Thursday, November 30, 2006

Today's Video Link

In late 1964, Marvel Comics produced a very silly "meet the staff" record to go in with the membership kit for their Merry Marvel Marching Society. I wrote about it here but now someone has added visuals to it and made a YouTube video. Thanks to Marty Golia for letting me know about it.

• Posted at 11:56 PM · LINK

Home Again, Home Again...

Carolyn and I got out of Indiana just ahead of a bad storm...this, despite some security folks at the Indianapolis Airport who thought one of her medications was suspicious. It hadn't been suspicious when she got on the plane in Los Angeles and it hadn't changed, which makes you wonder: Was the crew at LAX negligent or the crew at IND causing needless trouble? I suspect the latter. I've only flown a few times since 9/11 but my impression at every airport has been that an elaborate charade is being perpetrated; that really all they can effectively do with all that equipment is stop you from boarding the plane with a gun or knife. After the hijackings of that awful day, that did not seem to be enough...so now we pretend that making people throw away their hair gel and forcing old ladies to take off their shoes makes us safer.

As Carolyn was interrogated about an herbal potion, I waited...and watched a scene from Lewis Black's stand-up act performed before me. Black tells of watching an elderly woman in a wheelchair as she was practically strip-searched by Airport Security and asserts that "if the Enemy has recruited her to work for them, then they deserve to win." The lady I watched was physically unable to put her shoes back on — which suggests she might have had a bit of trouble overpowering the pilots and seizing control of the plane. Her travelling companion had passed through another metal detector and, having cleared security, was forbidden to go back in and assist the wheelchair-bound woman. It was all very uncomfortable...and I guess I could have understood it if I'd seen a scintilla of anything that might have stopped a genuine threat. But it was all about enforcing some very silly rules that obviously did not apply to the situation.

Doing that today almost caused us to miss our flight. If it had left on time, it would have left without us.

But pretty much everything else on the trip went right apart from one meal at a place called Max and Erma's. I've already told you about the Mid-Ohio Con. From there, it was on to Muncie, Indiana and meetings with Jim "Garfield" Davis about an upcoming project, then on the Indianapolis. As I mentioned, I was very impressed with the "Neverlost" Global Positioning System in my Hertz rental car. It was very easy to use and very helpful. Three times, I got off the prescribed path — twice, my fault for getting in the wrong lane, once because the dictated route was just plain wrong. All three times though, the system instantly recalibrated the instructions and got us right back on the path to our destination. I don't know if all G.P.S. devices are that good but if they are, I'm going to get one in my next car.

And now, it's nice to be home. There's nothing like your own bed.

• Posted at 11:41 PM · LINK

Bad TiVo Idea

Product placement at the end of shows you record. TiVo is like that friend you love even though he keeps doing things that you wish he didn't do.

• Posted at 10:44 PM · LINK

Dave Remembered

The New York Times has an obit up for our pal Dave Cockrum. I don't understand the part where Murphy Anderson is referred to as having "created the modern look of Superman, Batman, Flash and other characters at DC Comics" and I'll bet Murphy doesn't, either. That's one of those lines where you can tell the writer knows zero about the subject matter and is just misunderstanding something someone told him. I also think Clifford Meth deserves as much credit as Neal Adams (if not more) for the campaign that got Dave some cash out of Marvel Comics. But otherwise, it's a nice piece.

• Posted at 8:03 AM · LINK

December 1, 2006 • Current • November 29, 2006