It’s taken us a lo-o-ong time to get the dining room set up: Buying a big buffet to store my board games (and empty all the boxes of games that we lining the room), and getting a rug for the

[Read the whole thing]]]> Thursday I had people over for the inaugural poker night at the new house.

It’s taken us a lo-o-ong time to get the dining room set up: Buying a big buffet to store my board games (and empty all the boxes of games that we lining the room), and getting a rug for the room to protect the hardwood floors. Then last weekend I bought a length of felt to use as a playing surface (I already knew the table cloth doesn’t really work – it bunches up whenever you try to pick up the cards). But finally we were ready.

The great thing about our dining table (which I inherited from a friend of mine) is that with both leaves in, it easily sits 8, and could probably sit 10 without too much trouble. We got 8 people – though we maxed out at 7 at once – for the game, and everything went smoothly. I even hauled out our glass mugs from the freezer for the people who wanted beer (“How unusually civilized” one of the players said). The cats briefly checked things out, but only Blackjack hung out with us for the evening. And Debbi said that after she went to bed, she could barely hear us still playing (and talking) downstairs.

The only casualty is that I managed to knock over my own chair right into an electrical outlet, chipping a piece off of its frame. But that should be easy to replace.

The game – our usual small-stakes 5¢/10¢ blind no-limit hold ‘em – went well. I won some early pots, lost some late pots, and ended up a couple of bucks. Two players got it all in after a ridiculous flop betting line (several near-minimum-raises followed by an all-in overbet and a snap call), revealing a set-over-set situation. One player said, “I didn’t think you’d call me!” and the other replied, “I didn’t think you’d beat me!” A third player just shook his head at their (deliberately) silly line of play, even though the outcome was inevitable.

People started turning into pumpkins sometime after 11, so we called it a night. The next morning Debbi said she wondered how we ended up with more beer than we started with (since we don’t drink beer, and most of what we had was left over from my birthday party). I said that Adam left it to encourage me to host again.

I certainly will.

First, I do get a little tired of Alan Moore saying that he wishes comics companies would stop exploiting properties he created that he doesn’t own,

[Read the whole thing]]]> Before Watchmen, the upcoming project from DC Comics, has been the talk of the comics world for a little while now. Here’s my two cents on the project.

First, I do get a little tired of Alan Moore saying that he wishes comics companies would stop exploiting properties he created that he doesn’t own, or that he co-owns. On the other hand, he has his wishes, and the media keeps asking him what he thinks of the latest project based on his work, so what do they expect him to say? “Oh gee, you’ve worn me down, so I’ve decided that it’s great they’re doing this.” So I think people who complain about Alan Moore complaining doth protest too much. As long as people keep doing new projects based on his work we’re going to keep hearing him complain about them, so we just have to accept that and move on.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a less-necessary set of books than prequels to Watchmen. It was a gorgeous and influential book which was complete unto itself, and which is tightly tied to the creators who made it (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons). Moreover, it pretty much plumbed the depths of all the major characters, and what was left unsaid was left so deliberately. Any prequels I think would only be interesting to the extent that they inform a new reading of the original book, but since Moore and Gibbons aren’t doing the prequels, I expect they’ll feel superfluous.

It’s strange to me that DC would do prequels to the series, rather than a sequel, since building something new on top of the original might genuinely move the book forward. But doing prequels just seems like a cynical effort to squeeze some more money out of the property – cynical because it indicates that DC is too timid to do anything daring.

Which is ironic because, as Moore has said, the whole point of Watchmen was to do new things with the medium (graphic novels) and the genre (superheroes). You can argue to what extent they succeeded in being truly innovative, but the book clearly greatly influenced comic books for years after it was published. Going back and further rooting around in the backstory of its milieu seems contrary to the spirit of the book itself – and thus all the more cynical.

But in pop culture all old fads end up coming back and being revisited or reworked eventually. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re fresh, and sometimes they’re stale. The only way this project is different from DC relaunching the Doom Patrol/the Teen Titans/the Suicide Squad one more time is that it has Alan Moore complaining about it.

Just remember: The great thing about literature (graphic or otherwise) is this: Regardless of whether or not Before Watchmen ends up being a cheap knock-off of the original, we can always go back and enjoy the original. Considering how many superhero comics have devolved into a serpent swallowing its own tail, that’s an important fact to remember.

We went out running errands

[Read the whole thing]]]> Another sunny weekend here in the Bay Area. We got a good dose of rain last weekend, but now we’re back to the sun. Such a tough life, I know. I really would like to get some more rain, but at least the cats can enjoy the sun beams.

We went out running errands yesterday. Debbi’s boot camp, EmpowerFit, was having an event at the Road Runner Sports venue in Redwood City, so we swung by. Debbi saw some of her friends from camp, and I went through their shoe finder test to get some new workout shoes. The test was pretty interesting: I knew my feet pronate pretty good, but my right foot also lands pointing outwards a little bit. They also recommended that I go from my usual size 11 4E shoes to size 11-1/2 2E shoes. I tried on a couple of pairs, and bought some New Balance ones, which are ones I have favored anyway, but I did genuinely like them better than the other ones I tried. Plus I got some insoles for them to give me more support. I may look at getting some new insoles for my everyday shoes sometime.

We also went by Joann Fabrics where I bought a length of felt for our dining table, so I can host poker games once in a while. Our regular table cloth doesn’t really cut it, since it’s difficult to pick the cards up without grabbing a good chunk of cloth.

(We really need a new table cloth, too, but with both leaves in the table is so big that it’s hard to find ones that fit it. And yes, I’ve looked on the Interwebs.)

In the evening we drove up to Menlo Park where my team was having dinner for a departing team member (he’s just moving inside the company, though). It was actually just team members only, so Debbi had dinner at our usual Saturday night haunt, Cafe Borrone. Dinner was at Bistro Vida, which we’d walked by but never eaten at. It’s pretty good! I’ll have to take Debbi there sometime soon.

Having gotten most of the errands out of the way yesterday, I expect we’ll just hang out today. But wait, it’s warm and sunny out, and we bought new shoes yesterday! So maybe we’ll go out for a walk sometime…

So instead we got up at our usual time, and Debbi made scones. Somehow I forgot to open my presents

[Read the whole thing]]]> I had a nice birthday today. I’d debated going up to San Francisco to Cal Academy, but I didn’t really feel like getting up early to get there before the holiday crowds rolled in.

So instead we got up at our usual time, and Debbi made scones. Somehow I forgot to open my presents in the morning – Debbi thought I was just waiting until this evening, but no, I just forgot. Blackjack and Newton were happily lying in the sun in the family room. A nice lazy morning.

Late in the morning we drove down to Santa Cruz for the day. We had lunch and did some shopping downtown. Then we stopped at the surfing museum (Flash required, lamely enough) – it’s fun enough, but we were mainly there for the views of the ocean:

Then we went to Natural Bridges State Beach. It’s one of several stopovers for monarch butterflies migrating through California, and I’d hoped we’d seen a bunch of them. We were disappointed to only see a few; perhaps February is better for swarms. We did have a nice walk around the park and a visit to the beach to see the natural bridge for which the park is named:

Did you know Santa Cruz has a natural history museum? I didn’t. But we didn’t visit it this time; maybe next time.

We had dinner at FJL, and are wrapping it up watching the premiere of Alcatraz, which is okay. I rather wonder what any of the last inmates of the prison back in 1963 – if any are still alive – think of the premise, that they all disappeared and are coming back in the present day. The show greatly exaggerates the conditions on the Rock, from what I understand, too.

A pretty nice birthday, really. Way too short, though!

I threw my usual birthday party last night, and it was nice to not have to

[Read the whole thing]]]> My birthday is tomorrow, and Debbi and I have the day off to enjoy a long weekend together. It’s not a “significant” birthday, so I don’t feel much older. But it’s nice to have some extra time off.

I threw my usual birthday party last night, and it was nice to not have to worry about how many people would fit into our house, like it was in the townhouse. A lot of people couldn’t make it, but we still had about a dozen people show up over the course of the evening. I made a huge amount of Mai Tais, which were fully consumed by the end of the night, and bought a couple of cakes from the Prolific Oven which about half of which got eaten.

