Innocent Bystander

This week's epic walk...

You're probably getting sick of reading about this, but I kept my unbroken streak of Saturday morning long walks going today with a 5.61-mile hike to Hillcrest and back via Little Italy. With that walk my June total goes to just about 31 miles (30.76 to be exact) over the past 4 weeks. And there's still a little of June left.

Today I did the Hillcrest walk in reverse. No, I didn't walk backwards, silly. I went up to Park Avenue from my place, up past Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo to University Avenue, where I hung a left and walked up to First Avenue. By my pedometer, I felt I wouldn't quite make 5 miles (my goal) if I walked down First to home, so I went down Laurel Street into Little Italy and grabbed some take-out lunch.

There's a sweet-spot on Laurel Street that overlooks the aiport's runway. You can see it off in the distance and the view offers a great look at the exact point on the runway where the airplanes first take off. It's only there for a minute or two, since Laurel is a descending hill as you walk towards the airport, but it's pretty breath-taking.

I keep discovering cool little things about San Diego on these walks. The Laurel-end of India Street has some great bars and restaurants, and one block over on Kettner is a thriving arts area with galleries and stores. I knew that, but driving through it you never really see it like you do when you're hoofin' it.

I'm slowly building to 6-mile walks, although my feet were protesting the 5.61 miles today, and still are about 7 hours later. Calm down, dogs...we've got a lot of walking coming up in the near future.

Friday Foto #186...

  I left my heart...(part 7) near Amoeba Music in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco.

To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

The pursuit of lightning bugs in coal country...

There are no lightning bugs in California, at least to my knowledge.

The name is really "firefly", but we never called them that as kids. Growing up as I did in coal country in eastern Pennsylvania, warm summer nights were spent one of two ways: either chasing lightning bugs or chasing the other kids with flashlights. Either way, it involved illumination of one form or another.

Wikipedia, that bastion of higher learning on the Internet (where we are all Ph.Ds, and most of the woman are double-Ds), tells me that fireflies are "conspicuous for their crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey." That's fancy talk for they glow. And to be honest, they attracted kids. I don't think we were prey, exactly...no one ever made a giant lightning bug movie in the 50s, as far as I know.

I can remember seeing them cross a field, slow and languid in their movement, their tails blinking on and off like so many tiny yellow twinkle lights. It was like a starfield on earth. "Lightning" was a misnomer: their glow was soft and slow, not hard and shocking like a bolt of lightning. They were kind of big and kinda brown and they smelled funny. We'd beg our moms for jelly jars and poke holes in the tin lids for air and then run around with these glass engines of destruction and scoop them up, taking them home for the night. They always died in those jars. In the morning we'd have a pile of dead bugs in the bottom of the glass container, smelling like the buggy creatures they were.

I don't know why we caught them summer after summer, knowing they'd die like that. I guess it was one of the particular "flavors" of the season, like the soft ice cream we bought from Mr. Softee when his brightly-lit truck--another firefly--made the turn onto our street and worked its way down to the clusters of kids waiting with their tight little fists wrapped around quarters or dimes. We had to beg our moms for them, too. We were just as attracted to that bright light that moved slowly down the street as we were to the bugs that flew around our yards and lingered near the honeysuckle each night. If the lighting bugs had their own theme song like Mister Softee did, it would have been even better.

The Killing pretty much killed me...

The final episode of the first season of AMC's The Killing aired Sunday night, and I'm still on the fence about this show--even though it's wrapped up for the year--partly because the ending was so anticlimactic. I mean, really? The second season is going to continue the investigation of the killing of Rosie Larsen from the first season?

I've always been kind of "meh" about this show even while critics extolled its virtues. I've never bought Joel Kinnaman's Detective Holder, a street-smart hustler who has managed to get himself out of vice and into homicide. His jive-talking facade seems like a stretch for a cop and a major annoyance for viewers.  Mireille Enos is fine as Detective Linden, who sometimes seems to have some kind of psychic connection to the victim she's investigating, but she's so sad and morose most of the time. And their boss, a cop who makes a brief appearance or two in each episode (so lightweight I don't even feel like looking up his name on IMDb, even though I have the page open), treats them both like they're something he'd like to scrape off the sole of his shoe. All in all, the cops on this show seem like a bunch of bungling boobs.

The Killing had one great moment, and that occured in its penultimate episode last week. Having cracked the screen name of the suspected killer, Holder sent an e-mail to him and then visited someone in an apartment. While there, she talked to a fellow cop and told him to send the e-mail again, and a computer noise beckoned from the next room. "Send it again," she said, and the computer chimed again. It was one of those rare times that the series actually went somewhere that wasn't a dead end. Or was it?

