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Posted at 09:00 AM in Friday Foto | Permalink | Comments (0)
I was in the local Post Office the other day, mailing a package. Don't get me wrong...I love my local Post Office. It's very convenient and it's usually quick (unlike the "main" branch up on E Street, which is old, stinky, incredibly slow, and quite like Purgatory, I imagine, but with less interesting people). While there, I witnessed this exchange:
Customer: Is there any way you can check if a package was delivered to my home in Chicago?
Postal Clerk: Chicago the state or Chicago the city?
I swear to god this is true.
I don't know about you, but I think that the knowledge that Chicago is indeed a city in the state of Illinois should be something that's entirely expected of Postal employees.
Posted at 09:00 AM in Innocent Bystander™ | Permalink | Comments (1)
I have yet to find a series on USA Network worth watching. I've flirted with Burn Notice, Blue Collar, and that one with the female US marshal whose title escapes me, that's how memorable it was. None of them have made an impact on me other than living up to USA's slogan "Characters Welcome." They're all characters, all right, so quirky and annoying that I can't watch any of their shows. Note to the USA network heads: quirky is NOT a character trait. It's a gimmick, and when every one of your leads on every one of you shows is quirky, it's really, Really, REALLY annoying.
But I'm always in the market for a new show to watch, especially in these hot, barren days in the summer television desert. So I decided to give Covert Affairs, USA's new spy/thriller series. After all, it was touting itself in promos as being from "the producer of the Bourne trilogy." So it has to be good, right?
Well, it turns out that producer is Doug Liman, who also directed the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity (and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, too), thus jump-starting the best spy movie franchise in recent history (um...are their any others). But his influence--or any Bourne-like feeling--is sadly missing from Covert Affairs. The pilot was a big ugly mess with a new CIA agent (played by the horribly miscast Piper Perabo) getting bumped out of training into the big show--an actual assignment. Perabo's character has all the earnestness of a high school senior on an Ivy League college placement interview. It doesn't help that Perabo's acting is on the high school play level, either. I found her annoying and totally unbelievable as "the spy next door," a vibe I'm sure the series is going for. She's no Jennifer Garner (but Garner was only enjoyable in the first season of Alias, before both she and the series went elsewhere--Garner to movie stardom and Alias to a confounding level of stupidity that only the writers could decipher, and sadly not on screen). Add to Perabo's disappointing performance (I loved her in Imagine Me & You), an over-the-top cameo by Peter Gallagher, Christopher Gorham as the most non-convincing sighted actor playing a blind character ever, and the whole un-Bourne feeling of yet another "quirky" character-driven series on USA.
But the worst part of the whole first episode is the ending. They spend the entire episode setting up Annie as a super agent, a can-do kind of woman who speaks 6 languages, aces all her CIA training tests, and can kick ass, too. And what do they do with the climactic fight scene at the end? They have her mysterious boyfriend--the one who goes missing in the flashback in the beginning--come in and shoot the bad guy for her. So much for empowerment.
As far as my DVR goes, I'll be happy to keep Covert Affairs covert from it all this summer. I'll just wait for Mad Men next Sunday to add to my summer viewing list.
Posted at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Posted at 09:00 AM in Friday Foto | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm not as spry or nimble-minded as I used to be, so for a little while-from now until early August--I kinda, sorta, regretfully have to say we're on hiatus here. There's just too much work and too little leftover energy to do anything else until after next week. There will be a few upcoming Friday Fotos for the rest of the month, but unless I clone myself and/or find some kind of new personal power source, the rest of July will be a barren source of amusement around these here parts.
Posted at 09:36 PM in Innocent Bystander™ | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego has been besieged with a prolonged case of what the local weather folk like to call "June Gloom." It's a period of cloudiness, usually in the morning and evening hours, brought on by what they call the "marine layer." I'm using quotation marks here, but if you read this out loud, please feel free to do "air quotes" with your hands. Try it! It's fun!