Our neighbor Juan came by. He teaches salsa dancing, and later in the evening we put on some of his music and he got both Debbi and my friend/cow-orker Kelly dancing. (I resisted grabbing the camera and taking pictures.) I also saw Trish and her boyfriend Jared for the first time in quite a while. Susan and Subrata came by with Ajay; I think Ajay got a little bored with the big-peoples’ party until I pulled out one of my Hot Wheels cars (yes, I have Hot Wheels cars) which kept him entertained for the next hour or so.

(At one point Susan suggested she and Ajay go explore the house. She asked him who had to go with him when he goes upstairs. He was being a little shy and hesitated, so she said, “You can only go upstairs with a g–?” He didn’t respond, so I said “Gorilla!” That sort of humor goes over pretty well with a 3-year-old and his parents.)

I often feel like my parties are kind of underwhelming, but everyone seems to have a good time, so I’m probably overthinking things. I always have a good time, anyway, and I’m glad people came.

We watched both football playoff games yesterday. While the Patriots’ victory over the Broncos was a laffer (all the pundits have made the expected jokes, but the long and short of it is that Tim Tebow is no Tom Brady), the 49ers victory over the Saints was memorable and exciting, and gave the home crowd some great memories. (And then today the hated Giants stunned the 15-1 Packers giving the Niners home field advantage in the NFC championship game next week. I expect “low scoring” will be the term for that game.)

(I’m a little disappointed that it won’t be a Patriots/Packers Super Bowl, as the “no defense bowl” might have seen over 100 total points scored.)

Today we went to the Moss Beach Distillery for brunch. We had an epic food coma afterwards and collapsed on the couch for a few hours before running some errands, but mostly we had a quiet day at home. Which the cats appreciated, of course.

Newton is our elderly orange kitty. He’ll be 18 in April, and we’ve been together for over 17 years. He’s lived in 2 states, in 4 different homes, he’s seen Blackjack

[Read the whole thing]]]> I’ve written about Blackjack and his cancer so much over the last year that you might have forgotten we have 2 other cats.

Newton is our elderly orange kitty. He’ll be 18 in April, and we’ve been together for over 17 years. He’s lived in 2 states, in 4 different homes, he’s seen Blackjack and Roulette join our household, and seen his brother Jefferson pass away. He’s been on meds for the last 3+ years because he has hyperthyroidism. Yet he keeps plugging away.

After his vet appointment in November the vet upped his meds by 50%. And then over the holiday break he came down with a kitty-cold, for which I took him in last week and got him some antibiotics. The vet said that in older cats sometimes sniffling and sneezing is just a respiratory infection, but sometimes it’s an indication of something worse, like a tumor. Fortunately, the antibiotics seem to have taken care of his symptoms (with 2 days of meds left to go).

Newton’s always been a small cat – I think he topped out at a little under 10 pounds at his heaviest – and he’s gotten smaller in his old age. He’s now at about 6-3/4 pounds, and he is definitely boney. I’ve actually been worried the last week that he hasn’t been eating enough, although he loves wet cat food when we give it to them, but I have seen him eating his dry food in the last couple of days, which is a relief. But he’s so small that I’ve been worrying about him. Fortunately, he hasn’t shown any indication of being unable to do things he normally does, like jump up on the counter, or have trouble going up the stairs.

What he has done is slowed down. He was a manic cat when he was younger, and now he’s sedate. He plays a little, but not very much. He used to run all over the townhouse, but he hardly runs at all anymore. He does sometimes get that old spring in his step when he’s trotting around, though. But he spends a lot of time sleeping, and he especially likes to sleep in the hallway from our bedroom to the master bathroom, which we think it because it’s warm – we have a thermometer in the closet there, and it’s consistently 2-3 degrees warmer there than any of the other places in the house where we have thermometers. I don’t know that Newton has arthritis, but maybe the warmer temperature is more comfortable to him. He’s never been big on purring, but it’s been a while since he’s purred, that I can recall.

It seems like he’s slowed down a lot in the last few months, so when I take him in to get his blood work retested later this month, I’ll ask the vet whether the increased thyroid meds may be slowing him down. The vet who checked him out for his cold said his heart rate seems to be under control due to the meds. I just hope it’s not too under control. He’s also been getting picky about taking his thyroid meds, enjoying pill pockets less than he used to. (He eats them more enthusiastically when they’re fresh. But since they come in packs of 45, they get less fresh long before they run out. I’m trying to figure out how to store some of them so they stay fresher.)

If all this sounds like I’m preparing for the worst, well, I guess I am. He’s an old kitty, most cats don’t make it to his age. And he’s slowing down. And I know he’s not going to be here forever. And after Jefferson’s quick departure, and with Newton showing signs of his age, I guess I’m steeling myself to not be quite so blindsided when the time does come. It doesn’t help that Blackjack’s condition makes me more aware of Newton’s age.

I’m trying not to think about it too much, though. But I am trying to give him more attention and affection, especially when I realize he’s been snoozing up in the hallway most of the day and hasn’t come down to hang out with us. I’m grateful that he’s still healthy and comfortable. I miss the little troublemaking cat he used to be, but I’m glad the old snuggly guy he’s become is still with us.

And I’m really glad that he seems to have given up on meowing his head off in the middle of the night!

[Read the whole thing]]]> A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that Alien is his “favorite movie of all time”. This was coincidental, since during our lunch conversation the other day about Stanley Kubrick, someone asked me what I thought of Blade Runner, which of course wasn’t directed by Kubrick, but by Ridley Scott, who also directed Alien.

(Brief aside: Other than those two films, the only other film I’ve seen by Scott is Gladiator. While none of those films set my world on fire, I like them better than anything by Kubrick.)

I’m not a fan of horror; I don’t really like gore, or sequences calculated to make you jump out of your seat, or squirm, or worry about the worst that’s about to happen, knowing that it almost certainly is. I much prefer Alfred Hitchcockian suspense.

Still, despite not liking the genre, I do think Alien is a fine film, maybe the best horror film ever. It has a lot going for it:

1. Setting: The universe of the spaceship Nostromo feels real, with details like the alien ship the crew discovers, and the sinister corporate masters of the ship. Those bits suggest that here’s more to the universe beyond what we actually see, and in particular the alien ship stimulates our imagination to wonder where it came from. (I understand director Ridley Scott’s upcoming film Prometheus was originally going to explore the alien from the derelict ship, but I guess it’s now turned into a different film.) Even the fact that the Nostromo is a commercial ship, not a military or other government ship, makes it feel a little more real.
2. Characters: The characters are pretty well-drawn, and also feel real. They’re not supermen, they’re not even soldiers, and they all have opinions and agendas (and flaws). The fine cast helps here a lot, too.
3. Story: The story is smart. Presented with the killer alien creature hiding in their ship, the crew is smart about trying to deal with the problem: They come up with plans, and execute them. Since they’re not supermen, and since the alien turns out to be even more powerful than they’d thought, their plans fail. But they don’t march to their deaths through sheer stupidity.
4. Threat: The alien is of course one of the most memorable movie monsters ever. Beyond its appearance, it’s creepy (acid blood!), hard to find, hard to kill, and hard to survive. It certainly feels more alien than any other monster.

I appreciate craft in films, especially when it comes to plotting and world-building, and Alien excels on both points. I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been a horror film (much as I was sad that the great dinosaur animations in Jurassic Park were squandered on a horror film), but few films succeed so well at what they set out to do.

Whenever I think of Kubrick, I recall my high school film class teacher (who introduced me

[Read the whole thing]]]> At lunch the other day we somehow went from talking about Pixar films to talking about those of director Stanley Kubrick. Some people love Kubrick’s films, but I don’t, having seen five and not enjoyed any of them.

Whenever I think of Kubrick, I recall my high school film class teacher (who introduced me to my favorite film, North by Northwest) who said something to the effect that Kubrick was more concerned with where his electrical wires were going than with the script or acting.

Yes, Kubrick’s films do look great, but I realized over lunch that my basic problem with them is that they feel emotionless, even downright soulless.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a great example of this: The characters are flat and colorless. Dave Bowman is memorable only because Keir Dullea is an interesting-looking guy, and the orange spacesuits are distinctive. But the most human-seeming of the character is HAL, the computer. The film looks great, but it also feels lifeless, the direction and editing carefully constructed to make the whole film seem alien. It’s not about humanity’s encounter with the alien, it’s some weird zombie form of humanity encountering the alien, and evolving into something even more alien. The sequel film 2010 is a much warmer and more human film, and is more fun to boot. Not to say it doesn’t have plenty of flaws, but I’d much rather watch it again than its predecessor.