The thirteenth and final episode seemed anticlimactic to say the least. Having figured out who the killer is, they spent the entire episode doing the police work that was necessary to nail him--police work that should have been done in the first few days, like looking at mileage reports for the campaign car in which Rosie Larsen was found drowned and checking local gas stations. (Like I said, bungling boobs.) And after a season marked with false leads, red herrings, suspects who subsequently vanished from the show after being the "suspect of the week", and one episode (day 11) which seemed like the writers woke up and realized that they had THIRTEEN episodes to write, not twelve, I think I'm actually glad The Killing is over.

And angry that it isn't. Because the right thing to do would have been to wrap this up in one season and move onto another killing next time out, not just move on to day fourteen when season two comes on next spring. Rosie Larsen will still be dead a year from now and I don't really care, especially if it takes 13 more episodes to find her killer.

Green Lantern (2011)

Despite lousy reviews from most other sources, I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed MOST of Green Lantern, the new WB and DC Entertainment movie starring rom-com and frat-house film veteran Ryan Reynolds as test pilot Hal Jordan, who finds himself "gifted" with a ring from a dying purple alien--Abin Sur, who looks remarkably like TV's Frazier, Kelsey Grammer. The ring inducts him into the Green Lantern Corps, an interplanetary police force, of which he is the first human. As such, he's sucked into fighting an intergalactic menace named Parallax, who wants revenge on the Green Lantern who imprisoned him, the afore-mentioned Abin Sur. And since he's dead, the guy who got his ring will do just as well, thank you very much.

The green power ring works off of willpower, and the yellow power of Parallax works off of fear. It's the beginnings of the "emotional spectrum" that comics writer Geoff Johns has developed to rejuvenate Green Lantern as a comic book series. Hal Jordan was created in the late 1950s in a revamping of a hero of the same name from the 1940s. Throughout his comics career, Jordan was put through the ringer, and only in the past 5 or 6 years has GL been re-imagined, reborn, and reinvigorized to a point that the series is now a bestseller (or what passes for a bestseller in the world of comic books these days).

The movie suffers from trying to cram too much of that comics backstory into the first film. There's the classic origin story (Hal meets alien, gets ring), the test pilot history (Hal and Carol Ferris, love of his life, are pilots in Carol's dad's aviation company), the Green Lantern Corps (Sinestro, Kilowog, Tomar Re, among thousands of others), Parallax, the Guardians (the Corps' bosses), Hector Hammond (an earthbound enemy), and  Hal can make constructs of anything he thinks of. It's a lot to take in in one just-under 2-hour film.

But it has it's moments. There's a lot of money on the screen (as opposed to other cosmic superhero epics like Fox and Marvel's dismal first Fantastic Four movie, which looked like it was shot on a $7 budget, with half of that going to the craft table), but unfortunately a lot of the scenes on Oa (the home planet of the Guardians, the Green Lantern Corps' bosses) look like a gigantic video game. That's not necessarily a bad thing to the gamer-prone audience that's out there. Otherwise, the film looks great for the most part.

Reynolds is slightly miscast, I think. Jordan was a hot dog in the comics but never a smartass. Blake Lively is anything but as Carol Ferris, and I'm pretty sure she went to the January Jones school of superhero movie acting, but she is curvy and leggy and nice to look at. Mark Strong is wonderful as Sinestro, one of the top Green Lanterns, and you just know he's a ring toss away from being pure evil (stay a bit into the credits for more). And Peter Saasgard steals the film as Hector Hammond, even if his particular brand of menace pales against the cosmic Parallax (which is some kind of giant, tentacled cloud in this film...not as stupid as Galactus in the second Fantastic Four movie, but still kind of a head-scratcher). Directed by 007 savior Martin Campbell, it's almost impossible to find a director's touch in the film. It just moves along on its own momentum, seemingly not powered by anyone or anything except a glowing green ring.

Famed comics writer Mark Millar called GL the "worst superhero movie ever made," but he's probably  just disappointed that an 11-year-old girl in costume doesn't use the C-word throughout the entire film or Stan Lee doesn't make a cameo appearance. If you figure The Dark Knight and X2 (and maybe even X-Men: First Class) are at the top of the comics movie spectrum, and Daredevil, Elektra, and Fantastic Four are the bottom, Green Lantern is somewhere right smack in the middle: not great, but not awful. Kinda like Kick-Ass. I know that's not a sterling--or even green--endorsement, but you could blow your movie bucks on films a lot worse, if you're so inclined.

PS--Kudos to the filmmakers for having San Diego "portray" Coast City, GL's homebase. Look closely at the wideshots of the city--especially the second one--and you'll see the twin towers of the Hyatt.

Happy Father's Day from Groucho Marx...

I myself am not a father but I know a few of them. And today is that momentous day when we celebrate fathers the world over, with the possible exception of Osama Bin Laden (dead or alive). Who better to help us celebrate that than the one, the only, Groucho, who--quite possibly even by his own admission--was not exactly the winner of the coveted "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug. But he was fond of singing this song throughout his life, especially later, when he toured and did live stage performances of his "An Evening With Groucho" show. Here he is on The Dick Cavett Show singing it, 35 or so years ago:

 

Today's epic walk...

