The weather was, objectively, so-so: Cloudy and drizzly (if not rainy) most of the week. This was fine with me, though, since I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go, and when I wanted to go out, it wasn’t nasty enough to be a real problem. It was definitely better than hot-and-humid, which is a risk in Boston during the summer!

I was able to do the shopping I wanted (including visits to That’s Entertainment and Pandemonium), plus having dinner with my friend Bruce. I also read a book and a half, and was pleased to find that my Mom’s (relatively) new Internet connection has built-in wi-fi, which meant I could browse the Web and get my e-mail on my laptop rather than using her computer.

My first outing was to go down to visit Debbi’s family on Tuesday the 23rd. I think Debbi was happy to have someone else to chase around her nieces and nephews, who are 10, 8 and 5. The 10-year-old is getting quite fast, and chasing them around the house I was only able to catch her because she had to stop to keep from running into her siblings! The 8-year-old likes to play chase-and-catch games, and she way underestimated how far I can leap in a single step, surprising the heck out of her. We also reduced Debbi to hysterical laughter during dinner when I told the kids we should settle down because their mom was getting that look, to which the 8-year-old said, “You know the look?” Debbi almost spit out her dinner.

Thursday Dad and I drove down to Cape Cod for a day-trip around the peninsula. We chose the right day, as it was sunny and warm for the whole day, probably the one day it was while we were there. We had lunch at Cooke’s in Orleans, stopped in Wellfleet and then went up to Provincetown for some fried dough and to look into the stores. There’s a nifty game store there now, Puzzle Me This, which would be worth a trip every visit if I were still going to the Cape regularly. After that we stopped in Chatham to see the ocean, and then had dinner in Orleans again, this time at the Saltwater Grille.

We vacationed on the Cape every year while I was growing up, and my parents still go there each year, so the Cape holds a lot of memories for me. Orleans, where we stayed, is so different from the olden days: Most of the stores I remember no longer exist, and parts of town are considerably built up. Cooke’s is really the main holdout - it’s been there forever, and is just as good as it’s ever been. I remember finding some great used comics and books at stores around the Cape which either no longer exist, or are shadows of their former selves. And also a terrific kite store in Provincetown, which weirdly carried a few games like Star Fleet Battles. And biking on the excellent Cape Cod Rail Trail.

Dad said that Cape Cod feels like a second home to him. Even years after I last stayed there, it does to me too, despite all the changes. I should see if I can take a vacation there again some year.

Sunday night Debbi and I double-dated with her sister and brother-in-law, as we did a few years ago, having dinner in the North End, followed by coffee and dessert. They’re fun people to have a night out with, and we all had a great time. (With three kids I’m sure they enjoy getting a night out once in a while, too.) Debbi came back to spend an evening at my Mom’s afterwards, letting her sleep in on Monday.

This would have been a great end to the vacation, except for the flight home: Due to weather on the east coast plus a systems glitch at the airport, our flight back was delayed, delayed, delayed, until we would have missed our connection. So we switched to a different flight, and it was delayed, delayed, delayed, until it finally took off after we’d been at the airport for nine and a half hours. This one was a direct flight, but it landed in Oakland rather than San Francisco, and since it got in after 1 am, it was too late for anyone to pick us up (although Subrata did try, but it was too late even for him). So we took a cab to get Debbi’s car, and finally got home around 2:45 am. We were both exhausted and cranky by the time we got to bed. It was one of the worst travel experiences I’ve ever had.

Despite that, it was overall a very nice vacation. We get back there a little less often over time, but we always enjoy it when we do.

So I couldn’t help but pay attention to Michael Jackson as a teen. Despite this, I never bought any of his albums or singles. They were nice enough, but mostly not my thing. (Though to be fair, I did enjoy his music casually, especially the “Thriller” video.)

To be fair, Jackson at his best was better than dance-pop music (especially the synth-pop of the early 80s, which was largely execrable and which, unlike Jackson’s music, sounds even sillier today than it did then). It had some depth and complexity to go along with the rhythm and melody, and I think that’s what over the long haul separated him from most of his contemporaries. Jackson was also a showman, but what he brought were not just slick dance moves and a pretty face (although he brought those, too), but a sense of grown-up style atop his fundamental energy and enthusiasm. Really, all of this is perfectly captured in the cover to his album before Thriller, Off The Wall. Even in his later years, I think it’d be fair to say that Jackson was basically a big kid in an adult body.

Why do so many pop stars become so eccentric? Okay, everyone’s eccentric in their own way (look at me, for instance. No, on second thought, stop looking at me), but something about the rise to the top or the fall from the top seems to make these people nuttier than normal. Arguably Madonna and George Harrison’s eccentricities are more the result of the media coverage that they received, but consider Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, who embraced their eccentricities and ultimately crafted their images around them, and then seemed to get stuck in a feedback loop of getting weirder as they’re farther removed from their peak.

(Aside: Elvis, The Beatles and Jacko are clearly the dominant pop stars of the 50s, 60s and 80s; who was the dominant star of the 70s? The Bee Gees? Somehow they don’t seem to be in the same class.)

Jackson’s later years became more spectacle than performance (his last album was released in 2001), but his death yesterday still reverberates (even though I’m still a little surprised at the number of passionate Jackson fans out there today). I can’t yet think of the music of my teen years as “golden oldies”, but Jackson’s passing is a big step towards making it so.

(Another reminiscence at Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets.)

Walt Disney:
The Triumph of
the American
Imagination

Since my girlfriend is a huge Disneyland fan, I was finally motivated to pick up this biography of the man behind the mouse. I chose this book rather than a smaller volume because I figured if I was going to read a biography of Walt Disney, I’d rather get all the story, rather than something which made me want to go read another book with all the story. And on that score, Gabler mostly delivers.

It’s always a little awkward reading an extended sequence about the childhood of a famous man, since it’s rare that the childhood is truly interesting, but in Disney’s case, his youthful experiences seemed to inform his later life considerably. Gabler traces Disney’s childhood from his pastoral days in the small town of Marceline, to his teen years in Kansas City where he worked almost non-stop to help his hard-luck father keep food on the table. His two pleasures as a teen were drawing, and being a jokester and prankster. Following a turn with the Red Cross after World War I, he went into commercial art, where he soon was exposed to the nascent art of animation, and formed his own studio, which went under, and then he formed another one when he moved to California.