Full Metal Jacket, which certainly deals with powerful subject matter (the Vietnam War), felt decidedly bland when I saw it. Ironically, the IMDb summary of the film starts with the phrase “A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War…”, where it seems to me that Kubrick does a pretty good job of dehumanizing the characters in his films anyway.

Of the Kubrick films I’ve seen, I’d say I liked The Shining the best (and I don’t really care for horror films). The sense in Kubrick’s films that we’re seeing all this happen from a distance, that the people are just little chess pieces being moved around by the plot, perhaps plays better in a horror film, where the humans are often not the ones in control. I don’t think it’s a great film, I have no desire to see it again, but I thought it worked well enough for what it is.

(The other two films of his that I’ve seen are Dr. Strangelove, which I found neither insightful nor funny, and A Clockwork Orange, which I detest more than any other film I can think of.)

Overall my most charitable description of Kubrick’s films would be “well crafted”. But then, there are lots of directors who craft films well, and many who imbue their films with more humanity than Kubrick was able to. Usually I place a high value on craft in storytelling, but Kubrick’s films deploy his craft in the most superficial manner, completely failing to evoke any feeling in me as a viewer other than being impressed with the polish he brings to his settings. And that’s not nearly enough to make a great – or even good – film for me.

The main high was buying our new house (as well as selling the townhouse, no small accomplishment in this economy). It took us about 3 months of looking, and no small amount of frustration (bidding on and not getting a

[Read the whole thing]]]> 2011 was a mixed bag for us, with some big highs and big lows.

The main high was buying our new house (as well as selling the townhouse, no small accomplishment in this economy). It took us about 3 months of looking, and no small amount of frustration (bidding on and not getting a house we liked, and seeing many other houses we didn’t like) before we found this one at their open house. Debbi is a believer in things that are “meant to be”, and I’m not, but this house is a strong circumstantial argument for such a thing: It’s really perfect for us in location and layout, it’s just what we wanted. And the move went smoothly, even though it took weeks after the move to get the last few items moved from the townhouse

The other high was Debbi’s sabbatical and our trip to Hawaii, where we went to Maui and the big island. This was a great trip which we’ll remember for a long time.

The low, of course, was learning that Blackjack has cancer (lymphoma). He spent 5 weeks getting radiation therapy, followed by 6 months of chemotherapy. He was a good boy through all of it, even though he hated going to the vet. He seemed to be doing pretty well, until we got back from Hawaii when we learned that he’s gone deaf, and he was very wobbly on his feet. That seems to have been the low point for him, and he’s improved since then, almost back to his old self. But we still worry.

Those were the big points of the year. We finished out 2011 with a week off from work (both our companies closed down for the holidays). We spent most of it quietly at home enjoying the house.

We’ve just about got the last room in the house, the dining room, set up. For a while it was just the room with the big tables and all the boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked. Actually it still has 2/3 of the boxes we haven’t unpacked (by which I mean “2 boxes”, the third one is upstairs in the study), but now it has a buffet tables filled with our board games, and we bought a rug for it on Saturday, so it’s looking pretty nice. The cats are enjoying the rug, since it gives them somewhere comfortable to lie where they can look into both the living room and the kitchen.

Blackjack has been doing better this week. We’ve both seen him moving around more swiftly and even starting trouble with Roulette. He’s getting more comfortable jumping, and this weekend he got a little more affection towards Debbi, which she loved since he’s her special cat. But he also likes to go into the smaller spaces in the house (the bathrooms and closets) and meow his head off. He’s always had a really pathetic meow, so when he started doing this we’d go find him to make sure he’s okay, but it seems he just likes to do it. I don’t know if he can hear himself meow, or if he has a bit of tinnitis or similar phenomenon which makes him want to meow, or if he’s just frustrated at his condition and does it to let out some frustration.

Newton, meanwhile, has a cold, and I need to get some meds for him.

Thursday we drove over to Half Moon Bay for breakfast and then went up to San Francisco for ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli Square. We also went to Borderlands Books, but the cats were not in residence, since they’ve connected the bookstore and cafe and the cats can’t be there until they have a door between the two. Oh well!

We stayed up ’til Midnight on New Year’s, mostly watching the NCIS marathon on the USA network, including many episodes from last season I hadn’t seen. We got visits from two sets of neighbors from our dinner party wishing us a good one and saying how they were happy we’d moved to the neighborhood. We’re glad to be here, it’s nice to have friendly faces around to chat with when we step out the door.

I have a bonus day off today (Debbi’s back at work), and I plan to just take care of a few things around the house and figure out what to make for dinner. And then it’s back to work tomorrow, trying to put back together all the code I tore apart and rewrote during December. (Ahh, nice big code-rewriting projects, always fun and satisfying. But this one has been larger than any of us had anticipated.)

While I can’t say I’m looking forward to figuring out my income taxes this year after everything that went on last year (but hey, that’s why I have a CPA), I’m hoping that 2012 will be less momentous than 2011 was. On balance things are good right now, but I hope we can go a few more years without that sort of disruption again!

Well okay, another trip to Hawaii would be acceptable.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Steven Moffat’s second season running Doctor Who shared one major characteristic with Russell T. Davies’ second season: Both were not as good as their first seasons. Moffat is overall a much stronger writer than Davies and his story arcs have been more interesting (far fewer Daleks, for one thing), but this season felt like he bit off more than he could chew, setting up a complicated set of plot threads, but the payoff has so far been rather disappointing.

Here’s my ranking of this season’s episodes from favorite to least:

• The Doctor’s Wife (written by Neil Gaiman)
• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (Steven Moffat)
• The Girl Who Waited (Tom MacRae)
• The Wedding of River Song (Moffat)
• A Good Man Goes to War (Moffat)
• The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People (Matthew Graham)
• Closing Time (Gareth Roberts)
• Let’s Kill Hitler (Moffat)
• The Curse of the Black Spot (Stephen Thompson)
• The God Complex (Toby Whithouse)
• Night Terrors (Mark Gatiss)

Spoilers ahoy!

Individual Episodes:

The season’s best episode was actually outside of the main arc as well as not being written by Moffat, that being Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife”. Given all the River Song shenanigans during Moffat’s reign, I – like I’m sure almost everyone else – expected this would be a key story in the arc, but in fact Gaiman takes the story in a different direction, anthropomorphizing the Doctor’s relationship with the TARDIS. It was a very Gaiman-esque story, with atmosphere and horror and some sweet moments, as well as a lot of tantalizing bits for long-time Time Lord fans. Actually the story’s setting is the sort of thing that a whole season of episodes could spring from, but I doubt it will ever come up again. But that’s okay. The only drawback to the episode was the rather cheap and obvious manipulation of time used to terrorize Amy and Rory.

I previously reviewed “The Impossible Astronaut” and “Day of the Moon”, which were pretty good, but are a good example of the problem with the season’s arc: It’s terribly elliptical, and is full of an assortment of weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Why an astronaut suit? Why isn’t the Silence just cleaning up if they have these elaborate electrical powers and are nearly-invisible? Since when can the TARDIS turn invisible? Still, the set-up for the season’s big question – is the Doctor going to die, and if not (since he clearly isn’t), how’s he going to get out of it? – is pretty well done, there are plenty of suspenseful moments, and the Doctor’s solution to the Silence in the second part is rather clever.

Speaking of “cheap and obvious manipulation of time” as I did above, “The Girl Who Waited” was about as un-subtle an episode as one can imagine, taking the original meeting of the Doctor and Amy to its logical extreme via the perils of time travel, and in a ridiculously contrived environment. Yet it still works pretty well, mainly because of Karen Gillan’s portrayal of the two Amys, and the Doctor’s decision at the climax of the episode.

