About me: I'm an unrepentant generalist finding my way in a world of specialists. I started this blog to review books, but I now talk about topics ranging from management to cognition to social software.
email me if you have any questions or comments.
Using WordPress
3.1.3
I was hanging out at Yerba Buena Gardens this afternoon with a friend. Well, outside the Metreon actually. Yerba Buena itself was closed, apparently for a private party. We saw a couple guys in tuxes go by, and said “Huh, must be a nice party”. Then we saw a couple storm troopers walk by. And Darth Vader. And a few guys dressed in Jedi robes. I got a picture with the Sidekick of R2D2, over on the right.
Since I was pretty sure it wasn’t a movie launch party, our best guess was that it was the Episode III video game launch party, since when we went inside the Metreon, there were signs everywhere advertising the new game, available on the Playstation. But I just liked the incongruity of sitting in a city and seeing storm troopers walk by. It amuses me.
My local library branch now has a graphic novel section. I was astonished, really. While I can understand why they put it in the “young adult” section, they may want to reconsider their filing, considering they had Watchmen filed there as well, and that is anything but a children’s tale. I thought about flipping it open to one of the sex scenes and showing it to a librarian, but decided that kids should be exposed to really good graphic novels, so I left it.
I checked out three Daredevil graphic novels. I don’t know much about the Daredevil series, but after seeing Sin City, I wanted to go back and check out the original Frank Miller Daredevil work, and they had both Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the “Visionaries:Frank Miller” graphic novels available, as well as the Guardian Devil run, by Kevin Smith.
Reading volume 1, I thought it was okay, but pretty pedestrian stuff, not anywhere near what I expected from Frank Miller, even a young Frank Miller in his first comic job. Volume 2 was an immediate quantum leap in quality of writing. On a hunch I went back and looked. It turned out that the issues in volume 1 only had Frank Miller as the artist (and apparently occasional co-plotter). Volume 2 is when he took over as both writer and artist. And the difference is stark. The stories have much more emotional depth, and are just plain more interesting. Volume 2 traces the Elektra story line, which is pretty awesome in and of itself.
The Kevin Smith run was okay. Nothing too great. He gets into his schtick about dealing with his lapsed Catholicism issues, but whatever.
I’m glad I was able to get these from the library – they wouldn’t have been worth paying for. Daredevil just doesn’t do it for me. He’s not an interesting character that I sympathize with. Even less so after seeing him played by Ben Affleck in the movie. He’s just a little too invincible for a blind man. Actually, that was the same issue I had with Zatoichi, which I saw last night at a friend’s house. Anyway. Not a huge fan of the Daredevil series. But Frank Miller, as a comics writer, is pretty awesome.
Similar to the Evanovich books, when I saw the latest Terry Pratchett at the library, I grabbed it and read it. As usual, it’s clever and funny, but not particularly memorable.
Ten Big Ones and Metro Girl, by Janet Evanovich
I like Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, so when I saw the latest one in the library, I picked it up. And Metro Girl is the start of a possible new series. I liked Ten Big Ones better than Metro Girl – the Stephanie Plum antics are consistently funnier, with several incidents in each book that have me laughing out loud. Metro Girl was okay, but not as clever. Not sure why.
Before I spend more time interpreting an obscure French philosopher, I’m going to take a day off from serious posting, and do a general journal-type post. To wit, what I’m doing with my week off between jobs.
I’d originally considered going and taking a trip or something like that, but decided I had too many things to do here. All those little things that I’ve put off for months, I’m trying to get done this week.
Things I’ve done: lots of laundry, gotten a haircut, brought my bike in for a tuneup, went through my closets and packed up a bunch of boxes of clothes for Salvation Army, cancelled my phone land line (since my DSL is completely through my DSL provider now), took my tux into the cleaners after last week’s concert, made an appointment with the eye doctor for this Friday. Oh, and dealt with my car.
So after my threat to trade the car in, they finally took me seriously and looked at the electrical connections (I’d been guessing (and telling them) it was an intermittent electrical problem from the third time I’d brought it in – this was the sixth). They found a loose contact in the electrical junction box. They refused to give me a new car, but since they actually found something that I believed might be related to the problems I’d been having, I agreed to take it back. It helped that they threw in credit for two monthly payments for my aggravation and inconvenience, as well as swearing that they were on the hook if anything went wrong again. Cross your fingers everyone.
The other thing I’ve been doing is gorging on mindless media. After finally finishing the month-long struggle with Latour, I stopped by the library last Friday and picked up a huge stack of fiction. I’ll write those up in appropriate separate posts. I also stopped by the video store because it’s next to the dry cleaners, and checked out the first season of Dead Like Me, because I’ve been wanting to see that for a while, especially after seeing all of Wonderfalls, which shares a creator. So lots of vegging going on. It’s all good. I start work on Monday and then my time for mindlessness will be over.