Gabler’s theory is that Disney’s efforts were largely dedicated to two goals: First, to form a community of friends and like-minded individuals to replace the family and friends he’d left behind when he moved to California, and later, to recapture and recreate the idyllic feel of small town America at the turn of the century. So he was driven to form and maintain his animation studio, and later to turn it to produce films and TV shows about the American past as he saw it.

Disney turned out to be at the right place at the right time, of course, innovating in the animation field when it was still brand new. But he was also a strong storytelling, idea man, and frequently had his finger on the pulse of popular culture, even if he didn’t really understand himself how he did it. But he was also a strong control freak, wanting the final word over everything his studio did, obsessively reviewing minute details and sending his staff back to the drawing board, and being unwilling to delegate authority, to the point of reorganizing the company whenever someone else started to accumulate too much power. To the extent that Disney could do it all himself, it worked, but in later years it became clear that much of the company’s success was due to the unheralded employees who worked on the features.

Still, Gabler doesn’t stint on crediting Disney himself and his studio with being innovators in their time, being among the first to adopt color and sound in their cartoons, transforming the prevailing style of animation in the early 30s with “The Three Little Pigs”, turning their properties into marketing gold mines, and of course practically inventing the animated feature film in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as being the first Hollywood studio to fully embrace television in the 1950s and to create the modern theme park in Disneyland. In this way, the book reads like an early history of animation in America.

But Gabler also points out Disney’s flaws - and he had many, as a man and a manager, not least his tendency to lose interest in older projects when his studio was still on the hook for them, and turn to newer things while leaving his employees on their own without his guiding hand. Later in life he began to believe his own proverbial press releases, feeling he could change the world when in fact he was not quite an entertainer so much as the man behind the true entertainers (although he still did motivate some true innovations right up to his last years of life).

The book reads fairly quickly, for all that it’s a large tome of a book. It feels well-balanced, although I have little to compare it to. Its biggest failing is that after World War II it goes into less depth than I’d have liked, such as the nuts and bolts of building Disneyland (the opening day was a disaster, but little is said about it), or the studio’s later films. Relatively little about the nature of Disney’s legacy is said, as the book ends shortly after his death.

Nonetheless, it’s an insightful and informative book, and I’d recommend it to learn more about Walt Disney the man, as opposed to the myth behind the giant company.

The Yiddish
Policemen’s
Union

I’m not generally a fan of literary fiction - I stick to genre fiction for the most part - but I did read Michael Chabon’s celebrated novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay some years back, and I found some parts of it arresting, and other parts of it tedious, topped off with a disappointing ending as the book peters out. For my book club we tackled his novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union this month, and by and large I had the same reactions.

The story is an alternate-worlds story, in which the United Stated created in 1940 a district for Jews to immigrate to in Sitka, Alaska, Israel then falls in 1948, and Sitka grows to four million Jews. However, the district will revert to US territory after 60 years, and the story opens with less than a year before reversion, and the populace of Sitka are contemplating the diaspora facing them. In this milieu, Meyer Landsman is a police detective, formerly very successful, but now living in a fleabag hotel following a divorce from his wife. In this hotel a young man is found murdered, shot in the head execution-style, and despite being ordered not to investigate, Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko look into it anyway. They find that the victim was the son of the leader of the Verbovers, a powerful criminal organization. Despite being suspended following a gun battle, Landsman continues to investigate the case, uncovering a conspiracy and the secrets of several power figures en route to unraveling the mystery.

The centerpiece of the novel is the setting of Sitka, its culture, and the sometimes-whimsical, sometimes-sarcastic sense of humor of many of the characters. Becoming immersed in this culture is the main source of fun in the book, seeing how this marginalized society with a strong criminal element has survived in this remote environment for decades. The aged buildings, the history of the city’s chess club, the island of the Verbovers, and the history of the prominent individuals all contribute to the setting, an impressive and subtle bit of world-building.

The characters of Landsman and Berko are well-drawn. Landsman is the down-trodden noir detective, fighting for what he thinks is right even though he’s not entirely sure what that is anymore, or even whether it matters. Berko is the supportive, sidekick, albeit a big bear of a man who waxes philosophical even as he wears his emotions on his sleeve. These two dwarf all the other characters, although there’s a fair amount of variety here, and the main function of most other characters are as ones for Landsman and Berko to interact with.

The story meanders all over the place, taking some unusual approaches to the standard hard-boiled detective story: Landsman is suspended, yes, but not really for the reasons you’d expect, and he doesn’t assume the role of the outsider as a result because he’s already assumed that role following the collapse of his marriage. Landsman’s peeling back of the conspiracy and uncovering of the identity of the murderer feel anticlimactic: The ultimate goal of the conspiracy, which is focused on the coming diaspora, seems like a dream unfolding because it’s so grand, so improbable, and also left unfinished, being only the first salvo in a longer plan beyond the scope of the book. The murderer’s identity feels like it’s from out of left field, perhaps not entirely irrational, but more like a tying up of a loose end rather than a satisfying resolution of the event which drove the plot. The other subplot is Landsman’s relationship with his ex-wife, Bina, which I think is perhaps the least successful element of the book, as Bina is a pretty thin character, and the culmination of their story doesn’t really feel believable.

I’m conflicted about Chabon’s writing style: I love his ability to define both a setting and characters who fit comfortably within that setting. But his use of language frequently feels too self-consciously arty, and the story meanders around too much, with many flashbacks and digressions, some of which work, some of which don’t. While his command of the overall structure of the story is quite strong, he also sometimes pulls in new elements from seemingly nowhere, such as when Landsman’s late sister becomes a central element of the story more than half-way through, despite having barely been mentioned before then. On balance, I think what keeps the narrative from getting bogged down by all this is the fact that Chabon’s primary style is folksy and humorous, so there’s always the promise of another chuckle a few pages ahead even if the current sequence isn’t so exciting.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union certainly doesn’t live up to the effusive words of praise on the back cover, but it’s still a pretty good book. Chabon’s overall approach is enjoyable enough that I feel like I ought to read more of his stuff. I’m thinking of The Final Solution.

• Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (written by Steven Moffat)
• Turn Left (Russell T. Davies)
• Planet of the Ood (Keith Temple)
• Midnight (Russell T. Davies)
• The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End (Russell T. Davies)
• The Doctor’s Daughter (Stephen Greenhorn)
• The Fires of Pompeii (James Moran)
• The Unicorn and the Wasp (Gareth Roberts)
• The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky (Helen Raynor)
• Partners in Crime (Russell T. Davies)
• Voyage of the Damned (Russell T. Davies)

Season four got off to a very shaky start indeed, with the Christmas special “Voyage of the Damned”, which was silly, dumb, nonsensical and several other adjectives. A bad episode, as the Christmas specials generally have been. But still, forgivable as it was just a special.

Unfortunately, the season proper got off to a start nearly as poor, with a ridiculous (and rather gross) villain and plot. The redeeming quality of “Partners in Crime” was the whimsical relationship between the Doctor and new companion Donna Noble, with the memorable musical theme for their pairing. But the episode itself bent over way too far to keep the two just missing each other for its first half, and the premise of creating little baby aliens from human fat was disgusting for basically no good reason. Between them, these two episodes made me put off watching the rest of the season for quite a few weeks, because they were both really weak.

Unfortunately this is a consistent problem in Russell T. Davies’ writing: His characterizations are pretty good (occasionally great), but his plotting and premises - even by the loose standards of Doctor Who - tend to be very weak.

The next few episodes are decent “bread-and-butter” episodes: “The Fires of Pompeii” is about as middle-of-the-road an episode as you could get. “Planet of the Ood” is a pretty good thriller. “The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky” is a mediocre invasion-of-Earth yarn. “The Doctor’s Daughter” is a straightforward colonization-gone-wrong yarn, made a little better through the exuberant performance of Georgia Moffett as Jenny, and titular character; however, I guessed the episode’s punchline about 15 minutes in. “The Unicorn and the Wasp” is a far-too-pretentious science fictional mystery featuring Agatha Christie as one of the characters; despite a few good moments, the episode is too ludicrous to hold together.

At this point we’re more than halfway through the season and it’s been a pretty mediocre lot so far. And as a companion Donna has been something of a mixed bag. She’s at her best when she’s acting as a mature, capable woman; as with Martha Jones in season three, at times she’s more mature than the Doctor himself. But her characterization is uneven, as she’s often overwhelmed by events she’s thrown into, which although it’s fairly reasonable that she would be, it’s also ground that feels recently trod-over in the current series. Catherine Tate seems swept away by the eddies of the writing, doing well when given good material, but seeming whiny or annoying with weaker material. Ultimately I blame the writing, as I think it would take an actress of historic talent to forge a consistently great performance out of the character of Donna as portrayed here.

Fortunately, the second half of the season is a marked improvement over the first, unsurprisingly starting with Steven Moffat’s two-part entry, “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead”. It starts off as an effectively eerie horror episode - a global library which is utterly silent and deserted when the Doctor and Donna arrive - and soon become much more with the introduction of archaeologist RIver Song, who knows the Doctor but he doesn’t know her; this is the first time he’s met her, but she’s known his future self for a while. Alex Kingston is terrific as River, and makes me look forward to seeing her (hopefully) in the future, although the way television series work, I’m not holding my breath. The story has the frantic-yet-terrifying feel of some classic episodes, with the characters beating a hasty retreat from their opponents while slowing figuring out (at some cost in body count) what’s going on. If I have a gripe with the episode, it’s the fate of River Song, which although not utterly tragic, is less optimistic than I’d hoped. I like to think that she eventually is reincarnated and is able to live her life and meet the Doctor again. Nonetheless, this two-parter is - as was the case with Moffat’s last two stories - the clear standout of the season.

The season ends with four Davies-written episodes, which isn’t as bad as it might sound. “Midnight” is an effectively creepy locked-room story, more atmosphere than story, about an alien creature that takes over the body of a woman on a broken-down transport in the middle of an unlivable planet’s wilderness. The story’s main flaw is one of motivation - what’s the alien trying to accomplish, and why does it behave as it does once it’s rendered the Doctor powerless? - but as a suspense yarn it’s pretty good.

Donna barely appears in “Midnight”, so conveniently “Turn Left” is all about Donna: An alien fortune teller inflicts her with a creature which causes her to turn right rather than left back when she interviewed with the company where she ended up meeting the Doctor. As a consequence, the Doctor dies because she’s not there for him in “The Runaway Bride”, and terrible things befall the Earth because of his absence. This sets the theme for the season finale: Donna feeling like she’s just an insignificant person, when her presence has changed the world. It’s quite a good episode, although the sense of destiny imparted to Donna feels grafted-on after the way her character’s been handled so far, and again, the fortune teller’s motivations are left unexplained.

The big finish is “The Stolen Earth”/”Journey’s End”, in which the Earth is, well, stolen - by the Daleks, of course. It’s hard to understand why they keep losing when they have the technology to steal planets and keep them out of phase with mainstream time, which is just one of many flaws in the story. But as a Davies story, much of the plot is left unexplained and/or doesn’t make much sense. The theme of the story is that of the Doctor’s large extended family, all of whom (since the series reboot) appear in this episode, usually accompanied by a plot hole or a moment of sheer coincidence. Everyone pulls together to make things turn out okay, and there’s a rather nice sequence of saying farewell to everyone who’s been on the show the last few years, a sort of farewell to Russell Davies’ tenure.

Davies seems to be a sucker for both the Daleks and big, world-changing climaxes, both of which have worn thin their welcome with me over the last few years. He injects Davros, the Daleks’ creator, though other than giving a manic voice to the Daleks’ ambitions he doesn’t contribute much. The episode looks nice - the producers have learned how to apply their special effects budget quite well - and there are many touching moments (and a few clever ones, like when Jackie escapes certain death), but the whole thing feels like it’s trying too hard.

The story ends with a half-human clone of the Doctor, which gives Rose (who’s acquired a lisp since she last appeared) a happy ending with (after a fashion) the man she loves, and with Donna gaining the Doctor’s mind, which overloads her human brain, forcing the Doctor to make her forget all about him and leave her back on Earth. This latter bit seemed not only completely improbable, but largely unnecessary from a story standpoint: Either kill her off cleanly, or find some better way of having her leave the TARDIS. Wiping her memory, too, seems just like cruel writing.

Overall I think the fourth season was a little better than the third season, even though I liked Martha Jones better as a companion than I did Donna. But I’m looking forward to Steven Moffat taking over as head writer. I think he has the right sense of gravitas to give the series some meaning, but hopefully his tighter storytelling will carry over to structure for a whole season, without the kitchier extremes of Russell Davies’ writing.