As you can see, I’m already not hugely enamored of the season already. The season’s finale, “The Wedding of River Song”, concerns, well, its title, and also how the Doctor gets out of it. I felt pretty foolish for not seeing it sooner, considering the solution to the problem was telegraphed several episodes earlier, not to mention early in this episode itself. It’s reasonably satisfying, and the Doctor using the trick of hiding in “a Doctor suit” (a good line) to fall “off the grid” so the Silence doesn’t keep hunting him is pretty clever. But the climax felt, well, anticlimactic, very different from the explosive Season Five climax.

The mid-season arc stories, “A Good Man Goes to War” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” were rather unsatisfying. “Good Man” continues the rather silly trend of the Doctor being this universally-known figure, loved by many and hated by many more, which just completely clashes with my concept of the character as this lone, stealth figure doing good deeds under everyone’s radar across the universe. “Wedding” suggests that exactly this has become a problem for the Doctor, but Moffat never really establishes how the Doctor’s status quo changed in this way, so it just feels awkward and uncharacteristic for the series. “Let’s Kill Hitler” focuses on the mystery of River, basically explaining what we’d all guessed earlier when we learned that Amy was pregnant. I found this fairly unsatisfying, especially since it plays way too fast-and-loose with the regeneration rules for my taste. (Heck, Moffat undercuts any reasonable explanation for why River would have been able to regenerated by having her gestate outside of the TARDIS – while Amy is a captive of the Silence – though really no explanation would have satisfied me. It’s another “weirdness for weirdness’ sake” plot device.)

The other stories were one-off tales. “Closing Time” is the best of these, highlighting the Doctor’s fatalistic last years prior to the season ender; Craig from “The Lodger” shows up and the pair basically have a buddy episode, which is quite a bit of fun other than the cliched deployment of the Cybermen as the big threat. “The Curse of the Black Spot”, “The God Complex” and “Night Terrors” are all fairly generic horror yarns, all fairly forgettable; “Spot” gets the nod as the best of the three for its less ridiculous explanation for its mysterious goings-on.

The Season Story Arc:

As I said earlier, I think Moffat bit off more than he could chew in the complicated story arc of this season.

The Silence are a fairly creepy adversary, but they’re also basically a cipher. Considering that we’ve never heard of them, nor has the Doctor, one wonder how long they’ve been around and, more importantly, what it is they’re trying to accomplish. Are they trying to conquer the universe? If so, then their attack on the TARDIS in Season Five was a disastrously bad choice, as it nearly destroyed the universe. Are they trying to destroy the universe, then? If so, why? Are they just trying to kill the Doctor? If so, why? They seem to fanatic to simply be hired guns. Or do they have some other goal, and if so, what, and why do they fear the Doctor so much? This season really didn’t make any progress in exploring any of this. Presumably these elements are what Season Seven will be all about – they’ll end up a pretty weak and forgettable foe if not.

I’ve been conflicted about River Song as a character (though not about Alex Kingston as an actress, who pretty much steals any scene she’s in; ah, if only she’d been able to appear opposite Christopher Eccleston!). For a while she was being deployed in a strict “every time the Doctor meets her occurs for her before the last time we saw them meet” manner, which was a nifty plot device, but one I never really embraced because if both of them can time travel, then why do they have to stick to that pattern? But as a storytelling conceit I was willing to accept it. But the pattern goes completely off the rails here, as the Doctor meets her as an infant (at the end of “Good Man”), and then as (effectively) a teenager (in “Hitler”), and then at two different points in “Astronaut”, and then I gave up trying to untangle their timelines, since it’s clearly no longer important. If Moffat has been planning to build up to a grand “this is the first time River meets the Doctor, and the last time he meets her” scene, he’s already short-circuited the impact of that episode this season. Too bad, since such a scene could be quite cool.

(On the other hand, it would be equally impressive – and maybe have greater impact – if the Doctor manages to reincarnate her from her computer representation back in Season Four’s “Forest of the Dead”. But I digress.)

I thought the notion of the Silence appropriating River’s life to make her a weapon against the Doctor was a pretty nifty idea, although I didn’t understand how she was able to escape their control and short-circuit their plans. It also leaves one big questions about what we know about River: If the Doctor wasn’t killed, why was she imprisoned? How is she able to keep walking out of her prison? What authority imprisoned her? If the Doctor was killed in 2010, but shows up at some earlier time later in his own timeline, wouldn’t that conclusively exonerate her before she’s even imprisoned? For that matter, River seems able to time travel on her own, but we don’t know how. Her timeline is a mess, and I don’t see how Moffat can reconcile it all other than wiping everything away through some deus ex machina. I suspect he has no intention of trying. Maybe he has some notes which make everything fit together, but from the material on film, I can’t see how.

But okay, I admit I’m intrigued and amused by the metatextual mystery set up at the end of “River”, where the first question (of the TV series) will finally be asked: “Doctor who?” Does Moffat have the guts to actually dive into the Doctor’s earliest life and give us some insight into his character that we haven’t been given? It’s never been the purpose of the series to explain everything about the character, and some of that mystery has always been an underpinning of the show, but explaining some of it, especially in a manner that could be built on at some unspecified point in the future, would be very cool, and something that’s rarely been done. (Honestly, what must it have been like for the – far fewer – fans back in 1969 when the Time Lords were introduced? Could Moffat pull off a revelation anywhere near that level? I sure hope he tries.)

So in sum, the season was often interesting, but ultimately disappointing. In a way, it sums up Moffat’s style of writing: Many bits of it don’t make sense, but it’s emotionally satisfying. “The Girl in the Fireplace” from Season Two fits this description to a T, but at his best (“The Doctor Dances”, or “Forest of the Dead”) Moffat manages to overcome his plotting difficulties. But the whole-season arcs of his first two seasons don’t, and given that they rely on intricate plotting, they end up not being more than the sum of their parts. I think Moffat needs to simplify things a bit, and hopefully now that some of the mysteries behind River and the Silence have been revealed, the third act of the Matt Smith Doctor will hang together better than does the second.

[Read the whole thing]]]> It’s been over a year since my last webcomics round-up (you can find my first two such posts here and here), and I wanted to squeeze in a new such entry before the new year. As usual, I found a few I really liked, and there are a few that I don’t much like, but I’ve tried to give them a decent chance. Here are webcomics I’ve started reading in the past year, listed alphabetically:

• All New Issues, by Bill Ellis & Dani O’Brien: A slice-of-life gag strip set in a comic book shop, I still giggle at the clever title from time to time. Unfortunately the strip otherwise is only so-so: The art is decent, the gags are pretty routine, and I find the characters to be flat. Probably not a strip I’ll follow for much longer.
• Atomic Laundromat, by Armando Valenzuela: Another slice-of-life gag strip, this one drawn in a manga-like style and concerning a young man who runs a laundromat for superheroes and super-villains. However, I have the same problems with it that I have with All New Issues, in both art and writing. One recent arc involved the protagonist’s father, a major superhero, on trial because he has a tendency to indecently expose himself in public, which could have been amusing if it had been totally over-the-top, but just seemed creepy given the understated way it was written. Bad Guy High worked some similar territory, but was a more compelling strip, I think. Not to mention Evil, Inc.
• The Bean, by Travis Hanson: I discovered Hanson at APE in 2010, and have three of his prints framed and hanging on the wall. The Bean is his ongoing strip, a fantasy adventure about a boy having a very bad day, a goblin invasion, and the various heroes and supernatural creatures involved in it all. Very nice artwork, and the story is moving right along, albeit with a number of side trips to follow all the characters. My one lament is that I wish it was in color.
• Bucko, by Jeff Parker & Erika Moen: The title character is a down-and-outer who stumbles on a dead body and tries to solve the crime, a challenge since he ends up on the run from the police. I started reading this strip hoping for some real detective fiction with a side of whimsy, but the crime is an extremely small part of the strip, and it’s been more like a romp through some alternative subcultures (my interest in Juggalos: zero). Moen’s artwork is simple and features a lot of swoops and curves, but while it’s effective enough, the style isn’t my cup of tea. I’m just clearly not the target audience for this strip.
• Destructor, by Sean T. Collins & Matt Wiegle: Now here’s one that I am the target audience for: Destructor is a powerful armored man rampaging across a fantastic world with the goal of… something. But he seems to be assembling allies for some goal not yet revealed. Each chapter is pretty nifty: Destructor invades a city of crocodile-men, Destructor stages a prison break, Destructor frees a powerful and mysterious woman. There’s more mystery than character so far, but the mystery (and the adventure) is quite a lot of fun. Wiegle’s artwork is inventive and effective. I haven’t seen this strip getting much buzz, but it’s a good one.
• Doghouse Diaries, by Will, Ray, and Raf: Basically xckd for non-geeks: It’s got stick-figure artwork, popover second-punchlines, and a generally snarky attitude, but so it fills very much the same space. The humor leans to the crude side, but it’s still fairly funny. No, I’m not blown away, but it’s an okay gag-a-day strip.
• Dresden Codak, by Aaron Diaz: “42 Essential Third-Act Twists” is the funniest thing I read all year. I ordered a print of it. Dresden Codak is partly an ongoing strip, and partly a gag-a-day strip (well, more like a gag-every-three-weeks – it takes Diaz a while to do each strip, but the art is often gorgeous). Either way, it’s entirely geeky. The first extended arc, “Hob”, involved time travel, the singularity, alternate universes, and all that good stuff. The main character, Kim, is a scientist almost of the Girl Genius variety. She’s not a very likable character (she shares a little of her egotism and inability to relate to others with Sheldon Cooper from the TV show Big Bang Theory), but the ride is quite enjoyable.