So anyway, today the sun appeared in the morning for the first time in many moons...er, suns. We had some afternoon peeks the last week or so, but nothing completely sunny like today was, even though there were still some high clouds.
This--to me, at least--is a much-welcome anomaly. The past few years summer has been really, stinking hot here in San Diego. I remember being at a work picnic in June of 2008 and the temperature was 109 degrees. I didn't sign on for that. And cloudy and cool is a welcome change of pace for us San Diegans, amongst which I now count myself.
Of course, it'll be really stinking hot next week for the busiest time of the year for me. Wait and see.
Posted at 05:18 PM in Life in San Diego | Permalink | Comments (1)
Posted at 09:00 AM in Friday Foto | Permalink | Comments (1)
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We apologize for this inconvenience, but due to a bunch of buttheads taking advantage of our rather liberal commenting policy, we have to do this.
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Posted at 09:00 AM in Innocent Bystander™ | Permalink | Comments (1)
A mixed--and great--bag of comic book book reviews this time from such disparate creators as Chester Gould, Adam Hughes, Gene Colan, and Neil Young. No, that's not a typo.
My twice-yearly visits with IDW's The Complete Dick Tracy by Chester Gould are always eagerly awaited. That's especially true now since the books are knee-deep in the absolute Golden Age of Gould's hawk-nosed detective. The latest, volume 10 in the series, features strips from Sept. 20, 1945 through March 16, 1947. The villains here are amongst Gould's most villainous, including Itchy, Influence, and Shoulders. We also meet billionaire Diet Smith and see the introduction of Tracy's world-famous (if somewhat quaint nowadays) wrist radio, and even go to the wedding of Gravel Gertie and B.O. Plenty. Gould is at the absolute top of his game here, and will be for the next few volumes. Reading these strips in this large-sized quality hardbound format is still a dream come true for me, and even better, IDW is about to bring out the first of five volumes of Al Williamson and Archie Goodwin's Secret Agent Corrigan (nee X-9). Pinch me! (Just not real hard, okay?)
Gene Colan has had a bit of bad luck over his last few years. Sadly I was reading Marvel's new tribute book, The Invincible Gene Colan, when word came of the death of Gene's wife, Adrienne. If I remember correctly, proceeds of this book benefit Gene directly, so I urge you to go out and buy a copy. At $19.95 it's a steal, but it might only be available in comics shops. Despite a few annoying production errors, the book itself is a nice little package, covering Gene's Marvel career, with chapters focusing on Daredevil, Iron Man, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Tomb of Dracula, and Howard the Duck. Gene was the odd man out at Marvel--in a good way--an artist who drew his way and not within the house style, but still managed to create his own brand of the Marvel excitement of the '60s.
Speaking of art books, DC has a beautiful one with Cover Run: The DC Comics Art of Adam Hughes. Hughes is a supremely talented artist who is also incredibly slow, hence his ongoing string of great covers. He also has a way with women...at least on paper. This book covers his entire DC career to date in a deluxe, large-format hardcover, with a brand new cover and Hughes funny and insightful comments throughout. Highlights are his extended runs on Wonder Woman and Catwoman. I'm hoping this is a new line of books for DC. I'd love to see similar cover runs on Neal Adams and Brian Bolland, just to name a few.
And finally there's that musician guy hanging out in the comics world, Neil Young, with the aptly titled Neil Young's Greendale. Based on a concept album by Young, this Vertigo graphic novel is written by Joshua Dysart, drawn by the incredibly underrated Cliff Chiang, and colored by Dave Stewart. It's the haunting story of a small town in California, Greendale, populated by the Green family, a family that has mysterious ties with the earth and animal life. Sun Green is just coming into her own and she discovers her own strange ties with both her family and the world around her. Dysart's script is terse and well-written and he allows Chiang's art to tell the story more often than not. Neil Young is a huge comics fan and I read that he waited patiently for Chiang to be available to do this...it took him over 4 years to draw the 153-page graphic novel. Greendale seems a labor love for everyone involved. It shows on every page.
Posted at 09:00 AM in Comics | Permalink | Comments (0)