Posts

Showing posts from June, 2012

Series Review: The New Avengers, Volume 1

Image
The New Avengers, Vol. 1, TPB #1 I started reading comics again about a year and a half ago, partly because I'd missed comics after having taken a break from them for a couple of years and partly because my kids had finally gotten old enough to read on their own, and I wanted to share with them the joy that I remembered from reading comics back when I was their age.  The nice thing about having kids and reading comics with them is that they bring such a fresh perspective.  As an adult comic fan, I'd gotten totally away from traditional superhero comics just because I felt like everything that the Big Two were doing, I'd already seen it and read it, and it just wasn't interesting anymore.  I'd started reading Vertigo and a bunch of indies, looking for a more complex kind of comic storytelling that was more suited to my adult tastes.  But a lot of that stuff is so self-referential or deconstructionist that it gets old fast.  Having kids changes all of that, howeve

Friday Hair Metal: Styx's Crystal Ball

Image
This is from a live performance last year. By comparison, this is from...  I'm gonna guess a reunion tour, maybe 10 years ago.  This second video is definitely worth your time.  They've got the entire original lineup, including Dennis DeYoung . Anyway, Snowblind is another of my favorite Styx tunes. BTW, I accidentally posted Friday Mad Science earlier today (instead of at noon like I usually do).  So if you're looking for it, it's down below instead of up above.

Friday Mad Science: A Guy's Guide to Fifty Shades of Grey

Image
Alright, I’ll admit it.  I wanted to know what the fuss was about, so I swiped my wife’s copy of  Fifty Shades of Grey  this week and read maybe a third of it Tuesday night.  Fair warning: I’m about to get into that in some detail, so if you’re not ready for that—or you’re under seventeen—you probably ought to turn back now. Fifty Shades of Grey Fifty Shades of Grey  isn’t what I’d call scintillating reading for the most part—at least the first seventy pages or so weren’t—so I skimmed it until I started getting into the freaky parts.  With that said, once this book gets freaky, it gets  really   freaky .  The male lead in the story is a control freak whose parents beat him as a child, and as a consequence he comes to see love and sex through the prism of discipline, obedience, and violence.  Thus, this is a story with hard core bondage and beating and even talk of fisting (!), and frankly, some of that stuff, I can’t believe the women of America are going for it. Still. 

The Tour is Coming!

Image
Apropos  of nothing, I can't wait to get out on my bike this weekend.

Fairfield Half-Marathon 2012 Race Review

As I noted over the weekend, the  Fairfield Half-Marathon  was Sunday, and at least for me, it was kind of a disaster.  With that in mind, I don’t really feel like doing a full Race Report.  But I always autopsy these races—good or bad—to try to figure out what lessons I can learn, and this particular race is no exception.  So this is more of a Race Review than anything, and with any luck, it’ll be a bit shorter than these things usually are. The backstory here is that I’m a former Division 1 swimmer turned triathlete.  My wife Sally is a pure runner, and though she never competed back in school, she’s become talented enough lately that she’s often in a position to place—and sometimes even to win—her age group when we run smaller local races.  Last season I taught Sally to swim, and we did a couple of triathlons together.  Then we closed out the season with the  Hartford Half Marathon  in October and decided to focus the next season on running.  Given that Sally had just focused

Centurion Six #2: The Devil and the Agent from the FBI (Part 2)

Our Story So Far: Last night, Captains Blaine “Centurion Six” Winters and Jacob “Zulu” Mbeke of the New York State National Guard Enhanced Forces Division (EFD) were called out by the NYPD to consult on a multiple homicide in the south Bronx.  The case seemed like routine “skrag” gang violence until our heroes stumbled upon evidence that implicated a former teammate in the murders—ultra-human drug addict Jason King.  However, before Blaine and his team could begin to investigate, they were attacked by a killer cyborg robot-monkey mounting a highly advanced stealth/security system and a small-caliber machine pistol.  In the ensuing firefight, a police officer was killed, the crime scene burned to the ground, and the cyborg robot-monkey escaped. EFD commander Colonel Joachim “Aguilá” Rodriguez calls in the FBI to help with the investigation, and Special Agent Nora Mahoney is assigned to the case.  But Ms. Mahoney finds the EFD to be a strange and disconcerting assignment. Note:  

July Previews Reviews

Image
The race yesterday was kind of a disaster.  That's the second race of the season that's gone like that for me, and truth to tell, I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet.  So here's a video I found on YouTube reviewing the comics in Previews for the month of July.  If that's your thing, enjoy! I'll have something up on the race later in the week.