  Diaz passes time between the few major arcs with various one-off strips, and a few shorter arcs. Another good sample of the hardcore meekness of the strip is “Dungeons and Discourse” (“Abilities – Immune to metaphysics”), along with, of course, “Advanced Dungeons and Discourse”. If those don’t convince you that this is a great strip, well, then there’s no hope for you.

  I think I’m dreadfully late to the party in discovering Dresden Codak, but it did mean I got to spend an afternoon laughing my ass off as I caught up. Highly recommended.

• Drive, by Dave Kellett: A science fiction humor strip, similar in that regard to Spacetrawler: The SF is serious, but the storytelling is light and funny. A tough mix to brew, yet here we have two different strips doing it well. Drive concerns a human empire built on FTL technology inherited from aliens, and controlled by a single family. A mysterious alien is discovered who can pilot one of the ships better than anyone else, but he doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from. The empire is interested in him because they’re about to go to war with the race that created the FTL drive, and they’re clearly going to lose if they can’t find an edge. An eccentric crew is given a ship to try to solve the mystery. Politics, adventure, and humor. Only drawback is that updates have been sporadic.
• d20Something, by Mitz: His wonderful supervillain strip Plan B ended earlier this year, and this is his new one. Unfortunately, it’s not as good. It features a collection of Dungeons & Dragons type 20-somethings (each with their own character class) living in modern society and dealing with various monsters who also live there. I find that none of the characters are distinctly drawn (I couldn’t really tell you anything about any of them at this point), and the plot doesn’t yet seem to be going anywhere, problems that Plan B didn’t have. I still like his art, and some of the gags are amusing, but color me disappointed by this one so far.
• Ectopiary, by Hans Rickheit: A serialized graphic novel, a girl and her mother come to live in an exotic house, with unfriendly hosts and strange things going on in the yard. The girl’s curiosity of course gets the better of her, and she’s getting caught up in whatever it is that’s happening. The story doesn’t move fast, but it’s making progress. The art is intricate and beautiful, especially the highly-detailed backgrounds. I’m not sure where it’s going, but I’m enjoying it. Hiatuses occur from time to time when life gets in the way of the artist.
• Family Man, by Dylan Meconis: One of the most polished webcomics out there as far as the art and web site go, Family Man takes place in 18th century Germany, and is the story of Luther Levy, a half-Jewish young man (with a nose longer than Cyrano de Bergerac‘s) who was ejected from the school where he pursued a Theology degree. He ends up as a teacher at a rural university and falls in love with the rector’s daughter. Oh, and we’re promised that there will be werewolves at some point.

  Meconis’ art shifts between the slightly-cartoony and the dead-on realistic (favoring the former style for the figures, which makes the latter more striking when it’s employed). The story – now over 230 pages in – is not exactly galloping along, but it’s well-crafted and witty. At a page a week, I wonder how many long-time readers are getting over-eager for the shoe to drop.

  The first chunk of the story has been collected in a high-quality paperback edition, which you can order from Meconis.

• Frankenstein Superstar, by John Hazard: The Frankenstein monster in modern times, having married and settled down. Hazard’s art is among the best out there, but the stories and jokes are not, as the humor often feels cheap if not gratuitous. There’s an ongoing mystery involving a friend of the couple which suggests something more serious in the future.
• The Gutters, by Ryan Sohmer & various artists: Ryan Sohmer, writer of Least I Could Do, has been doing this several-times-weekly graphic editorial of the comic book industry for a year and a half. Think of it as The Joy of Tech for comic book fans rather than technology enthusiasts and you get the idea, with the difference that Sohmer uses swear words and R-rated imagery a lot more. Overall I think I’ve been numbed sufficiently by the comic book blogosphere’s snark about the industry that nothing here is fall-over funny to me (and honestly sniping at DC and Marvel these days seems not only too easy, but de rigueur), but some of his observations are still pretty good. If you’ve been looking for the comics blogosphere distilled into comic strip form, then this is the strip for you.
• K and J, by Sara Park Sanford & John Sanford: The story of two sisters and their Korean mother, focusing on their growing up and the culture clash of Korean and American values. A bit wordy, but otherwise really good. While the art is on the sketchy side, it actually works quite well. Updates have been sporadic recently, but it’s worth catching up on.
• Kukuburi, by Ramón Pérez: Delivery girl Nadia finds herself shunted into a surreal alternate dimension where she joins a variety of weird creatures in a struggle against a skeletal entity. The strip is just recently back from a long hiatus, so my memory of the storyline is pretty fuzzy; my general recollection is that it was a fun ride but hard to discern who all the characters were and what their motivations were. The art is outstanding.
• Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, by Rick Burchett & Greg Rucka: Fairly new, this is a straight-up adventure strip by a couple of comic book pros (Rucka also writes novels). Wild west steampunk with a side dose of the supernatural. Too soon to know where it’s going – the characters have barely been introduced – but it’s enjoyable so far.
• Let’s Be Friends Again, by Curt Franklin & Chris Haley: Irreverent pop culture satire, sort of The Gutters crossed with Penny Arcade – there’s not much continuity, and if you’re not familiar with the subject matter then it probably won’t make any sense to you. I don’t really understand the meaning of the title, but it’s enjoyable for what it is.
• Living With Insanity, by David Herbert, Paul Salvi & Fer: I’m not sure what to make of this one. It often seems semi-autobiographical, concerning writer David Herbert’s struggles to make it in the comics (or other writing) biz, but there have been extended sequences involving zombies, aliens, and whatnot. Overall my brain has summed it up as “Whatever the writer feels like writing.” A recent arc involves one of the characters hiring a busty model to represent his super-heroine. It’s just earnest and irreverent enough to keep me reading (updates can be infrequent), even though I’m not sure what to make of it.

  Artist Salvi recently left, replaced by new artist Fer, whose style I like better, although neither is a very polished artist. Still, the webcomics landscape is littered with artists who started off unpolished and grew to be quite good. I don’t know if Herbert has greater aspirations for the strip (it feels like when it grows up it could be something like Least I Could Do), but if not, it’s enjoyable enough.