...wasn't as epic as I intended. I started with a haircut (which, if you know me, takes 7.3 seconds flat most times) and from there I walked up Pacific Highway (not to be confused with Pacific COAST Highway) to Washington Street. My goal today was to walk up the big hill on Washington Street to Hillcrest, but as I suspected, there aren't any sidewalks (at least none that I could see from the corner of India Street), and I didn't want to walk up an active highway.

So instead I walked back down India as far as I could, before it, too, became more of an off-ramp for Interstate 5 and then cut up to Columbia Street, which led me to Laurel Street. From there I walked up Laurel to Balboa Park, through the park on its main drag and then down Park Avenue to home. It was a beautiful San Diego day, with temps in the mid-60s and a not-too-light, not-too-breezy breeze. Total walk time was about 2.5 hours and I managed to walk 5.6 miles, which takes this week's total up to just under 8 miles in the past 4 days (almost 14 if you add in last Saturday's 5.87 mile walk). Best of all: when I got home and weighed myself I weighed exactly one pound less than when I left the house. Yes...I know. We all weigh in differently at different times of the day. But I can dream that I walked off a pound, can't I?

Friday Foto #185...

I left my heart...(part 6)

To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

Attack of the Drive-In Movie...

It's nice to know in these days of Weiner-gate and other such unsavory TV topics, you can come home, glance at your DVR and see that little red record light and remember that you were recording Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman.

TCM is running a "Drive-In Movie" festival each Thursday night this month, pairing classic--and not so classic--1950s horror and sci-fi films up into sets of the ever-popular double featuree. One of tonight's featured themes is "Giant People" and includes the above mentioned very tall lady (you would have to yell LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADY! for her to hear you), and Village of the Giants, plus "Ladies of Sci-Fi" (the unkillable Zsa Zsa Gabor in Queen of Outer Space), and "Mutant Men," featuring another one I'm recording tonight, Cyclops. Most of these movies are dogs, so bad, they're good. And almost all of them I've never actually seen in a drive-in; they're all movies I first saw--and have seen ever since--on TV.

I grew up in an era when local TV stations regularly scheduled programs titled "Early Show," "Late Show," "Late, Late Show," and "Chiller Theater." None of them featured talking heads in suits and chic dresses...they were all movies. Some programmed week-long themes, like "Giant Insects" (on TCM last Thursday night), or five straight Abbott and Costello movies. And the Chiller ones ranged from the sublime (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula) to the ridiculous (Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Cyclops). The cheesier the station, the smellier the movies, as if someone left a big uncovered chunk of limburger out on their low-rent counter.

I loved all those films and it's very gratifying to see TCM literally resurrect some of them in this day and age. The remaining two weeks of this month-long theme include 2-film mini-festivals titled "Out of the Deep," "Appetite for Destruction," and "Monsters from the Sea" (It Came From Beneath the Sea, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Giant Behemoth, and 3 others), and "Blobs," "Radioactive Monsters," and "Killers from Space" (The Blob, The Thing from Another World, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, and four others). That's SIX schlocky films each Thursday night...for FREE.

Through all this, an occasional gem emerges. The Thing (showing on June 30) is certainly one such film, and last week I watched THEM!, a movie about giant ants terrorizing New Mexico and migrating elsewhere. THEM! is probably the most atmospheric giant insect movie ever, and stars James Whitmore and James Arness. While the giant ants themselves are laughable at best, the film builds up suspense nicely, is beautifully shot in sterling silver black and white and just generally hits the whole big, atomic radiation-fed, bug genre film out of the ballpark. And there's a lesson to be learned, too, all about the Cold War and the Atomic Age. TCM is saluting the lost art of drive-in movies...lost because drive-ins are all but gone and that kind of cheap, schlocky filmmaking has become as dead as most of the monsters it portrays.

This, to me, is the funniest thing in the world...

If you've read this blog for any length of time you've most likely gathered that I am a huge comics fan. And one of the great things about being a comics fan in this day and age is the wealth of great books out there--that aren't comic books, per se--about comics history and writers and artists. Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, IDW--to mention just a few--have done a stellar job of keeping comics and comic strips out there in the market.

But occasionally something comes out that the completist in me really, Really, REALLY wants to like and that's the case here. The book profiled in this video is one I own...but have never managed to read.

 

This video was part of the Reuben Awards ceremony at the National Cartoonists' Society gathering over Memorial Day weekend. I'm pretty sure that's Mell Lazarus near the end (and also exclaiming "900 PAGES!" early on) and that's definitely Jean Schulz playing the role of nutcracker. Caniff is a god and RC Harvey is a wonderful historian. But yeah...900 PAGES!!!