Oh, and also, we’ll have a new Doctor, as David Tennant is departing along with Davies after this year’s specials. So it’ll be a fresh start. Again.

• Batman and Robin #1, by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely (DC)
• Astro City: The Dark Age Book 3 #2, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
• Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers HC vol 117, collecting The Avengers #80-88 and The Incredible Hulk #140, by Roy Thomas, Harlan Ellison, John Buscema, Herb Trimpe & Tom Palmer (Marvel)
• War of Kings #4 of 6, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
• Irredeemable #3, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
• The Boys #31, by Garth Ennis & Carlos Ezquerra (Dynamite)
• Star Trek: Crew #4 of 5, by John Byrne (IDW)
• Atomic Robo: Shadow From Beyond Time #2 of 5, by Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener (Red 5)

Recently, the twists and turns of the DC Universe have resulted in Batman being killed off. Well, not really, but you know how it goes. In any event, as far as the world is concerned, Bruce Wayne is dead, and as long as that’s the status quo it’s a good time to launch Batman and Robin, a new series by Grant Morrison (the writer who handled the dispatching of Bruce) and Frank Quitely, in which Dick Grayson - formerly Robin and then Nightwing - puts on the cowl, and Bruce’s son Damian (whose background I can barely understand) is Robin. Although the blog Second Printing says “it feels so brand new, like discovering Batman and Robin for the first time”, it didn’t feel that way to me. Indeed, it took only a few pages for it to feel an awful lot like John Byrne’s Generations series, in which in the 1960s Dick Grayson becomes Batman and Bruce’s son BJ becomes Robin, which itself is an homage to an “imaginary story” published back in the 1950s. Presumably Morrison’s paying homage to the same story, having realized that the characters available in the current milieu happen to make such a scenario possible. Comic history aside, the set-up only really feels “new” in some incidental ways, mainly by contrast with the traditional Batman: Dick is more of a teacher to Damian, with more empathy for others than Bruce has displayed in recent decades, while Damian - the grandson of the head of the League of Assassins - is apparently brilliant but callous, and only barely regards Dick as a mentor. But in the large the premise is the same as Batman’s been going back to the 40s. I wonder whether someone who’s not familiar with Batman lore would really find it all that different, either. I’ve given Morrison’s writing a lot of flak recently - largely because Final Crisis was such a disaster at the writing end - but I continue to buy (most of) his work because he’s always been a solid ideas man, even though his characterizations and execution can be lacking. The story here is rather the reverse of what Morrison usually delivers: A little more characterization (as noted above), but the ideas content is pretty thin: Outre-looking villains, not much plot. But then, it’s only the first issue, and the story has a very “uncompressed” pace. All-in-all, it’s an okay first issue. Quitely’s art seems a little more nuanced than usual, which is welcome since I find his art can get repetitive (and his women always look creepy and a little ghoulish). But the gosh-wow factor is low, and as I said, it feels like we’ve seen this before. Plus, Byrne did it better.

The opening montage of the film in which we see how the disappointment’s in Carl’s life shaping him into a cranky old man really resonated with me. My thought while watching it was that its message is not to put off following your dreams, not to let the little day-to-day things get in the way. My temperament is that of a steady, day-to-day guy, and from time to time I worry that I’m spending all my time just going through the motions and not doing anything truly memorable, the sort of thing I’ll look back on when I’m old and think, “That’s something I’m glad I did.” I also haven’t had any great ambitious goals in life like Carl and Ellie did to go to Paradise Falls.

The later montage shows Carl reading through Ellie’s adventure scrapbook, filled with pictures of their life together. In contrast to the first montage, this one shows how all of the little things, in aggregation, makes up a fulfilling and memorable life. Rather than resonating deeply with me like the first sequence, this one gave me something to think about. I’m still thinking.

The evening of the day we saw the film, I asked Debbi if she’s happy with me even though I don’t go on any adventures with her. She said that we do go on adventures: We went to Hawaii, to Las Vegas, and to Portland, and Disneyland. And I know I’ll remember that Hawaii trip for years to come.

It still seems like it falls short of fulfilling some lifelong dream, though.

The journey of retiree and widower Carl Fredrickson (voice of Ed Asner) to South America in a house lifted by thousands of balloons is an utterly ridiculous premise, and it gets sillier as it goes on, with a nonogenarian explorer, dragging the floating house several miles atop a butte, talking dogs and fantastic animals. And yet the whole thing works on its own terms, as it’s really about Carl’s personal journey to find a way to keep going after the death of his wife.

There are two tear-jerker montages which certainly do their jobs: The much-heralded opening sequence in which we see how Carl became the grumpy old man he is, and a later sequence in which he reminisces on his life from a different perspective. In a way they show how two views of a person’s life can say very different things about that person: In Carl’s case, either that he should have seized the day before it was too late, or that he had a wonderful life that he shouldn’t regret. But the story is about Carl making his way from here to there in his head.

But it’s the exuberant characters that carry the day: Russell, the young wilderness explorer (Jordan Nagai) who stows away on Carl’s house, and Dug (Bob Peterson), the talking dog who tags along when he meets the pair, eventually turning on his master, the adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). Dug is especially hilarious, and quotable (”Hi there!”).

If the film has a weak spot, it’s the obsessive villainy of Muntz, who makes an effective heavy, but not a terribly convincing one: While his motivation (chasing after a fantastic animal for decades and not letting anything get in his way) makes a certain gut-level sense, I wondered why he didn’t try to “catch more flies with honey”, as they say. But given how much suspension of disbelief the story asks for just by its nature, a little bit of character motivation is easy enough to overlook.

I think Up is the film that The Incredibles wanted to be: This film’s epiphany works better than that one does, and it feels more true to itself, not tied up in trying to be a superhero film (with a poor understanding of superheroes), a family drama, and a spy adventure all in one. Up is is much more focused on its main character and story, and the whole thing works much better.

Is it Pixar’s best film? It’s hard to pick just one, since they’ve made so many good ones. WALL-E may have been more inventive, but it stumbled in the premise of its second half. Up is more consistent and overall works better. I’ve watched WALL-E, Cars and Finding Nemo many times now; I hope Up holds up as well in repeat viewings.

Squirrel!

