Fie on Goodness! Fie!!

So...why would I be bringing forth that most limp-wristed of epithet songs (from "Camelot," if you remember...and say it loud and clear if you have not...)? I mean, c'mahn!....knights...singing "Fie on Goodness!" Oh, yeah...you guys mean business! "Fie on Goodness," my Aunt Sally!

I'm in a foul, foul mood. Lots to do tonight and I got home real late, so I'll be up late. And I had to walk in, because my car is parked up on the Main Road so I can get out in the morning. My finger hurts, and I'm typing. The dog is being a jerk. The cat's harassing me. My blood sugar's low, and I'm probably anemic. I should probably eat. And drink. And smoke. Toss on "Lush Life" and put it on "loop." Life sucks tonight. The combination of snow on the ground and responsibilities on the 'morrow have a tendency to create that kind of mood in me.

And then I see this:http://men.msn.com/articlepm.aspx?cp-documentid=1628365&GT1=8991

And my big question is: Why is this in the Lifestyle:Men section?

No. Work was fine. Then I did some stuff in Seattle (mail--got a check!--and the LCS, where I had a two-week pile-up of funny-books), then I went to Burien to get my car looked at for a pesky rattle that makes me think the whole thing will fly apart on the freeway, only today there's no rattle. I tell the guy who runs the service department that and he says..."Then I'm not gonna work on it. Not if there's a $100-an-hour serviceman working on it. I'd be wasting your money! When it does it again, bring it in. We'll fix it then and there...but I'm not going to waste your money."

So, cool. I take care of the busines I had down there, and start my drive back to the Island.

I say "start." At 3:45pm.

At about the First Avenue Bridge, it starts to rain. By the time I'm on the Viaduct, the clouds are threatening and the hail starts. Out of the Tunnel, it's snowing, but I'm still moving forward. I get to I-5 and it's still sleeting, but the traffic is now crawling at about 5 mph. And it continues to do so all the way up to Lynnwood. Now the speed stays constant, but the weather doesn't. The snow-storm literally goes over us and is done in 30 minutes. But the cars. They stay as slow. There are no accidents. No tires deflated or off. But there are...abandoned vehicles. We continue driving 5 mph, while the road is what is officially called "bare and wet." This could be rain now. But we are still moving at 5 miles per hour. At my exit I veer off and I'm soon doing the speed limit. I think to myself that I've heard about bad conditions in Schmuckilteo on the radio, so there's no way...NO way I'll make the 6:00pm ferry. But the Incredible Schmuckilteo Speedway (yes, that's what it's called...you'd expect 54 funny cars cruisng the loop!) is clear. In fact, it's almost abandoned. I stop for gas, because you never know, and gasoline, like life, is cheap on the Speedway. But I drive down, give my ferry ticket to the Man, and I drive right on to the 1800 ferry. Amazing.

And, as we get no AM radio signal, I take it as an excuse to not listen to the Commander-in-Cheat tell us he's bombing Cambodia ('cause it worked so well the last time). Over to our friend, Mr. Keith Olbermann...



Keith's P.O.'d. And there's this... http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/10/olbermann-a-look-backward-at-the-commanders-credibility/

So, I miss "W" and another thought occurs to me. The only reason traffic was going so slow was not the snow...the streets were fine...it was the fear of snow and panicky drivers. What took me 2 1/2 hours could have been considerably shortened if someone, somewhere was just more on the ball. And those folks put more folks at risk far back down the line, when snow was falling. I get on the Island, and pick up the dog from the sitter's. I'm tired. But the further I drive up the Island, the more snow there is. Finally, after slipping and sliding I pull into the street and just to be on the safe side, I park up where I can get quick access to the closest main road and the dog and I walk to the house, me carrying a bunch of groceries, and the dog carrying on, not minding and not "heeling" and I can't do anything about except yell at him to return (which he does) and admonish him. But I'm doing it a lot. I'm home at 8pm. I'm exhausted. I'm cranky. I feel beat up. There's two inches of snow on the ground that I'll deal with tomorrow. And lots to do.

But the house is warm. And we're safe for awhile. I can work with that. *Sigh* "Hump-day," indeed!

