"We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all goes well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased's life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed."
"Are you sure?" I said.
"To plot, to take aim at something, to shape time and space. This is how we advance the art of human consciousness." (Don DeLillo, from White Noise)
It's a small week, and I'm a bit bored. That's a dangerous combination!!!!! So I apologize in advance for the doggerel beneath. Or you might like it. NO MAN CAN SAY!!!!
Batman, Incorporated #4 ("Kill Box") by Grant "I think DiDio may have mentioned a reboot at some point, but that bloke blathers about a lot of shit" Morrison (writer), Chris Burnham (artist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), and Dave Sharpe (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC.
There are no ads in this book.
The Batman Corps, they kick some ass.
Maybe you should take a look.
That Merlyn, he's a nasty crook --
His weird hair style means he has no class.
There are no ads in this book.
Who is the Wingman? - Ah, that's the hook;
He has to deal with Redbird's sass.
Maybe you should take a look.
Matches Malone sure is a schnook;
His cheesy 'stache gives him no pass.
There are no ads in this book.
From Damian, Leviathan took
His youthful "innocence" en masse.
Maybe you should take a look.
Batman, Inc. lacks a Canuck
But G-Mozz and Burnham still kick ass --
There are no ads in this book;
Maybe you should take a look.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Dark Horse Presents #17. "Finder: Third World Chapter 15" by Carla Speed McNeil (writer/artist/letterer), Jenn Manley Lee (colorist), and Bill Mudron (colorist); "Crime Does Not Pay Presents City of Roses Chapter 2" by Phil Stanford (writer), Patric Reynolds (artist), Bill Farmer (colorist), and Nate Piekos (letterer); "The Girl With the Keyhole Eyes Chapter 3" by David Chelsea (writer/artist); "Aliens: Inhuman Condition Chapter 6" by John Layman (writer/letterer), Sam Kieth (artist/colorist), and John Kalisz (colorist); "Deep Sea Chapter 2" by Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Justin Gray (writer), Tony Akins (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), and Bill Tortolini (letterer); "Edgar Allan Poe's The Sleeper" by Richard Corben (adapter/artist) and Nate Piekos (letterer); "The Sacrifice" by Michael Avon Oeming (writer) and Victor Santos (artist/letterer); "Concrete Park Book 1: You Send Me Chapter 7" by Erika Alexander (writer) and Tony Puryear (writer/artist/letterer); "UXB Chapter 2" by Colin Lorimer (writer/artist); "Mr. Monster: Back From the Dead!!!" by Michael T. Gilbert (writer/artist), Kevin Horn (colorist), and Ken Bruzenak (letterer). $7.99, 80 pgs, FC, Dark Horse.
In Finder Jaeger gets scooped up by girls;
McNeil's world continues to expand.
Through Rose City a lonely stripper twirls;
While Corben at more Poe tries his hand.
The Girl With Keyhole Eyes is still so weird
And does it really end with Stewart, J.?
The final Aliens is now right here
And Munden's Bar shows up; gets blown away.
While Oeming's story might just blow your mind*,
The Puryear tale is still a kind of mess.
But Palmiotti, Gray, and Akins shine
Their story is by far the best.
Dark Horse Presents - it's full of awesome stuff!
So go and find it - it should not be tough!
* Probably not, but I had to find a rhyme, damn it! It's still pretty neat.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Debris #4 (of 4) by Kurtis J. Wiebe (writer), Riley Rossmo (breakdowner), Owen Gieni (finisher/colorist), and Ed Brisson (letterer). $3.50, 28 pgs, FC, Image/Shadowline.
Why would women be
So much better running things?
See: Margaret Thatcher.
Raven is right --
People always screw things up!
Maya should shut it.
Not a bad ending
A bit quick; maybe five parts
Would have been better.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Mind MGMT #6 by Matt Kindt (writer/artist). $3.99, 26 pgs, FC, Dark Horse.
And so Matt Kindt brings us right back around
To issue one, where all this shit began;
The explanation for it we have found.
Who knows what Meru, returned to life, can
Do once she breaks the walls that hold her in.
I guess it's up to Henry Lyme, the man
Who's trying to repent for all his sin,
To make sure Meru lives her life so well,
And never hears the world above the din.
The art and writing in this book is swell,
The coloring is truly beautiful,
If you don't buy it, I say "What the hell?"
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
The Shadow #6 ("The Fire of Creation: Conclusion") by Garth Ennis (writer), Aaron Campbell (artist), Carlos Lopez (colorist), and Rob Steen (letterer). $3.99, 26 pgs, FC, Dynamite Entertainment.
I once read a book with the Shadow,
Which certainly wasn't real mellow,
Garth Ennis likes gore
So he gave us some more
Which stopped when the Shadow said "Hello!"
The book began with a beheading,
Which shows you where Ennis was sledding,
Betrayals and worse,
Show up in this verse,
And Kondo receives a just shredding.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Gantz volume 25 by Hiroya Oku (writer/artist). $12.99, 201 pgs, BW, Dark Horse.
I don't even know what to say about Gantz. I mean, it's Gantz. There are horrific and weirdly sexual monsters, lots and lots (and LOTS) of violence, and by the end, we finally find out Gantz's purpose. Sort of. Oh, Gantz.
Star Wars: Agent of the Empire volume 1: Iron Eclipse by John Ostrander (writer), Stéphane Roux (artist), Stéphane Créty (artist), Julien Hugonnard-Bert (inker), Wes Dzioba (colorist), and Michael Heisler (letterer). $18.99, 115 pgs, FC, Dark Horse.