• Green Lantern #41, by Geoff Johns, Philip Tan, Eddy Barrows, Jonathan Glapion, Ruy José & Julio Ferreira (DC)
• Justice Society of America #27, by Jerry Ordway & Bob Wiacek (DC)
• The Literals #2, by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Mark Buckingham & Andrew Pepoy (DC/Vertigo)
• Madame Xanadu #11, by Matt Wagner & Michael Wm. Kaluta (DC/Vertigo)
• Avengers/Invaders #11 of 12, by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, Steve Sadowski & Patrick Berkenkotter (Marvel)
• Guardians of the Galaxy #14, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Brad Walker & Victor Olazaba (Marvel)
• The Incredible Hercules #129, by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Ryan Stegman & Terry Pallot (Marvel)
• The Immortal Iron Fist #26, by Duane Swierczynski, Travel Foreman & Tom Palmer (Marvel)
• Nova #25, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Kevin Sharpe, Jeffrey Huet & Nelson Pereira (Marvel)
• Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 #6 of 6, by David Petersen (Archaia)
• Ignition City #3 of 5, by Warren Ellis & Giancula Pagliarani (Avatar)

	Madame Xanadu wrapped up its first storyline last month, chronicling how a woodland sorceress in the time of King Arthur gradually turned into the reserved, somewhat dour seeress of the modern day, bedeviled all along by the cryptic guidance of the Phantom Stranger (a long-standing DC character who must frustrate the heck out of everyone he tries to help although they rarely show it, so Xanadu’s honesty in that regard has been rather refreshing). That taken care of, regular artist Amy Reeder Hadley is taking a break while much-lauded cover artist Michael Wm. Kaluta fills in for a 5-issue story. The series has been kind of so-so to date: A fairly consistent pattern of the Stranger trying to help, Xanadu getting frustrated, and things turning out badly, until the last two issues when she strikes back, and things still turn out badly. Now she’s hung up her shingle as a fortune-teller, and one of her first clients is a woman whose father was found immolated in his home, and she suspects foul play. Xanadu determines that it was likely a supernatural murder, and as she starts to look for the killer, she also reminisces about the days she lived in Spain, during the Inquisition, and had taken on a young woman as a lover. The modern story (which I think takes place in the 1920s) is fairly interesting, but the flashback sequence is ho-hum, the sort of thing I’d hoped would have been put behind us after the first ten issues, which have really been one large flashback. Let’s stick to moving things forward! I guess Wagner is going for a Sandman-esque feeling of filling in the backstory as things go along, but without a strong set of stories in the present day, it just isn’t working; it feels like the series is still in its prologue, and nearly a year in it really should have gotten started moving wherever it’s going. Kaluta is a fine artist, although he could use a stronger inker who works in heavier lines, as his light touch with the blacks tends to get washed out once the pages are colored. Oddly, the inking on the cover works better, but the composition is downright odd, with the character’s outsized head and hands compared to her body; not one of his better ones. While I’d say this is a series that’s had trouble finding its groove, I suspect it’s actually working out exactly as writer Matt Wagner has planned. I’ve just found it slow and not very exciting.
	The odd thing about Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova coming out the same week is that it’s so clear how much better Nova is than Guardians, even though they’re both set in Marvel’s space milieu and they’re both written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Both books have had rotating artists throughout their run, and Guardians has the clearly-better penciller this month in Brad Walker (whose sense of form and rendering appeals to my preferences), but it’s the writing that sets Nova apart. Both series have had a problem in that they keep getting interrupted by silly crossover events that sometimes don’t make any sense for them to be involved with (Secret Invasion), and otherwise detract from the ongoing story in the title itself (War of Kings, the current event). Nova has done a very good job of weaving its ongoing story into these disruptions, while Guardians has gotten completely sidetracked by them each time. Since Guardians also has a large (and growing) cast of characters to manage, that means little about the book really gets the attention it deserves. Not that there aren’t good bits about Guardians: Star-Lord’s sardonic outlook is consistently amusing, and seeing Warlock take on Emperor Vulcan and the Imperial Guard here is quite a treat, leading in to what looks like a huge slug-fest next month. But overall the book is flailing around a lot and not really going anywhere, which is disappointing. Editorial really needs to just leave it alone for a year or two to find its own path without all these interruptions. Nova, on the other hand, has remained fairly focused in Richard Ryder’s relationship with the Nova-force and its sentient overseer, the Worldmind, who have been embedded in his head and body since before the series began. It all came to a head recently when the Worldmind went around the bend, formed a new Nova Corps, and ejected Richard from it. Richard acquired Quasar’s quantum bands and has his showndown with the Worldmind here, which is quite effective and comes to a satisfying resolution (although not a conclusion to the overall plot thread). Despite the new Corps dealing with the War of Kings event, Richard’s main story has remained largely divorced from it, which has made the series much more enjoyable than Guardians. I look forward to the day that crossover events are no longer big sellers and we can just have good, ongoing stories which drives sales. Sadly, I doubt that day with come anytime soon, and consequently that means a lot of otherwise-promising comics are going to be less than they could be.
	With Archaia’s financial problems apparently behind them, Mouse Guard has finished up its second series in the last couple of months. Although it’s been a more textured tale than the first one was, I don’t think it’s been a better one. But admittedly the long delays and the fact that it no longer feels novel may have to do with that. Petersen’s artwork is still nifty - the coloring especially is fabulous - and this month we get to see the Guard’s mounts: rabbits! There’s a sense that there is an over-arching story connecting things, involving the Black Axe, the fabled champion of the mice, which has played a central role in the first two series, so I’m curious to see where that’s going to go, if it’s going to be an epic tale or just a series of loosely-connected ones. I think the biggest flaw in the series is that Petersen the writer keeps too much emotional distance between the reader and the characters, though since the characters are mice with not-very-expressive faces, that’s a hard divide to bridge anyway. But there are some moments in this issue which could be quite poignant, but fall short because the mice seem so reserved and unexpressive. But overall this is still quite a good series, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

One unusual site was biking past a cul-de-sac road and seeing a large (German Shepherd-sized) dog lying on its back in the middle of the cul-de-sac. I hope it was just lying in the sun and rubbing its back on the pavement, and not that something bad had happened to it, but stopping to investigate didn’t seem advised.

As usual for the first ride of the year, my legs are wobbly and I’ve been ravenously hungry (and trying to resist doing things like gobbling down chocolate-dipped croissants). It’ll take a couple of weeks for my body to adjust to the shock of all this sudden exercise.