Grrrr

But I can't leave it at that. At the Ranch, someone showed me a movie that "I just HAD to watch." *Sigh* I usually hate those. But surprisingly, I liked it. It made me laugh. I also found it rather clever, while being dumb as a stump and having no budget to speak of. And lots of stylized violence. Plus, it's the perfect film for the mood I'm in.

It's called "Robot Bastard!" and here's the link: http://www.robotbastard.com/ (Yeah, natch!)

Be sure and check out the trailers--particularly the Japanese one.

Oh, one more thing: The price of a barrel of oil dropped $2.14 to $51.88. $2.14! Gasoline prices in the area are still at their Thanksgiving-Christmas levels.

* (not *********)

We lost power twice yesterday(for about 1/2 hour in the afternoon, and then an evening reprise from 4:30 pm until 2:30 am)during my weekly gasoline sabbatical (and by the way, the price of oil has dropped to a five-year low) and managed to gouge a triangle-sized piece out of the tip of my left middle finger (that spewed blood EVERYwhere--I thought I was watching "Curse of the Golden Flower" again!) while washing dishes. One of my dad's old Ford truck-fleet tumblers did the trick (All those cocktail parties with the Coynes and it didn't survive a simple washing) and now I've got a nice little bandage around the tip of my left typing finger (so if there are typing screw-ups, that's why). So, all in all it was a busy day, but without the computer there was not too much business accomplished. But I did managed to cook the pets' meals on the wood-stove, keep the place warm, and listened to entirely too much talk-radio 'til finally, Frank Shiers put me to sleep (That's the only good thing I can say about the man). But a KIRO radio guy I DO like is Terry Rose-recently retired from KIRO and living down the highway from me. I stopped by his and Christine's palatial pad, shared Island horror stories, briefly re-asserted that we have different tastes in movies--he loved "The Departed" and Jack Nicholson in it, I think Scorsese was slumming, and Jack needed some reigning in--and went over some nifty features in the recording software in his home-studio. Nice digs. And just when we were really getting into the nitty-gritty of it *poom* power goes out.

Which is where you came in.

I got up early expecting a lot of snow and found...nothing. A slight dusting on the table on the deck, and that was it. Roads were clear, but the further I headed south the more snow there was. Very gratifying to see the road-crews out. It'll be a busy day back at the Ranch, then I take my car in for some maintenance down in the old stomping grounds. Pick up some do-food. Check my mail. Pick up the dog. Go home. Do the stuff I couldn't do yesterday. Sleep. That'll be it. Get up early for the de-icing. Such is life.