• The Meek, by Der-shing Helmer: I discovered this strip at APE last year. I’m not sure how to describe it: It’s sort of a post-Renaissance, pre-industrial setting with a variety of characters at various levels of society, from thief to noble. The strip updates erratically and the story is slow, so it feels like it’s still in the prologue stage. Helmer’s art is absolutely gorgeous, though, from figures to layouts to coloring. She’s collected it into 2 comic book issues (so far), which look equally lovely. I’m hoping the direction of he overall story will soon be revealed.
• Ph.D. Comics, by Jorge Cham: Gag-a-day strip about the dangers and humors in academic life, sometimes quite clever. Probably worth following for anyone who’s serious pursued a graduate degree, and probably not meaningful to anyone who hasn’t.
• Power Nap, by Maritza Campos & Bachan: Science fiction adventure strip with a good dose of humor. In the future, drugs allow people to go without sleep – unless you’re allergic to the drugs, as our hero, Drew, is, in which case you try to sleep as little as possible so you can keep up with the competition for your job, and then you fall asleep at awkward times and/or experience strange hallucinations. Smart and funny, with very good art, and the first major twist to the story just occurred, so this is a good time to jump in and catch up.
• Rigby the Barbarian, by Lee Leslie: Woman archaeologist is suddenly transported to a barbaric world where she takes on a Conan-esque role of sword-wielding savior. Overt gender politics in this one, as you might guess, but it’s pretty clever and well-illustrated, and the fact that Rigby doesn’t take any crap from people who want to put her in her proverbial place (and she has the big sword and prophecy to back her up) makes it an entertaining ride. It’s been on hiatus for a while (looks like the archives are not currently accessible, either), but promises to be back in 2012. I’m looking forward to it.
• Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen, by Dylan Horrocks: Cartoonist Sam Zabel struggles with depression, and then his characters come to life and start talking to him (or do they?), and he finds himself lost in their worlds (or does he?). Metaphysical angst, and good artwork, mimicking a variety of art styles as the story calls for it. Unfortunately another strip which goes into hiatus from time to time.
• Savage Chickens, “cartoons on sticky notes” by Doug Savage: The only strip I’ve added in the last year that updates every weekday. Gag-a-day strips which are pure irreverence with a dash of geekism. Fun.
• S.S. Myra, by “Tom Walker”: If you’re looking for a covertly pornographic science fiction strip, then you’ve found it. Newlyweds Bran and Tink are given a starship as a gift and head off on it on their honeymoon. The ship’s computer, however, has the personality of the previous owner, who was, uh, rather hedonistic. Played for broad humor – NSFW, but surprisingly not-very-raunchy and not much nudity.

  Tom Walker is definitely not also known as Christopher Baldwin of Spacetrawler (he even says so); the fact that their art style is nearly identical is just one of those weird coincidences.

• Unsounded, by Ashley Cope: Serious medieval fantasy, somewhat similar to The Meek, and with similarly excellent artwork. The story focuses on Sette, the daughter of a man who I think is probably a mob boss, who’s been sent on a mission with an undead warlock, Duane Adelier. Duane is capable, focused and serious, while Sette is a capable thief, but lacks focus or seriousness, and gets out of tough scrapes more through luck than skill. She’s still a girl, and gets overwhelmed by some of what she sees along the way. The story meanders all over the place and it’s not clear where it’s going, but it’s still pretty fun, and the world is inventive. And as I said, the art is great. Hopefully the story will get better as it goes along. If you like The Meek then you’ll probably like this, and vice-versa.

I’ve stopped reading some strips I’ve previously listed: Last Call updated less and less frequently and was losing its cohesion anyway. Bad Guy High and FreakAngels both ended. And Something Positive just never grabbed me; the art was too stiff for my tastes, and the humor didn’t work for me either.

A few strips seem to be on indefinite hiatus, but if they ever come back I’ll keep reading them. These include Aardehn, Border Crossings (the artist departed), The Guns of Shadow Valley (too bad, this sort of strip really needs regular updates to work), Maya, Moon Town (supposedly returning in 2012), and Rocket Road Trip.

[Read the whole thing]]]> We got woken up around 4 am this morning by Newton doing his late-night meowing thing. Debbi wasn’t able to get back to sleep and came downstairs to read until she could sleep again. I came down later (I’d been sleeping fitfully all night) and found both Blackjack and Roulette snoozing while she read. Not the best start to the day, alas. But we both did get back to sleep.

Other than that the day went well, though. We opened presents in our living room with the fireplace on, and the cats mousing around at the pile of wrapping paper. Debbi baked cinnamon rolls which we ate after the presents. She talked to her family, and I talked to my parents. While talking to Dad, both Roulette and Blackjack climbed up on the couch and slept next to me.

We went out for a mid-day walk to the supermarket, just for some rolls to have with dinner, and I started cooking when we got back. I made bacon-wrapped meat loaf, and Debbi steamed asparagus and made mashed potatoes. All very yummy!

We discovered yesterday that we now get BBC America in our cable package, so we watched the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me! special last night; it was pretty funny, but they cut a lot of the best stuff to make room for commercials. Fortunately, all that best stuff made it into the radio broadcast. And shortly we’re going to watch this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, having watched last year’s just a couple of nights ago. The Christmas specials are okay, but not really “special”; the cheesy – often campy – fooling around with Christmas traditions is getting rather tiresome.

So that’s been our first Christmas in our new house. The first of many to come, I hope!

We’ve done all the grocery trips to have food for today and tomorrow. And

[Read the whole thing]]]> …by which I mean it’s actually the second day of my vacation. The company’s shut down for Christmas week, so I’ll be bumming around through January 2. Happily, Debbi has the week off too, to assist me in my slothfulness.

We’ve done all the grocery trips to have food for today and tomorrow. And last night we went to Sundance the Steakhouse for dinner. (We were a little bummed that they don’t give discounts for Passport cardholders anymore, but not nearly as bummed as the fact that we didn’t get seated until half an hour after our reservation time. At least the food and drinks were good as always.)

I also made a run to the comics shop yesterday to pick up some stuff, as Ryan was having a big sale this past week. (I picked up a few collections on Wednesday, too.) It occurs to me that I should have seen whether he had any old issues of Suicide Squad in stock, as I really enjoyed reading the From the Ashes collection and have a yen to read the original series (which I guess will never be completed since DC cancelled the second collection, much like they seem to have abandoned the Sandman Mystery Theatre collection series).

The NFL has shifted most of their games from tomorrow to today, so we’re sitting watching the Forty-Niners game, and I’ll probably bake cookies a little later on.

We don’t have much in the way of plans this week, though we’re thinking about one or two fun things we could go do while we’re lounging our week away. But mostly I expect we’ll just relax and keep the cats company.

From the cover, it has all the hallmarks of something that should be a pretty good comic book: Matt Fraction has a good reputation (I’m not a big fan of his Casanova

[Read the whole thing]]]> The Defenders #1, by Matt Fraction, and Terry & Rachel Dodson, Marvel, December 2011