Fairfield Half Marathon: Pre-Race Jitters

The Fairfield Half Marathon starts in about two hours.  I've been resting my legs all week, and I've spent a ton of time training for this race, but I still can't shake the feeling that this is really Sally's race.  As I said the other day, if it was up to me, I'd rather we were doing a bike race, a metric century or something like that.  I mean, I'm ready to run; it's just that I know that the last two or three miles today are gonna be a slog, and at this point, there's no dealing with that besides to just gut it out. Thankfully, the heat around here has finally broken.  It was in the mid-nineties all week and the mid- to upper-eighties yesterday, but it's only maybe sixty outside right now, and it's not supposed to get above the high seventies before the end of the race.  That's good.  Still, I already told Sally that my goal today is just to finish.  Hitting Mile Ten in seventy-seven degree heat is gonna take everything that I have.  I

Sunday Comics: The Adventures of Hiro Arturian, Samurai (Day 8)

Image
The Adventures of Hiro Arturian , Page 8. To see the page at full size, click here . Whoops!  Uh oh, looks like Hiro's got a little problem here.  Heh.  Who will come to Hiro's aid? As always, to read the story from the beginning, just click the Hiro tag.  Or, if you want to read all of the Sunday Comics entries, you can use the Sunday Comics tag.

The Amazing Spider-Man Looks... Amazing.

Image
Cover for ASM #650, by Humberto Ramos. From  Newsrama : The first reviews of the big-screen Spidey reboot  Amazing Spider-Man  are beginning to emerge online, and despite some misgivings amongst fans about the successful film series being rebooted so quickly and the origin story being retold so soon, the early word is nearly universally positive. Of the 11 reviews currently tracked by RottenTomatoes.com as of Friday afternoon (mostly UK based publications), only one has been negative, giving director Marc Webb’s  Amazing  an early but highly encouraging 91% approval rating. Critics so far have been drawn to the balance of romance, humor, and characterization that gives life to what Boyd van Hoeij of Variety calls, "a mostly slick, entertaining and emotionally involving recombination of fresh and familiar elements." I’ll admit, I’ve personally been less than excited about the new Spider-Man movie, both because there are already a lot of superhero movies in the the

Friday Mad Science: Microsoft's New Tablet and the Genius of Kurt Busiek, George Perez, and Ed Brubaker

Image
Before I get started this week, let me just say up front that this site is not for everyone.  If you read through this and hate it, by all means leave a comment.   But.   If you find yourself reading and hating and reading and hating and reading and hating, and we start arguing in the comments...  at that point, it might be time to reassess your commitment.   'Nuff said. * * * I read the first part of  Ed Brubaker ’s   run on  Captain America  this week and the first year or so of the  George Perez/Kurt Busiek  run on  The   Avengers , and I enjoyed both tremendously.  For those in the know, that’s the first  Winter Soldier  arc and the first of two volumes marked  “Avengers Assemble!” , both of which were in TPB form in the Milford, CT, library.  Avengers Assemble, Volume 1 (TPB). I really, really liked this book. Avengers Assemble! was especially satisfying.  I’ve liked what   Brian Bendis  has done lately with some of the  New Avengers  stuff—pre- Si

Friday Hair Metal: Working for the Weekend

Image
I spent about an hour trying to get this link on my phone.  Finally, I just gave up and waited until I got home.  Anyway, this one's for Chi Chi .  It's Chi Chi's song. Heh.  Here's one more from the same era.  More of an early hair metal song.

Sharktopus!

Image
I don't know how we got on the subject of sharktopi yesterday, but we did.  And I laughed so hard when I watched this trailer yesterday that I embarrassed my boss in the middle of a conference call.

Someone I Used to Know

Image
This is my kids' favorite song.  Uptempo but strangely sad.  My man obviously lost his manic pixie dream girl. Anyway, you've probably heard the song, but maybe you'll groove to it anyway.

Centurion Six #2: The Devil and the Agent from the FBI (Part 1)

Our Story So Far: Last night, Captains Blaine “Centurion Six” Winters and Jacob “Zulu” Mbeke of the New York State National Guard Enhanced Forces Division (E.F.D.) were called out by the NYPD to consult on a multiple homicide in the south Bronx.  The case seemed like routine “skrag” gang violence until our heroes stumbled upon evidence that implicated a former teammate in the murders—ultra-human drug addict Jason King.  However, before Blaine and his team could begin to investigate, they were attacked by a killer cyborg robot-monkey mounting a highly advanced stealth/security system and a small-caliber machine pistol.  In the ensuing firefight, a police officer was killed, the crime scene burned to the ground, and the cyborg robot-monkey got away. Fortunately, Blaine managed to subdue Jason King with the help of teenaged ultra-human club girl Rebecca Rodriguez, daughter of Colonel Joachim “El Aguilá” Rodriguez, following a brutal fight just outside of Central Park. Note:  To re