Whistling in the Wind

It's the start of another week, and this one started out cold and extraordinarily rainy--not the most enticing weather for K to head into town for an intense week of work, but she's off and I and the dog and the cat are fending. Off to town in a moment for supplies, and a walk in the woods. The Passage is calm. Lots of free-lance to do today, then another project/another group later in the week, so it's going to be hectic with the regular work also making me busy.
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As I'd mentioned before, we lost power again this past week. The lights went away about 10 Friday night (I stumbled in about 8:30pm), and stayed out until 2:00pm Saturday afternoon. It's getting to be old-hat now. One looks forward to cooking on the wood-stove and gathering the animals together for warmth. We went foraging for coffee yesterday, and there were, of course, all sorts of honking-fits at non-functioning traffic lights (having become 4-way Stops), and a lot of folks looking straight out of "Night of the Living Dead" staggering for caffeine. Must say I was one of them. The Island appears to be back to normal, but when we lose power it seems like the whole Island invariably loses it, too. And not just power.
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Johnson is doing just fine, there are no complications and he's out taking progressively longer walks and building up his strength. He sounds "bubbley" over the phone if such a term can be applied to him. Amazing. Between that and Pat's brain surgery going so well, it's enough to dispel most fears about going into the hospital. Then, I go over to my Seester's and she turns on "Grey's Anatomy" ("West Wing's" best non-Sorkin writer is now a producer on the show) and I start thinking, "How do these people stay on-line with their jobs when they're hopping into each other's sacks all the time?" Makes me never want to get sick...at least until doctors become monks (and look how well that's done for the Catholic Church!).
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Actually listened to the Seahawks play-off game last night (not like me!), and was kept on the edge of the couch. Interesting game...seems like the Seahawks were playing their exact match in the Dallas Cowboys, not only in skills, but also in their ability to be their own worst enemy and Play-Things of the Fates. Yeesh! Players started dropping like flies. Former "goats" turned into the highest level of Heroes, and it finally came down to timing and running out the clock. After four quarters of wierdness, the best way to win..was to simply stand in place. The Seahawks advance. Hopefully there's a lot of skin on their teeth, as they must be out of finger-nails by now.
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Absolutely no takers on the "Query" from last week. I yell into the "Comments" section and there's just an echo (at least I get that...and if that isn't a metaphor for the whole "blog" phenom, then what's a "meta" for?). No response. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Null set. "The Big Goose-Egg."
The Cupboard is Bare.
Could it be the question? Does it produce a Rumsfeldian response ala "We don't know what we don't know?" I'll leave it up, but I'll probably be molderin' in the grave by the time I get ten responses. No blow-back on the "Greatest DC Covers of All Time"--this is why I don't write about comics! Coming up: I have two reviews in the hopper (don't expect a "10 best list" I don't do those, except for this ...eventually that old paper that'll take a week to post...and that brings up an issue, but I'm loathe to ask because I probably won't get a response...given the lengths of some of these things, should I just "bite the bullet" and "digest" everything (just present the first three hundred words or so, then link to the full article) or is there some reader-satisfaction in having the whole thing "right there" where only scrolling needs to be done. I've pondered. Oh. I have pondered.
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And finally, Happy Birthday to my Ex-Wife, Sandra. It's her umpty-umpth birthday today.

This Post is Useless Without...

power!

The lights R.I.P. 10:00pm 1/5/07-2:00pm 1/6/07)
Just to let Puget Sound Energy know...I'm keeping track.

Speaking of keeping track, the oil companies have not seen fit to lower gas prices despite the nose-diving price of a barrel of oil. Perhaps it's because of the recent spate of power outages in the Northwest and the panic-filled gas-lines on the Eastside...in Schmuckilteo, where the lights never dimmed, there was never a line for gasoline. My brother tells me the price of gas hovers around $2.00 regular in Detroit.

Market forces, they say through their teeth.

Movie Review-"The Curse of the Golden Flower"

The Crouching Tiger in Winter

'What family doesn't have its ups and downs?" says Elanor of Aquitane in "The Lion in Winter." Some family's more than others. Take the royal family in Zhang Yimou's "The Curse of the Golden Flower." The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) is poisoning the Empress (Gong Li). The Empress has slept with her step-son, the Crown Prince. The CP is sleeping with the daughter of the Emperor's physician--who's providing the poison to the Emperor for the Empress. And the daughter of the physician, she's sleeping with the Crown Prince, too, and, well, it just gets a little messy at this point. And instead of King Henry's family-war of precisely chosen words, this family battles with ever-increasing sizes of armies, internecine plots and even ninjas who call to mind the flying monkeys of "The Wizard of Oz" albeit with razor-sharp scythes, and throwing weapons.

A technical element that reminds of "Wizard" is the stunningly ravishing (in all senses of the term) color photography that hasn't been seen since they stopped using the three-color-dye Technicolor process (or since Dorothy clicked her heels together and returned to sepia-toned Kansas). Zhang, even more so than in "Hero" and "The House of Flying Daggers," suffuses the screen with a sumptuous chiaroscuro of reds, lavenders and golds--this is truly one of the most beautiful films to come out this year,* and it more than lives up to Zhang's past flashes of spectacle.

Dramatically, though, the film falls a little flat--setting up a confrontation that gradually escalates from hand to hand combat to eventually rivalling the endlessly epic battle set-pieces in the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy (and as the armies just kept getting bigger and bigger, it brought to my mind an old Chuck Jones cartoon where Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd engaged in a frantically escalating war: from knife to pistol to rifle to rolling cannon to BIG rolling cannon). After an extended bloody battle sequence, the movie ends where it began, only with a lot fewer characters and the biggest clean-up operation the Forbidden City has ever seen. Needless to say, there's going to have to be a new planning committee for next year's Chrysanthemum Festival.