The Defenders #1 is a bad comic book. From the cover, it has all the hallmarks of something that should be a pretty good comic book: Matt Fraction has a good reputation (I’m not a big fan of his Casanova series – just not my thing – but I quite liked his run on Iron Fist with Ed Brubaker; and I heard good things about The Order). The Dodsons are fine artists (though Terry’s pencils always remind me of Adam Hughes’ style; he’s moving gradually away from that, though). Also, I’ve always had a soft spot the the Defenders; I love Doctor Strange, and this particular combination of heroes (Doc combined with the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner and the Silver Surfer, with a few others tacked on for good measure) usually leads to some quirky stories. While the cover is a bit drab in its colors (why is everyone wearing some combination of red, white and blue-gray? What happened to Namor’s green swim trunks, or Iron Fists’s green costume, or Doc’s bright-blue outfit and bright-red cape with yellow trim?), it’s still promising. But the story: Ugh! “Breaker of Worlds” starts with mayhem in Bucharest as a giant black creature causes rampant destruction. Not exactly something we haven’t seen before – Kurt Busiek’s terrific run on Avengers featured something similar – but not the worst premise for a story. But then we but to Doctor Strange waking up after casually sleeping with a student, and realizing it was a mistake (as does she). This feels utterly out of character for the good Doctor; certainly he’s slept with his student before (back when they were called “apprentices”) (unless he’s a university professor now, which wouldn’t make much sense for the character), but it was always in the form of a serious relationship. Indeed, Roger Stern’s great run on the title in the 80s was greatly concerned with his relationships with a couple of women in his life. Then the Hulk shows up, and asks Doc for help – which is apparently hard for him, although the old, childlike Hulk felt that Strange was one of the few people in the world he actually trusted. The pair gather Namor and the Silver Surfer (who seems to have the new ability to transform himself into snow, which seems gratuitous), and the Hulk explains that his anger and power have taken on their own form, a creature called Nul, Breaker of Worlds, which is the black creature we saw earlier. He’s come to the Defenders for help, but he can’t help himself since he could be sucked back into becoming part of it again. None of the Hulk/Nul stuff makes much sense, either. I’d assume that Fraction is going to explain it all (How can the Hulk’s rage and anger become personified? Who’s behind it? How did the Hulk break away from it? How could he be sucked in again? Why hasn’t this happened before in the Hulk’s years of existence?), but it’s presented as a fait accompli and I don’t have a lot of faith that it will be explained. (Indeed, some of it should probably have been explained by the Hulk, himself, in this issue.) Since the Hulk can’t go along, he recommends the Red She-Hulk pitch in instead. Red is Betty Banner (well, I guess she’s back to being Betty Ross now) for reasons I neither know nor care about (having lost interest in the recent “Red Hulk” stories after about 4 issues), and she’s something of a nonentity of a character here – charitably, I’d say she’s Marvel’s answer to Power Girl. (I always thought Ms. Marvel was Marvel’s answer to Power Girl.) And wait, if the Hulk can have his rage and power extracted into a separate entity, why couldn’t any other of the Hulks not have the same thing happen to them? The team also brings in Iron Fist to provide transportation, since his alter ego of Daniel Rand is rich and owns a super fast plane. I find Fist’s portrayal here to be immensely annoying, as he’s something of a weenie geek who just wants to read comic books when more important things are going on. This doesn’t feel like Iron Fist’s character at all – it’s too cutesy, and not serious enough (hmm, just like Doctor Strange). Anyway, the plane gets shot down, and the team gets ambushed. End issue one on this cliffhanger (well, with a little more thrown in, but that’s the bulk of it). The story here is pretty pedestrian, but that’s not a crime. It’s tough to write a superhero comic that really breaks new ground. But the characterizations are really annoying. Only Namor comes out of the issues not seeming like a substantially different character than the one I’m used to, and that’s just bad writing. Maybe Marvel’s trying to mix up all their characters (in which case, I really have no interest in following them), or else Fraction’s just getting too cute with the characters, writing them the way he wishes they were rather than how they actually are. That my two favorite characters in the book – Doctor Strange and Iron Fist – are the most changed just makes it worse. The Dodsons’ art is fine, of course. Ironically (given my earlier Power Girl comment), it seems like their style is evolving to look a little more like Amanda Connors’. The colors often seem a bit washed out, though, making many of the pages seem a bit flat. But that’s not enough to make me want to keep reading. If issue #2 isn’t significantly improved then I don’t see myself continuing with the series. Which is too bad because I had been looking forward to this series, and this issue was really disappointing.

Actually it was our neighbor Juan who wanted to have a get-together, and he finally pinned us

[Read the whole thing]]]> Two nice things about our new house: One, we have enough space to host a dinner party. Two, we have a neighborhood and we’ve been getting to know our neighbors. And that’s what we did Friday night.

Actually it was our neighbor Juan who wanted to have a get-together, and he finally pinned us down last month to set a date. We invited a couple from a couple of houses down whom we all knew, and the couple between their houses who moved in recently. Everyone brought something, but Juan’s wife Maria cooked most of the entrees: Roll-up lasagna, and chicken tortellini with sausages.

The sign of a good party, I think, is when you lose track of time, and after people started arriving around 7:15, it was 10:00 almost before we knew it. The food was delicious, and we had a great evening all of us chatting. Blackjack hung out with us most of the evening and even showed that he can still jump if sufficiently motivated (like piles of yummy food on top of the counter). Even Roulette came down to say hi later in the evening.

We also got to show off our Christmas lights: We have a new light show on the front of the house, and we have two Christmas trees up: Our main one in the living room, and a smaller one in the family room. All of our guests live across the street from us, so they all get the benefit of the front lights.

A great night.

Last Sunday, Debbi hosted a cookie exchange with some friends. So we had six guests over to exchange cookies. I

[Read the whole thing]]]> Apple closed down its corporate offices for Thanksgiving week – which it does from time to time, but not every year – so I had the week off. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Last Sunday, Debbi hosted a cookie exchange with some friends. So we had six guests over to exchange cookies. I tried baking peanut butter cookies on Saturday, and they came out good. Next time I want to figure out how to make them chewier, since I like them that way rather than flaky, which this recipe yielded. We had a good time having people over, and Blackjack enjoyed visiting with everyone, too. He surprised us by being able to jump up onto the counter by way of a bar stool, which was more than we thought he was capable of, in his current state.

Unfortunately, over the next couple of days Blackjack’s condition went downhill. Coincidentally, we had a scheduled check-up on Tuesday with the vet that’s been treating his cancer. By Tuesday morning he was very wobbly, having a lot of trouble staying balanced and getting up and down from things. He would jump down from the dining table and lose his footing and splat on the floor. Fortunately he didn’t hurt himself, but we were pretty worried.

The vet is pretty baffled, too. It could be that his cancer has spread to his hindquarters and is affecting his nerves. Or he could have an inner ear problem. Or he could have a problem with his brain. She noticed he had some unusual eye movements, which suggests one of the last two. But we can’t really know for sure without some expensive – and possibly invasive – tests, and even then we might not be sure, and even if we were we might not be able to treat it. So I’m not sure we’re going to do a lot more for him at this point, but try to keep him comfortable. He’s lost some more weight, so the vet put him back on the steroids he was on during his treatment to stimulate his appetite. Of course he loves being pilled.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though: Over the next few days his strength and stability came back, and this weekend he’s seemed almost back to his old self. Not jumping like he used to, but only a little wobbly, and there’s something in his eyes that seems to say that he’s feeling more his he ought to. We may be in for cycles of good days and bad days, but at least he’s having some good days, when he wants to get into trouble and isn’t spending all his time sleeping.

Monday and Tuesday I did some shopping, and hung out at home. I did a couple of Innistrad drafts on Magic Online. My draft Monday was a disaster and I got eliminated in the first round. My Tuesday draft was much better, with a pretty potent vampire deck, but I got eliminated in the second round by someone who had drafted a gimmicky milling deck. I came somewhat close to pulling it off even so, but it was frustrating, as my deck really had no way to deal with his tricks other than to kill him quickly.

Debbi took Wednesday off, so we’ve had a 5-day weekend together. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home, cooking a 12-pound turkey with the usual trimmings for dinner. Cooking a turkey is a good way to find out how well-calibrated an oven is, I find – I have a long history of overcooking turkeys. Our oven has a built-in probe thermometer which we used, and it works well! The turkey came out just about perfect, and it and all the other food was yummy. We got some pies from Marie Callender’s too.

This weekend we’ve been doing some work on the house. Well, maintenance. We have some accent lights around the yard which had stopped working, but it turned out that they were all just burned-out bulbs and easily replaced. I suspect one of the light units themselves will need replacing sometime soon, as I was having trouble getting the bulb’s leads to connect to it, but fortunately not quite yet. We also replaced one of the bulbs in the recessed lighting in our family room. We have a lot of light fixtures in this house, so I expect we’ll be replacing random bulbs with some frequency. (Though hopefully the fluorescent lights, at least, will last several years each.)

We also bought a Dyson DC25 vacuum cleaner since they’re on sale this weekend and we’ve been wanting to replace our existing vacuum. I tried it out today and it works quite well! We also ordered a new rug for the living room. Now we just need to find the right rug for the dining room…

We’d hoped to get together with our friends Joar and Karin for a meal this weekend, but they we feeling a bit under the weather, as I’ve been since Friday, so we decided to postpone it ’til sometime later. Actually, my under-the-weatherness has been pretty annoying this weekend: Congestion, general lack of energy, like I’m fighting something off. I wish I’d either get sick, or get better. This in-between stuff sucks.

Still and all, it’s been a pretty good vacation, especially because Blackjack’s feeling better.

[Read the whole thing]]]>

Interview With
The Vampire

I think Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” series didn’t become really big until the publication of The Vampire Lestat in 1985, but look at the copyright date on this book, the first in the series: 1976! Remember the controversy over whether Tom Cruise was an appropriate choice to play Lestat in the 1994 film adaptation – in its pre-World Wide Web way as big a casting brouhaha as anything involving the Twilight cast today – and now realize that this book was published 18 years earlier. Today it seems like you can’t throw a rock without hitting a couple of writers getting rich off a series of vampire novels, but all of these modern vampires owe their popularity – and arguably their very existence – to Anne Rice and Interview With the Vampire This is where it began.