Feels good to get out again, though.

During the summer it’s tricky to figure out where to park to get to the trail without having to pay for parking, since all the state beaches are charging now. Their charges are a pretty good deal if you’re going to spend the whole day on the coast, since admission to one beach lets you in to the others, too. But if you’re just walking for an hour or two, then the price (which I think is up to around $7.00 these days) is a bit steep. Fortunately over time I’ve found more and more free places to park, as there really is just lots of parking around. You just have to look.

It’s the height of wildflower season along the coast, so it was very colorful. But it was also overcast and a bit chilly, so we were glad we brought a sweatshirt and jacket. But otherwise it was rather pleasant.

We also saw a bunch of neat stuff. For instance, a cat on a fence who seemed to be mousing, but when I went over to get her attention she jumped down and climbed right into my arms, and was happy to jump into Debbi’s arms, too:

The birds were out in force, too: Lots of red-winged blackbirds, and a few yellow birds I hadn’t seen before:

Plus some bunny rabbits:

(All photos by Debbi using her new camera, except for you, know, the two photos of Debbi.)

It never did clear up, but it was a pleasant walk all-in-all. We grabbed some iced coffees for the drive home, where it was sunny and warm. Then we collapsed for the afternoon until heading to Cafe Borrone for the evening.

It’s always fun to head to the coast for half a day.

(Click for larger image)

Of course, it took practically no time for someone to come up with a tournament-competitive deck using cascade, which is surely a lot better than my deck. But what the heck.

This deck is based around what seems to be the most popular cascade card, Bloodbraid Elf. The main feature of Bloodbraid Elf is that it’s a 3/2 with haste. So I decided to build a deck around creatures with haste:

My goal in building this deck was to minimize the number of cards I could cascade into which would ever be unplayable. Since our metagame makes enchantment and artifact removal a must - especially since this is a largely creature-based deck - I needed a Naturalize-like card, and the enchantment Seal of Primordium was perfect for that. I also like Incinerate and the withering Puncture Blast to clear the way for the creatures. Colossal Might is really the only card which might not be playable (since it can’t target the cascading Elf), but it’s so useful in pumping up the relatively small creatures that I wanted to use it.

With all the hasted creatures, Primal Forcemage is quite potent (and if an Elf cascades into it, then it pumps up the Elf!) - especially with Viashino Sandstalker. Tattermunge Witch provides an outlet for any extra mana and a way to run over blocking creatures.

In play, the deck is a little under-landed - deliberately, since no spell costs more than 4 - and it lacks a true finisher, or a way to deal with big threats. It might do pretty well in duels, but it runs out of steam in multiplayer, relying on drawing 1 or 2 elves for card advantage.

When I rework it, I think it needs a finisher, like Overrun. But larger spells would require more mana. (And then there’s Protean Hulk, which seemed like a great idea when I thought of it, except that creatures fetched when it dies don’t get played, they get put into play, so their Cascade abilities wouldn’t trigger. Alas.)

I’m not sure what I think of the Slith Firewalkers. They’re so vulnerable until they get going. Then again, any 3-cost creature with haste is going to be relatively wimpy; the Boggart Ram-Gangs are really the best you can do in that category.

So it’s an interesting base to start from, but I’m not sure how much potential the deck really has. It is fun to play out a lot of hasted creatures, though, so I’ll tinker with it a bit to see what I can do with it.

(Incidentally, the deck is pretty close to being Standard-legal. Swap in Hell’s Thunder and Jund Hackblade, and replace the Seals and Gaia’s Anthems with something appropriate - more burn, perhaps - and it would probably work pretty similarly. The big loss would be the Primal Forcemage effect.)

Even once I bought my house, I still didn’t have many places I walked to. It’s about a 30-minute walk to downtown from my house, which is a bit far for most of the things I go downtown for. Maybe I’ve just been inculcated with the California driving mentality, but I don’t want to spend that much time just travelling around. (I like biking, but not that much!)

Recently, though, I’ve realizing that I actually have several places that I now walk to regularly, because they’re just a few blocks from my house:

1. My friend Chris hosts our Monday night Magic games and lives at the other end of the block from me.
2. Another fellow hosts a regular low-stakes poker game and lives even closer to me than Chris does.
3. We have a 7-11 in one direction and a Starbucks and a decent “fast food” Chinese restaurant in the other direction. There’s hope that the discount supermarket will open in the latter location soon, too.
4. A great burrito place is three blocks from my house.
5. And my polling place - which I visited this morning for the California special election - is about 5 blocks away.

I could probably walk even more than I do, but I was thinking this morning while going to vote that it’s nice to have these places to walk to from time to time. Makes me feel more like I really live in the area, rather than that I live in one place, get in my car, and magically end up in some other place.

Myself, I’m an unreconstructed original series fan, and I happily enjoy those old episodes and the early movies while ignoring almost everything that followed. So I was just hoping for a good movie. Well, it’s got lots of action and plenty of humor, but it also self-consciously compares itself to the original series at every turn, and the story makes basically no sense, while blazing no new ground. So it was a rollicking ride, but ultimately it’s just another action film.

Spoilers ahoy!

In the late 24th century, Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) fails to stop a supernova from destroying the Romulan homeworld. As a result of his actions, Spock and a Romulan mining ship are thrown back in time to the 23rd century. The Romulan ship arrives right at the birth of James T. Kirk; its captain, Nero (Eric Bana), blames Spock and the Federation for failing to save his homeworld, and vows to destroy them all. He starts with the he encounters upon arrival, and Kirk’s father George sacrifices himself to delay Nero.

22 years later, Kirk (Chris Pine) has grown up to be a rebellious ne’er-do-well who gets into fights with Starfleet cadets. Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) goads Kirk into joining Starfleet to make something of himself, and the trick works. Three years later, Kirk is near graduation, when his antics in facing the Kobiyashi Maru test throw his career into doubt when Spock (Zachary Quinto) accuses him of cheating. Fortunately for Kirk, Nero chooses that moment to put his plan into action, attacking Vulcan. Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) sneaks Kirk on board the U.S.S. Enterprise which sets out with a fleet heading to Vulcan. Nero’s ship is too powerful and destroys the fleet, then captures Captain Pike and destroys the planet Vulcan. Left in command of the ship, Spock elects to regroup with the fleet, and exiles Kirk to an ice planet when he tries to stop him.