"The Curse of the Golden Flower" is just too beautiful and detailed to be appreciated on the small-screen, but too inconsequential to pay full-price. Find a cheap matinee and enjoy the colors.

* I rushed out to see "The Curse..." because of the past intimate, intricate sound design of Tao Jing, hoping that he would surpass the masterful job done on "The House of Flying Daggers." Alas, although the design is a marvelous skein of chimes and movement, the best sounding film I've heard this year is "The Fountain."

It's the Same Old Song...

You may not know Doc Pomus. He was a white blues singer who only achieved great success by penning rock and roll records for the likes of Elvis Presley, Dion and the Belmonts, The Drifters, The Coasters, Ray Charles, and on and on. The man is responsible for some of my favorite songs in the rock and roll era, and looking at the list of his work is to have your head filled with great melodies, high-flying strings, and fond memories. And words that hang on your heart.

But this weekend on "A Prarie Home Companion", I learned a bit more about Doc Pomus. That, as a child, he was crippled by polio and spent his early years on crutches, which is how you see him in photos singing at blues clubs. There's some speculation that's what kept him achieving any fame-you can't have a singing sensation who can't stand on his feet. He spent most of his life in a wheelchair. In 1957, he married an aspiring Broadway actress/dancer named Willi Burke. Not long after, he wrote (with his partner Mort Shuman) "Save the Last Dance For Me." You know it, it's been "covered" lots of times, and been a hit more than once. It's a classic song with a blues sentiment and a spanish rhythm that dances all on its own. Now, read the words with the story of Doc Pomus and his pretty wife in mind and you'll never hear the song the same way again.

You can dance
Every dance with the guy
Who gives you the eye,
Let him hold you tight
You can smile
Every smile for the man
Who held your hand
'Neath the pale moon light
But don't forget who's takin' you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darlin' save the last dance for me

Oh I know
That the music's fine
Like sparklin' wine,
Go and have your fun
Laugh and sing,
But while we're apart
Don't give your heart
To anyone
But don't forget who's takin' you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darlin' save the last dance for me

Baby don't you know I love you so
Can't you feel it when we touch
I will never never let you go
I love you oh so much

You can dance,
Go and carry on
Till the night is gone
And it's time to go
If he asks
If you're all alone
Can he walk you home,
You must tell him no
'Cause don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling,
Save the last dance for me
'Cause don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling,
Save the last dance for me
Save the last dance for me
Save the last dance for me.

Words and Music by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman

2007 and Query: The Greatest Movie Never Seen

A bright, happy, healthy, brand, spankin' new year to you. It's 2007. In Chinese New Year's terms, it's the year of the boar, and K and I celebrated by watching the last of our NetFlix choices ("Finding Neverland") for the month, and resuming our plowing through the seventh (and last) season of "The West Wing." We made it through 1 1/2 discs and find that, divorced from the weekly installment aspect of it and the anticipation that's built up, the non-Sorkin episodes aren't truly that bad. In fact, that last season was really good. Having trouble watching John Spencer, however. He was essential to that show.

As is our custom, we fell asleep on the couch, while the DVD player went from "Main Menu" to "Screen-Saver" to "Off," transitioning to the TV's Blue Screen of Death. Didn't hear any fireworks, because we were asleep at 12, only the roaring of the wind and the rumble of the surf when the 3am "wakies" occurred. The animals stuck close. I've been suffering a bad back since Thursday from staying at my Seester's--I should probably re-inflate that air-mattress--it was compounded by long hours of sitting while commuting. So, my left hip is tweaked out. Doing a lot of stretching, hot showers, Aleve. And not blogging for long stretches. One stretch today popped it, so I'm at the keyboard, but it does hurt. Have to work through the pain rather than avoid it. Shower/Walk the dog/Eat a meal/Prepare for the short-week-that's the agenda for the day. It's raining right now. Delay of game for 15 minutes. There's no "live" TV here, thinking it an unnecessary expense, so no PapaJohn.com Bowl (which is just as well!), Doing some reading. "This I Believe" is a fast read.
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So, you wanna play a game? Here's one. I'll call it "Queries." I'll throw out a topic. You give me a response. After ten responses, new query.