I read some of Ostrander's Star Wars: Legacy and liked it, but not enough to keep reading it. (My nephew, with whom I hung out this summer in New York, got into it when I bought him the first two trades, and then he came up against the fact that - out of 11 volumes - Volume Six is out of print. I called Dark Horse customer service and they have no plans to bring it back into print. Wha-huh? That seems odd. My best guess is that they're waiting for all the volumes to go out of print and then re-issue them with fancy new covers or something, but they can't leave Star Wars comics - especially one in the middle of a bunch - out of print, can they?) Anyway, I figured I'd give this sucker a shot. I don't know why Roux didn't do the whole thing, but the inker and the colorist keep the look pretty consistent.
Wolverine and the X-Men volume 1 by Jason Aaron (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler/colorist), Nick Bradshaw (artist), Duncan Rouleau (artist), Matteo Scalera (artist), Tim Townsend (inker), Jaime Mendoza (inker), Al Vey (inker), Mark Irwin (inker), Victor Olazaba (inker), Jason Keith (colorist), Justin Ponsor (colorist), and Rob Steen (letterer). $14.99, 88 pgs, FC, Marvel.
I wasn't going to get this because of the price (for four issues, mind you), but I figured that if I had bought it in singles, it would have been 16 dollars, so a dollar less is pretty good. I still think Marvel (and DC, but this is about Marvel!) is gouging their customers, but if we lap it up, why wouldn't they?
**********
I don't really have a lot to write about this week - I didn't watch the debates, so I can't really say too much about those, although I was extremely impressed that Michelle Malkin - MICHELLE MALKIN - called out Ann Coulter for calling the president a "retard" - you'll recall my feelings about that word, I hope, and I was very glad that someone on the conservative side (and boy howdy, is Malkin in the tank for ultra-conservatives) said that Ann Coulter had gone too far. Yes, Michelle Malkin said someone tweeting about liberals had gone too far. Now I jsut have to sit down and vote - my ballot is sitting on the counter, demanding to be filled out. VOTE-BY-MAIL FTMFW!!!!!
Last weekend I participated in the Devil Dash mud run out at Camelback Ranch, which is where the White Sox and Dodgers have spring training. It was pretty fun, but there were some problems. The mud section of the run was at the end, presumably because mud is really, really heavy and they didn't want to weigh us down too early on in the run. The obstacles were a lot of fun, but they were spread out too much. As someone who absolutely hates to run (you can tell by my physique; see below), I don't know why they didn't shorten the course (it was 3 miles) to 1-2 miles and put the obstacles closer together, because then getting us muddy earlier in the run (not at the beginning, but perhaps halfway through) wouldn't matter, because the course wouldn't be so long. As we had to run around the baseball fields, the course was a bit twisty and haphazard, too. But it was a nice day (the temperature is finally starting to drop here, so it probably didn't get much higher than 85 while we were "running" - we started at 10 in the morning and were done around 11) and I had a good time. And a few people took pictures, so if you just ignore the rotund man in the photographs, they should give you a nice idea of what we were dealing with:
So that was my Saturday. How was yours?
Moving on, let's check out the Ten Most Recent Songs on my iPod (Which Is Always on Shuffle):
1. "You Said Something" - PJ Harvey (2000) "How did we get here, to this point of living?"
2. "Let it Die" - Foo Fighters (2007) "Do you ever think of me? you're so considerate"1
3. "Happiness in Slavery" - Nine Inch Nails (1992) "Don't open your eyes you won't like what you see"
4. "Following You" - Chumbawamba (2004) "We make it up as we go along, sometimes it turns into a song, this song"
5. "The Sun and the Moon" - Pogues (1995) "And all of your fake tears will come whirling down the years"
6. "The Desperate Kingdom of Love" - PJ Harvey (2004) "At the end of this burning world you'll stand proud, face upheld"2
7. "Rusty Cage" - Soundgarden (1991) "You wired me awake and hit me with a hand of broken nails" 3
8. "Low Road" - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals4 (2010) "I held on so dearly to the wrong things in my life"
9. "Song to the Siren" - This Mortal Coil (1983) "Should I stand amid the breakers? Or shall I lie with death my bride?"
10. "Politik" - Coldplay (2002) "Give me piece of mind and trust don't forget the rest of us"
1 Both my kids like singing along to this song. Dave and the boys have a lot of good songs with repetitive choruses (chori?), so my older daughter likes that, because eventually she figures out the words!
2 Uh Huh Her is a decent album, but this song is by far the best song on it. BY FAR!!!!
3 "Rusty Cage" is one of the best opening songs of an album, and these lyrics are some of the best to begin a song. That means these lyrics are some of the best opening lines of an album EVER! I think that's the Transitive Property of Awesomeness at work there.
4 I'll review the new album by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, soon, but here's a quick tip: It's really, really good. Just so you know!
I forgot some Totally Random Lyrics last week, but that's why they're random! Let's fire them up!
"There's a shit storm a'coming
Somebody's claiming some I.O.U.s
Because the animal's back
With the man intact
They had a gun at my head
And a knife at my back
Don't wind me up too tight
I've been had by the balls all my life
I'm in no mood now
To stop dead and talk it over"
Good stuff, right? Anyone out there know these? Let me know!
I hope everyone has a nice weekend. And I hope you enjoyed another one of my experimental posts. Let me tell you, I hate iambic pentameter, at least when I'm writing it. It sounds so ponderous! Stupid Shakespeare and his stupid fame!