And it’s actually a pretty good book. I first read it around the time of the film (though I never saw the film), and found it engaging and compelling. Which is more than I can say for the sequel, as I thought The Vampire Lestat was borderline-unreadable (and way too long), so I stopped there. But Interview stands on its own just fine.

The vampire of the title is Louis, who is being interviewed by a young reporter in present-day San Francisco (using a tape recorder, since the “present day” is the 1970s here). Relating his life story, Louis was a plantation owner in Louisiana in the late 18th century, when he is attacked and turned into a vampire by Lestat, who desires to use Louis to live a comfortable life of leisure. Lestat is a mercurial personality, filled with anger and ego, who lets Louis know only a little about being a vampire in order to keep Louis tied to him. When Louis shows signs of wanting to leave, Lestat tricks him into helping him turn a 5-year-old girl, Claudia, into a vampire. This ultimately proves to be Lestat’s undoing, as Claudia – who never ages – chafes after several decades at Lestat’s dominance of their triad and eventually schemes to free herself and Louis from Lestat. The pair leave the United States in the late 19th century and head to Europe.

After a period in eastern Europe learning the sad fate that befalls some vampires, they end up in Paris, where they meet a coven of vampires who have set themselves up as a high-class theater. They are nominally led by Armand, who believes himself to be the oldest vampire on Earth, and who wishes to anchor himself to Louis so that he can avoid the disorientation of living through the changing centuries which causes most vampires to ultimately kill themselves. He and Louis plan to allow Claudia to live on her own, but other forces within the theater troupe engineer a series of events leading to tragedy for our heroes and everyone around them.

There’s a lot to like about Interview. For the science fiction fan, there’s the fact that Rice pared down the mythological trappings of the vampire, discarding many elements which felt superfluous (the vulnerability to crosses and garlic, for instance), turning them into predatory creatures of the night. She outlined the mechanism through which humans are turned into vampires, thus explaining why the world isn’t overrun by the creatures (vampires need to deliberately act to transform someone), and even explained why vampires eventually die off. While obviously not everything about a vampire can “make sense”, getting down to the essentials – the blood thirst, the vulnerability to the sun, the strength, speed and heightened senses, and the immortality – makes them terrifying creatures while also tragic ones.

Rice of course also brought the sense of gothic romance which pervades the genre today. While homoeroticism pervades the scenes between Louis and Lestat, and later Lestat and Armand, in a broader sense it’s raw passion and the denial of consummation of that passion which characterizes Rice’s vampires: They react viscerally to the deaths of their victims, moved as much by the shared experience (or what they imagine is the victim’s experience) as the need for their blood. And they cling to each other fervently because there are so few of their kind, and after just a few decades they can no longer relate to mere mortal humans. They are sexless, and the homoerotic overtones of their relationships are I think largely driven by their strong passions towards whomever they connect with than by any homosexual tendencies. But because their motivations are different from humans, their expressions of their desires are natural to them but seem strange to us, inasmuch as they are inhuman entities in human form.

Louis is an awkward protagonist, as he’s what an acquaintance of mine would term a “wussbag”: He’s not a very active character, has trouble making decisions for himself and is easily overwhelmed by stronger personalities, of which there are many around him. Subservient to Lestat, he is repulsed by what he has to do as a vampire to live, and even more repelled by Lestat’s cavalier attitude toward the same. Enthralled by Claudia, he does her bidding despite her being even more alien than Lestat, having never been grounded in human morality before being turned. Armand is less reprehensible but no less domineering, just a softer touch.

But the story is still wholly Louis’; fundamentally, it’s about his eventual fall, though it takes more than a century. He initially resists embracing his vampiric nature, preferring to survive by killing animals, but he eventually gives in. He doesn’t have the courage to kill himself, especially once he has the responsibility to care for Claudia. Having thought he’s finally found a place where he belongs, with the theater troupe, the climax of the story sees him lose everything he cares about, and drives him to finally take charge and retaliate against the parties responsible. He destroys the last bits of his soul in the process, and becomes numb, wandering the world with Armand but no longer seeing or feeling the things around him. His downfall becomes complete in the final chapters as he wraps up his interview in the present day.

It’s hard to say that Louis – or anyone in the book – is an admirable character. Reading about these characters is more like seeing a slow-motion train wreck, played out over decades. While I usually can’t relate to books whose characters I can’t relate to, Rice makes the characters human enough, and the exploration of their world and lives chewy enough on an intellectual and emotional level to keep you reading. Inasmuch as the book is narrated by a vampire, the characters come off a little more sympathetically than they would otherwise, but Rice remains detached from the question of whether vampires are morally reprehensible and whether they can be judged by the same standards as ordinary humans. Of course they can be, but making those judgments is up to the reader, which I think is one of the book’s strengths.

A friend of mine thinks this is a terrible book, poorly structured and featuring loathsome characters, only mildly redeemed through some well-written passages. I think it’s much better than that, if not quite the pop classic it’s become in the last generation, but well worth reading, especially to provide some historical context for today’s vampire mania. Indeed, for me this is all the vampire fiction I feel the need to read.

First, can you spot the two cats in the photo below?

Roulette & Newton have been enjoying the morning sun in the guest room, and Roulette has also turned into something of an “under-furry”.

Blackjack sometimes lies in the

[Read the whole thing]]]> Time for a few pictures of our cats as they enjoy our new home.

First, can you spot the two cats in the photo below?

Roulette & Newton have been enjoying the morning sun in the guest room, and Roulette has also turned into something of an “under-furry”.

Blackjack sometimes lies in the sun, but lately he’s discovered that the heating vent under our kitchen island blows a nice stream of hot air to warm his paws and shaved belly:

And one morning he decided he really needed the warmth:

Roulette has been getting more used to the downstairs, and the other morning she was enticing me to pet her on top of the kitchen island:

Blackjack and Roulette each like sleeping in the papasan, which now lives in the library upstairs (which holds my comic books, humor books, and mass-market paperback fiction). Sometimes, when there’s no sun elsewhere, they’ll sleep together:

But more likely we’ll find Newton and Roulette sleeping together, which is how I found them a few minutes ago when I came up to post this entry:

[Read the whole thing]]]> Now that daylight savings time has ended, so to has my biking to work regimen. Not because it gets cold, but because I don’t like biking home in the dark. While Silicon Valley is a pretty good place to bike (for an urban environment), it’s not so much the cars that worry me, as the crap on the road that I might run over and get a flat or damaged wheel – stuff I could see when it’s light out, but wouldn’t have much hope of seeing in the dark.

So instead I’m going to try to go to the gym twice a week to use the machine, and this morning was my first trip.

One thing that vexed me about the gym last year was that they’ve taken away the book holders they used to have which would keep your book open while you exercised. But now I have an iPad, and I realized I could read books on that. But which books to read? Most books I want I just buy when I find them, and I didn’t really want to buy them again digitally.

Then I realized that Iain M. Banks’ publisher has basically stopped printing his books in mass market paperback. I don’t enjoy Banks enough to buy his stuff in hardcover, and as I’ve said before, I dislike buying books in trade paperback. But this way I can turn a negative into a positive and read his newer works digitally at the gym. So I downloaded Surface Detail and started reading it this morning. Once I finish that, I can move on to Transition and Matter.

The experience of reading on the iPad was pretty good: Being able to adjust the text size is nice, and the contrast is fine. I didn’t have any problems reading for half an hour on an LCD screen (although, since I do that all day anyway, that didn’t surprise me). I haven’t tried any other e-readers (such as the Kindle), so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I didn’t have any complaints.

Well okay, my legs registered a few complaints after spending an hour on the elliptical machine for the first time in over half a year. Definitely not the same muscles that I use for bicycling.

Spacetrawler is a really fun webcomic, combining serious SF with humor and other silliness. If you’re intimidated by trying to catch up with this strip on-line, I recommend buying the handsome full-color paperback collection. The strip

[Read the whole thing]]]> The crew of Christopher Baldwin’s webcomic Spacetrawler reviews one of my favoritest novels, Alastair Reynolds’ Chasm City:

Spacetrawler is a really fun webcomic, combining serious SF with humor and other silliness. If you’re intimidated by trying to catch up with this strip on-line, I recommend buying the handsome full-color paperback collection. The strip above is included as an extra at the end of the book.

(By the way, my own review of Chasm City is here. And Reynolds’ blog can be found here.)