Jean Sherrard came up with this one out of the blue: What is the greatest movie you've never seen? You know about it, you've heard about it, yeah, you want to see it, but you just haven't, even though you intend to put it on your NetFlix list...any day now. Honest Abe made a confession--he'd finally seen "Casablanca." He'd gone fifty years without seeing "Casablanca?" I was stumped. There are lots of movies I've never seen, but what's the greatest one?

And what's "great?" The most critically-acclaimed, or the most popular? The one with the most awards, or the one that's always on those "100 Best" specials? What do you think of when you think "Greatest?"

I'll start: "La Strada." Never seen it. I'd like to. But it's one of those movies you have to make a special effort to track down. And Fellini is one of those directors where I haven't seen EVERY SINGLE FILM the man's ever directed. But this one's a big one for him--the one where he became "FELLINI" with all the elements of Italian life and his circus themes, and the downtrodden and show-business. Plus it stars Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart and Giulietta Massina (Mrs. Fellini). She stars in my favorite Fellini film ("The Nights of Cabiria") and she's supposedly just as great in this. Never seen it. It's been called his greatest film and is on all sorts of great films lists and is sited in a masterful book by William Bayer called "The Great Movies."

Never seen it. But I'll track it down this year. Really.

Your turn....

Spike it!

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Appropriately enough, this book was a long journey. Now incredibly dog-eared, its cover in a perpetual twirl, this book has been in my car and kept me occupied, entertained, and entranced through many a ferry-crossing. The story of Lewis and Clark never impressed me in grade school, became more of an interest as its bicentennial approached, intrigued, the more and more markers of it I passed in my travels and reached full exploratory mode after seeing Clay Jenkinson perform a couple of chautauqua talks as Merriwether Lewis, alone or with a fellow scholar who portrayed Clark. I've read a couple of books by Ambrose (and have another in my stack of "to-reads") and he has an easy, popular style that expresses the facts and lets other authors who've covered the subject do the flummery. Take, for instance, this passage, describing what surely must be the most amazing occurence during the trek West. It involves a parlay between The Corps of Discovery and the Shoshone tribe for horses desperately needed for passage over the the Continental Divide, and directly involves Sacagawea, the teenaged Indian woman, who, with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau, had been living with the Mandan tribe, and who joined the Corps as interpreters:

Lewis had a camp set up just below the forks (of the Missouri River). He had a canopy formed from one of the large sails. At 4:00 p.m., he called a conference. Dispensing with Drouillard and the sign language, he decided to use a translation chain that ran from Sacagawea, speaking Shoshone to the Indians and translating it into Hidatsa, to Charbonneau, who translated her Hidatsa into French, to Private Francis Labiche, who translated from French to English.

Scarcely had they begun the cumbersome process with Sacagawea began to stare at Cameahwait (the Shoshone chief). Suddenly recognizing him as her brother, 'she jumped up, ran & embraced him, & threw her blanket over him and cried profusely.'

What a piece of luck that was. No novelist would dare invent such a scene. As James Ronda writes, "the stars danced for Lewis and Clark." (Undanuted Courage, p. 277)

There are scattered maps, and some illustrations throughout, but only when words fail and a representation can add color, and Ambrose depends on the journals of Lewis and Clark for the most immediate descriptions, going so far as to retain the original misspellings and punctuations of the two men (Ambrose ruefully laments writing the book with the use of "SpellCheck").

One is left with a mind boggled by the monumental task that was commissioned by President Jefferson of his protege, Lewis, to survey the Louisiana Purchase and beyond, and of just how adept Lewis was in his painstaking research, record-keeping and planning for the task. Ambrose is always quick to praise Lewis and Clark, particularly for their skill as commanders (Ambrose, as an author, is renowned for his WWII volumes, and as a scholar, for his work with Eisenhower), but is equally quick to point out their failings, while acknowledging them being men of their times. Clark's post-trip treatment of his slave, York, who was an equal member of the group and walked every step of the way West, comes under deserved question, as well as Lewis' inconsistent policy towards American Natives. Ambrose also gives Sacagawea her rightful due (she did, after all accompany the troop from the mid-West to the Pacific Coast and back, while caring for her infant), where Lewis and Clark apparently did not. Incredibly, for all the unkowables and the hazards, only one man died, and skirmishes with the tribes they encountered were kept to a minimum. And a wealth of knowledge was gathered and recorded. An amazing feat.