On the planet, Kirk meets Ambassador Spock, who tells him that Nero’s actions have changed history, by killing Kirk’s father and destroying Vulcan. With the help of Spock and Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg), Kirk returns to the Enterprise, is able to force Spock to surrender command, and heads off to face Nero before he can destroy the Earth, too.

Star Trek has basically the same plot as its predecessor, Nemesis, with a time travel twist: Grumpy bald Romulan in a powerful ship vows to destroy the Federation. Nemesis plays its story absolutely straight, while this film is a laugh-fest.

The biggest problem with this film is that the story makes no sense. It’s actually the same basic story as its predecessor, Nemesis, with a time travel twist: Grumpy bald Romulan in a powerful ship vows to destroy the Federation, and only the Enterprise can stop him. But in its details the plot is one of the shakiest of any Star Trek film:

• A supernova that threatens to destroy the whole Romulan empire? Riiight.
• Nero’s motivation is thin: How are Spock and the Federation to blame for the destruction of Romulus, exactly? Didn’t Spock try, yet just not succeed? What did Nero do to help stop the supernova?
• A mining ship that can easily dispatch a warship, even if it was 150 years earlier? Okay, the Romulans are a warlike race, so maaaaybe… but it seems like a stretch.
• Why would Spock’s ship be carrying so much black-hole-creating red matter? Isn’t that just stupid?
• Kirk sneaks aboard the Enterprise against orders, and for this Captain Pike names him first officer?
• Kirk is promoted from cadet to captain for his role in one successful mission?

That’s just what comes to mind off the top of my head. The whole story is ridiculous even by Star Trek standards.

The way the film is constantly measuring itself against the original series and its cast is just plain weird. And distracting, considering I was entirely willing to take the film on its own terms and forget about everything that came before, but it wouldn’t let me. Whether it’s recycling gags from previous films (Chekov’s accent), the attention paid to rewriting continuity, or the efforts of many of the actors (especially Quinto and Urban) to recreate the vocal and body language quirks of the original cast, it was a reboot that just couldn’t let its source material go.

That said, there are several fine performances. Quinto does capture the mannerisms of Leonard Nimoy well, yet it seemed like he never quite grasped Spock’s character fully. Far more impressive was Pine’s Kirk, which captured the essence of the character - despite the different environment in which he grew up - while not reproducing William Shatner’s superficial characteristics (indeed, he reminds me strongly of Matt Damon, who I’ve heard was briefly considered for the role, and whom I also heard Pine partly modeled his performance after). If Pine hadn’t come through, the whole film would have fallen flat; instead, he credibly portrays Kirk as a dead-end kid in the first half of the film, and then one who’s grown up considerably in the second half.

(Also of note is Bruce Greenwell as Captain Pike, who seems tailor-made for the role of mentor and elder statesman, a hero figure who shows the kids how it’s done by his self-sacrificing example, as well as displaying the deepest empathy for Kirk. Given that his role wasn’t very large, they really hit a home run when they cast him.)

Other than that: Special effects, fine. Music, weak (though not as weak as Jerry Goldsmith’s music on earlier films). Costumes, fine. Cinematography, your typical action-film work.

Overall, I guess George R. R. Martin put it a lot more succinctly than I have, although he hated the film. I thought it was okay for what it was, but what it was was completely devoid of ambition or freshness. It’s an evening’s diversion, but ultimately I was disappointed, and my expectations weren’t very high to start with.

• The Flash: Rebirth #2 of 5, by Geoff Johns & Ethan Van Sciver (DC)
• Blackest Night #0, by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert & Rob Hunter (DC)
• Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three #1 of 4, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
• Power Girl #1, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner (DC)
• War of Kings #3 of 6, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
• Far West: Bad Mojo #2 of 2, by Richard Moore (Antarctic)
• Fire and Brimstone #5 of 5, by Richard Moore (Antarctic)
• Irredeemable #2, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
• The Boys #30, by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite)
• The Life and Times of Savior 28 #2, by J.M. DeMatteis & Mike Cavallero (IDW)
• Star Trek: Crew #3 of 5, by John Byrne (IDW)
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (Top Shelf)

