Some Thoughts on Titans and the New DC Universe Streaming Service

I bought our daughter Emma a subscription to the new DC Universe streaming service for her birthday.  She is a monster comic book fan and a superfan of the DCU’s Young Justice animated show, and it’s been great because we’ve been watching a ton of TV together since getting the subscription.

Source: "Why Wolfman and Perez's THE NEW TEEN TITANS Is a Must-Read"

Totally worth it from that standpoint.

5 Things on a Friday: Ridin’ the Storm Out

Something happened on Wednesday.  The blog went viral in some way that hasn’t happened previously.  I think that a West Pointer somewhere--I’m guessing from a class in the mid- to late-1970s--saw my preview of the Hawai’i game on Facebook and sent it out to a bunch of his buddies in a monster email blast.  It propagated from there.  Alas, the event came without much in the way of statistics from Blogger’s traffic tracking pages, so there are a few other possibilities.  But some kind of email chain seems most likely.

Regardless, hello new readers!

Experience suggests that most of you will not stick around long, and that’s okay.  As I tell my own classmates, our friendship is not contingent on your reading my stuff.  The blog’s traffic has been growing over the years, but this isn’t a Get Rich Quick scheme.  It’s the way I entertain myself while I’m on Metro-North going back and forth from New York City.  

The blog is intentionally organized as a salad bar.  You take what you want and ignore the rest.  There is no one else on earth who also likes all the stuff that I like.  I get that.  You don’t have to like my stuff; you don’t have to like me.  It’s fine, really.  

Writing isn’t my career.  Some people build little ships in little bottles.  I write a blog.  It is what it is.

5 Things on a Friday: Waiting for My Giant Seahorse

I was on vacation the first three days this week, and it still feels like it’s been a long week.  Argh!

Happy Friday, folks.

#ArmyNavy & Other Notes

The Eyes of the World Are Upon You. #BeatNavy #ClimbToGlory pic.twitter.com/ZDGZnWx8er

— ArmyWestPoint Sports (@GoArmyWestPoint) December 9, 2017

5 Things on a Friday: Black Friday

Happy Black Friday, folks!  I assume you’ve got the day off, and I do, too.

Are we shopping yet?

Quick Thoughts: Justice League

Went with my buddy Ben and his son to see Justice League Saturday -- in IMAX -- while Sally and the girls and their friends went to see Wonder.  Right up front, I had two key takeaways:

1. IMAX shows a lot of Justice League.  Like, yo, that League was big, and it was LOUD.

2. Coming off Batman vs. Superman, the movie overall was exponentially better than I thought it would be.  I still don't think that the DCEU has come up to the standard of the MCU, but this one movie at least was a lot more fun than it was grim, gritty, and noir.

*Spoilers Below*

Wonder Woman & Spider-Man vs. the Man of Steel

I finally got to see Wonder Woman this week.  Good flick.  They did a nice job of making Diana fierce but also feminine and of making Steve Trevor both nowhere near as tough as his star but decidedly heroic and masculine nonetheless.

Wonder Woman

Spoilers ahead.

5 Things on a Friday: A New Kind of Star Wars

It’s a lot of entertainment news this week.  I’ll do my best to keep it quick.

5 Things on a Friday: It’s Wonder Woman’s World!

It was a crappy week on Wall Street, but my man John Kasich looks like he might still have a little life.

Let’s get to it.

More Pics from Washington, DC: The Hirshorn & The Museum of the American Indian

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei did a collection of sculpture called Animal Heads/Chinese Zodiac that's on display under the Hishhorn right now.  Born in 1973, I'm an Ox.

This is the Dragon from the same collection.  You can see some of the other heads in the background.

This is called something like Classical Sculpture by Rodin.  It's also in the Hirshhorn.
This was one of my favorites from this trip.

The Museum of the American Indian is a very sad place.  It starts by making a point of the fact that "Indians" are from India, and that even calling American Indians "Native Americans" is an anomoly in that they existed on the continents that we call America long before the continent itself had been given that name.  The people living in the Americas before Columbus had a rich culture, history, and heritage long before Europeans knew them.

But then the museum dives straight into the conquest of America by the Spanish, and the plagues and wars that went along with it.  By the time English settlers landed at Plymouth Rock, the native population had already been nearly obliterated by disease, so that the pilgrims were able to settle in an abandoned Indian village.  Moreover, the Spanish looted and then destroyed the native culture where they found it, so that an astonishingly small collection of native artifacts remains from their pre-settlement culture.  The Museum of the American Indian is therefore mostly filled with replicas and with collections from Native American life in the modern day.  It's interesting, but it's also sad.  Having seen a wide cross-section of both this past weekend, I think there might be more African culture left over from the black slave trade in America than there is American Indian culture from the lives of the pre-conquest peoples.

My father was 1/8th Cherokee.  I got into this stuff quite a bit while thinking of him and am looking forward to doing some research on the Cherokee when I get back home.

This is the Buffalo Hunter, done in the style of the Pueblo Indians.  It's outside the
 Museum of the American Indian.

These skate decks are a good example of the kind of thing that's on display at the Museum
of the American Indian.  They are a modern interpretation of classic American Indian culture. 

I took this picture of the Capitol with my wife's iPhone from a window in the Museum of the American Indian.

This is The Nymph.  It's the center of three, but it's on display by itself in the
Hirshhorn's Sculpture Garden.  It was another of my favorite pieces from this trip.

Visit to See My Father

We visited my father on Memorial Day.

More Pics from Washington, DC

The Washington Monument, as seen from the new World War II Memorial.

Sally and I both got really into the Renaissance
sculpture.  This one is called  Diana of the Tower.

This statue of Mercury is in the rotunda at the National Gallery of Art.

Perhaps my favorite sculpture was this one.  It's called Flight of Europa.

Pics from the Smithsonian

As I said yesterday, we're down in DC with the kids.  Well, yesterday we took them to the American History Museum and the Natural History Museum, both of which I think they really enjoyed.  Certainly I enjoyed myself.  Here are some pictures to prove it.

A statue of George Washington, re-imagined as a Greek god.

Hannah and an early DC generator.  I loved all this stuff from
Thomas Edison's  workshop and the shops of his early competitors.

Hannah and Emma and a giant telescope.

I was looking for something for my wife at the gift
shop, and this caught my eye.

Hannah the predator.  Behind her is a sabertooth tiger skeleton.

Hannah and Sally and the barbarian exhibit.  You can't really
tell from this picture, but that barbarian girl is French;
one of her breasts is exposed.

Man-eating bird!

Where else but the Smithsonian will you see a whale
hanging from the ceiling?  Well, to be fair, they also have one
hanging from the ceiling of the Museum of Natural History
in New York City as well.

Dire wolf skeletons.  I looked but couldn't find the crest for House Stark.

These elephants were in the Presidents' section.
They belonged to Ronald Reagan.

Hannah and Emma pose with a triceretops.

The one thing I thought I kept coming back to today as we walked through the Natural History Museum was that the entire place is designed to show the effects of evolution and the origin and development of the various species of life on Earth.  I say that because Washington, DC, is such an inherently political place, and so I'm a little surprised that folks haven't gone crazy about the fact that our national natural history museum teaches evolution.  But they do, and they do a good job with it.  

Hooray for science!