Like every description of the expedition, the journey home goes by in a flash, and Lewis' erratic post-expedition behavior leading to his suicide becomes the focus. A combination of many factors led to it, and one can see the focus that characterized Lewis' behavior moving west becoming scattered in a whirl of hubris, adulation, greed, unrequited love, drunkeness and self-medication. New challenges were thrown at him, and Lewis, flush with fame and ambition, couldn't say no. Better for him to have stayed in Washington, and tended to the editing and publishing of his journals. But they went unpublished. Perhaps he thought there was no hurry (though as Governor of Louisiana he knew that settlers were already starting to follow in his foot-steps), or perhaps he kept delaying until inspiration came along, as he was hyper-critical of his attempts at prose. Maybe he just wanted to cash in on a burgeoning fur-trade that promised to be far more lucrative than the profits from his book deal. But after the triumph of the Expedition, he found only disappointment, and in the taking of his life, cast a pall on its works--an injustice that history would not let stand.

The publication of the Thwaites edition of the journals at the end of the century began a revival. It has continued, and the reputation of the captains have soared. Today, there are statues to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark; some towns, some counties, many high schools, and numerous streets are named for them. There is a Lewis and Clark College. (Undaunted Courage, p. 484)

That sentence resounds with a thud which might be amusing to the alumni. And then there is Jefferson's effusive summation of Lewis written in one long precise sentence.

Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from it's direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order & discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs & priciples, habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables & animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed, honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body, for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprize to him. (Undaunted Courage, p. 484)

An unprecedented journey, ending too soon. I could have read this book for a few more weeks.

I'm reading Lynn Truss' "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (trying to corral some of my bad punctuating habits), but the next book I'm reading for pleasure arrived unannounced in the mail the day before Christmas, sent by Dan of Cape Cod Public Radio, whose Voice is of Burnished Oak (Jean Godden described it thus--I, on the other side of the forest, have a voice of distressed balsa). He works for the Producer/Author of it (and it's autographed!!), I think I may have mentioned how much I admire the concept and execution of this resurrected project. I'll be poring over various belief systems trying to improve on my own (which comes down to, roughly, "I believe I'll have another piece of chocolate!"), Then, I'm going to take a vacation break (like I do every so often) with a Travis McGee.

The Best DC Comics Cover

So, DC Comics is asking its collective readership to vote for their favorite covers ever published. That's a lot of artwork to consider, but I've narrowed it down to four, and not one of them features a gorilla or the color purple (two features that a DC editor swore up and down was guaranteed to sell a comic-book!) There are tons of others, but these are the ones that popped into my head from various eras--from the very beginning of comics publication to the present day:

1) Action Comics #1 - This first issue of Action introduced the character of Superman and that first cover image is so iconic that it has been copied, snatched, pilfered, and "homaged" ad infinitum...right down to the crook holding his head in a panic...by any number of artists who are looking for an image that resonates. It resonates, all right. They even included a live-action version of the scene in "Superman Returns" (though no one appears to be holding their head). This image was drawn by "Supes" co-creator Joe Shuster.

2) Superman #199 - This issue of Superman's book featured what every comic book fan wanted to see--a race between the two super-heroes with super-speed, Superman and The Flash. Endless geek-debates about who was faster would finally be settled. Well, maybe I just wanted to see it, but the sight of this comic's cover filled me with anticipatory glee. This was back in the day when super-heroes rarely played in each others' back-yards, so it seemed like we were getting more for our 12¢ than usual. Something about the cover still irks me--Batman was Superman's pal in "World's Finest "comics and here he is rooting for "The Flash!" Perhaps Bruce Wayne had some complicated off-site betting scheme we weren't privy to. And Hawkman seemed to be more of a friend of Flash. Hmm. I've seen the cover credited to Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella, but the way Hawkman is drawn makes me suspect it was the Hawks' regular artist, Murphy Anderson.