	A friend asked if I was going to review Blackest Night #0, which was part of Free Comic Book Day, and how could I resist a direct request? Blackest Night is this year’s big event in the DC Universe, although writer Geoff Johns says it’s a story he’s wanted to do since he relaunched Green Lantern. There’s a hint of it back in the Black Hand story in the series’ first year, so clearly Johns has had something in mind since then. This is one of the higher-quality FCBD issues from the Big Two that I can recall: It’s the beginning of a larger story, written by one of their big name writers with solid art (although I’m not entirely sold on Ivan Reis as a top-tier guy). It also does a pretty good job of recapitulating the set-up of Green Lantern, explaining the assortment of “Lantern Corps” through a series of pin-ups, leading into the main story, and also providing a bit of insight into the hero through GL’s dialogue with the Flash, reminiscing about their fallen friends and especially GL’s relationship with Batman. It’s not a complete story in itself - though you can’t fault DC for using a freebie as advertising for the rest of the story - but for what it is it’s quite good. As I’ve said of late, Green Lantern is probably Geoff Johns’ best work. This issue might not completely sell you on the series - especially since it has a complex backstory at this point - but it certainly tries its darndest. I approach all big events in comics with trepidation, and I don’t have much confidence that it will, as Johns says in his afterword, “recharge the DC Universe”, but I think it could be a fine, fun story. So check it out. You can’t beat the price.
	Superman’s almost-cousin Power Girl gets her own ongoing series this month. Thankfully she’s seemingly past the ridiculous identity crisis that plagued her JSA Classified story a few years ago, but the challenge for the series is to give her a reason for being a headliner. PG has always been at her brightest when she plays a counterpoint to other characters - she was, after all, conceived as a young, upstart counterpoint to the stodgy Golden Age Superman - but she’s had trouble leading up her own stories, because she’s not really grounded in anything but being one of the heavy-hitters on a super-team. I assume her appeal is a mix of her (ahem) physique and her strong, no-nonsense personality. Neither of those are really enough to carry a series, but filling her with angst over her background runs counter to her essential personality, and is why the JSA Classified story didn’t work. This first issue restores her Karen Starr identity from the 70s, in which she’s the head of a tech company. As PG, she fights a bunch of constructs controlled by the Ultra-Humanite (who must be back from irrelevance for about the fifth time by now). It’s okay, but it’s only the barest of groundwork for putting together a complete series about the character. Abnett and Lanning tend to hit more than they miss, but they’ve got their work cut out for them. At least they’re aided and abetted by the always-terrific artwork of Amanda Conner. I may be a bit skeptical, but I’m pulling for this one to succeed. And not just because PG is a babe!
	Astro City: The Dark Age finally continues with the third part of - I think - four. For those who’ve forgotten - and given the series’ publishing schedule (for which the creators frequently apologize) - it focuses on Astro City in the 1970s and 80s, especially a pair of brothers, one a cop, one a small-time hood, who witness and frequently get caught up in the larger events going on during the time. Kurt Busiek has said that The Dark Age is the story he’d originally come up with as a sequel to Marvels, but when Marvel didn’t seem interested in it, he reworked it for Astro City. And then came up with a sequel for Marvels anyway, the currently-running Eye of the Camera. Unsurprisingly, since the two series cover the same time period, they have a very similar feel, a general bleakness and foreboding which accompanies the outre and often violent heroes and anti-heroes who peppered comic books of the era. Both series also whip through a large number of events, focusing on their characters from time to time, but often leaving me with a feeling that I’ve missed an awful lot and that I’m not getting the careful exploration of the main characters that I’ve come to expect from Busiek’s writing. In both cases, it seems like he’s trying to jam too much into the series, and that’s saying something given the length of The Dark Age. I’m hoping that The Dark Age will come to some transcendent climax which will justify the series’ length and some of the larger-than-life keynote moments (the SIlver Agent’s death, and the Apollo Eleven team, for instance), while still bring a sense of closure to the brothers’ lives. It’s a tall order, really. Busiek’s one of the very best writers in comics, but I wonder whether he’s bitten off more than he can handle, here.
	Richard Moore’s Fire and Brimstone wraps up this week. The story of an angel and a demon who have been tasked with rounding up a collection of demons they accidentally unleashed on the world millennia ago has been little more than a diversion from his on-hiatus series Boneyard, with wacky and sexy hijinks and not a whole lot of a story (the cover to the left sums up the tone of the series rather well). This last issue involves a deity-turned-hitman gunning for our heroines, with a somewhat tried-and-predictable resolution. It’s nice to see Moore’s art in color, but overall the series has been fluff. The second half of a new Far West story by Moore also came out this week - but I missed the first issue, so I haven’t read it yet. Thumbing through it I see the pencils are un-inked; Moore’s a fine artist, but his stuff looks a lot better when it’s been inked.
	I was resoundingly unimpressed with the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Dossier, which seemed mostly like in-joke wankery and had an utterly lame ending. And it got mixed reviews across the Web, as well. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill are at it again, though, with the first of three volumes of a story called Century. The Black Dossier took place in the 1950s, and this volume takes place in 1910, 21 years after the first League story, so to some extent we’re catching up with the League as it’s evolved in more-or-less continuous existence since the disastrous encounter with the Martians in volume two. The story mainly follows two threads: Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain’s team’s quest to stop a wizard from bringing about the end of the world - a chase which leads them down a seemingly blind alley, although the reader knows there’s more going on than meets their eye. And Janni, the daughter of Captain Nemo, coming to England, and eventually taking up the mantle as his successor. In the mix is a series of dockside murders which swirl around Janni’s story and are told partly in song (more allusions to fictional figures of the time, naturally), although it kind of splutters out at the end. I think it’ll be hard for LoEG to ever recapture the sense of fun and excitement it had in its first volume, mainly because in that one Moore hit the nail squarely on the head with a collection of well-known, yet exotic, characters, and a nifty little puzzle for them and the readers to figure out. In later volumes, the lead characters have gotten more and more obscure, and that’s made elements of the series less interesting to people who don’t want to go to great lengths to figure out who these people are, or who don’t have any particular interest in the characters. (In other words, Carnacki, Raffles and Orlando don’t have quite the cachet of Mr. Hyde, Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man) Century: 1910 has the additional problem that it’s just the first part of a three-part story, so it sets up both an over-arching threat, and what will presumably be a significant new character (Nemo’s daughter), but ultimately it’s all set-up. But with the last two chapters taking place in 1969 and 2009, I wonder what it’s going to be set-up for Certainly if Janni and the wizard aren’t major components, it will really diminsh the impact of this volume. Overall, the story so far works much better than almost all of The Black Dossier did, with more little details that are interesting in and of themselves (such as “the prisoner of London”, which obviously will be showing up again). Also, Kevin O’Neill outdoes himself on the artwork, his characters having more fluidity and a wider variety of facial expressions than he’s employed in the past. While I’ve always appreciated O’Neill’s art for what it was, it’s great to see him evolving it. I’m hopeful that Century will be a good, solid story when it’s all told. The first volume is encouraging, and I look forward to the rest of it.

For her birthday we went down to Disneyland with several of our friends, including her high school friend Lisa who flew out from Milwaukee and who’s as big a Disney nut as Debbi and her other friend Lisa. We went into the park for Sunday night, and then on Monday and Tuesday, and last two of which were under the restricted 10 am - 8 pm hours for the season. Aside from the massive remodeling job on California Adventure (the ferris wheel opened while we were there), things were pretty much the same. Debbi was delighted: She got to see fireworks and go on every ride she wanted, and had a whole bunch of her friends there, and it all went pretty smoothly considering there were seven of us.

For her birthday I bought her a digital camera, and bought her (well, really us) a new coffee maker, since ours was on its last legs. I actually bought a new one of the exact same model we had, a Black & Decker TCM700 which makes the right amount of coffee for the two of us, and the thermal carafe works really well. (I decided the TCM830 10-cup model was perhaps more than we needed.)

In addition to those celebrations, we had our 8-year anniversary last Thursday, and went for our annual dinner to celebrate. And then on Saturday we went to our friends Josh & Lisa’s wedding, which was a nice ceremony at Thomas Fogarty Winery. I got to wear my new suit (with the lavender shirt) and we had fun hanging out with our friends there. The couple were very happy indeed, and are now off for a fun and relaxing honeymoon.

Fortunately thing didn’t back up too much at work, and I’m now trying to slide back into things. Today has been a little stressful, but I think it’ll even out tomorrow.