3) Wonder Woman (second series) #195-
Man, look at that cover! In fact, click on the one at the right without all that logo-stuff getting in the way to really get a good look at it. Wonder Woman is barely even there, except as a very threatening image in that poor pilot's face-mask--and notice, she's diving out of the sun in classic attack strategy. And the look on her face--she'd going to be IN that plane in half a tick. The perspective is awesome with the reverse-image of the pilots' hands reflected as well--you even get the sense that WW is reversed. Look at the shadows on the gloves. And the puffy clouds on the horizon. Right down to the coloring of the sky suggesting they're all on the edge of space. This took a lot of research and imagination. Cover artist is Adam Hughes (his trademark sig "AH!" in the lower-right corner). Hughes had an amazing run as WW cover-artist. Now he's writing a new series for her. Amazing work! In fact, it's AH-some!

But my favorite cover is also one of the most gimmicky covers the wiley DC editors ever devised:
4) The Flash #163 - Editor Julius Schwartz was very fond of coming up with "Zowie" cover ideas to sell the magazine, the stories that accompanied them usually being look-warm affairs that fulfilled the requirements of that powerful cover image...but just barely. This one...I never owned it, but someone told me the story and it was a real stinker. But the cover is a classic. That huge hand pops off the page and the Lichtenstein-striped "STOP!" couldn't help but grab your attention. It's "The Flash's" "Buy this Magazine or We'll Shoot this Puppy" issue, and I love it down to its craven little red-dotted flesh-tone. I also loved the very 3-D look of The Flash's winged ear-piece. Drawn by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella (for sure). After Julius Schwartz's death, tribute issues using his peerless covers (and new stories to go with them!) were published and the classic Infantino-Giella art was recreated by current hot artist, Alex Ross.

Holiday Wrap

Christmas was a quiet, low-key affair. No tree (no room!) Hardly any presents, except for K and the pets! It was the one day when it didn't rain, so we celebrated the birth of the Baby Jesus by leveling a small patch of ground that the neighbors can't see to provide a space for our wood-crib. 2 x 4's were acquired. The construction kit's been sitting in the shed for weeks. We moved the wood for burning onto the porch to dry out, and raked and raked to an approximation of flat-earth. We hit ground-water, however, so some gravelling and sanding needs to be done. We've tarped and stowed the wood-pieces out of the anticipated rain, and will build another day. Phone calls were made, and it was discovered that Johnson was discharged from Overlake (seems a bit hasty as he'd only had surgery on Wednesday!). Steve B had come up to visit, and found he was no longer there! He has a message on his voice-mail from me, inquiring about his whereabouts.

K made an imaginative dinner: wanting a traditional dinner, but not wanting to go to the extravagant lengths of a turkey-with-trimmings dinner that would go to waste with two people, a dog and a cat, she decided to punt. We had two chicken breasts acquired for "dirt" cheap during the power outage, which she covered in yogurt and herbs and flash-seared, then cooked at a lower heat. She made mashed potatoes with red new varietals (keeping the all-important skins on), used an abandoned loaf of french bread, combined with herbs, onions and bak choy (substituting for celery) for dressing, and made a gravy from mushrooms and spices. Imaginative and less dependent on animal fat. It was absolutely delicious, just enough, and no "carcass-that-would-never-leave" in the 'fridge. It was a fine holiday repast.

They say Christmas comes but once a year, but this year we're having more than one Christmas day--the Detroit package hasn't made its way here yet, and my Seester and I have yet to exchange presents. So, let the festivities continue....
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Today I'm at the "1'sn'0's" ranch, where they had snow! Driving in I got caught in one of the Island's freakish hail-storms, which dusted the countryside, but I wasn't expecting the white stuff on the Eastside. Quite the shock.
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Still waiting for the precipitous drop in gas-prices now that the Holiday Driving season is winding down. We in the NW might have to wait becaues of the high demand placed on petrol during the "Outage of '06!" Might have created a "bump" and God knows we wouldn't want them oil prices to come down any time sooner than later. It occurs to me that they might be waiting for the traditional "Driving of the Drunks" before we'll see any change.
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Coming Up: Lots of stuff in the hopper, including a rare comics entry, and one (or two) reviews, one after a long, long journey.