Aw Yeah, Comics!

Our little town was celebrating its 150th anniversary.  They were offering free entertainment every night last week week, culminating in a parade on Saturday.  We wound up going to the festivities Thursday night to hear a band play Jimmy Buffet covers and to see magician.There were quite a few older folks at the show who looks like they had been around for the town's founding.

It had been forever since I had seen a stage magician perform. He walked around on stilts while the band performed and changed into his sparkly vest for the actual performance. I liked him. His banter had more political jokes than I would have expected, but his patter was pretty slick. When a little kid named Anthony was helping him, he called the kid "Andrew," the kid corrected him, and he said, "Ah, Anthony. Good, your name didn't change." I thought that was pretty clever, because if he ever did legitimately screw up, he could just pass it off as part of his shtick.

I was trying to keep on eye out to see how he did the various tricks, but there were a bunch of kids with balloons in between us and the magician, so I didn't have a good vantage point.  He stressed that he wasn't really doing magic; he was performing illusions. This led to an amusing misunderstanding
when we went to Aunt Lori's house after the show.

Aunt Lori: I heard you saw a magician! Did he do any magic?
Lily: Nope.

We ran into our friend Eric and his family at the event, as we seem to do at every town event. I fully expect to see them at tomorrow's Farmer's Market. I think it's really cool that she's growing up with children of her parents. As frequent readers of this blog no doubt are aware, I of course sprung forth fully formed from the head of Zeus and thus never had playmates like that.

Lily adores Eric's oldest. She was planning her birthday party (five months in advance) and he was the first on the guest list. They watched the magic show together and then took turns jumping on me. They both like Batman (even though Batman poops and Superman rules) so he was Batman and she was Batgirl.

I mentioned in another post that Lily had started but not completed a viewing of Star Wars. She was flipping through my Summer 2011 Thinkgeek catalog and saw a lightsaber and said "ooohhhh, what's this?" and I told her. Later on, she asked to look that the catalog again to pick out "just one thing" that she wanted. I figured she was going to go for the lightsaber again, but no, this time she picked out a Tauntaun sleeping bag.

I told her that we were finally going to head up to the comic book store. She had been excited about this for weeks. When I mentioned that Saturday was the day, she yelled out, "Aw Yeah Comics!" I'm glad that I'm raising a kid with a sense of humor.

So the two of got into the car and drove up to the comic store where I used to work. My boss from back in the day, Nick, was still running the place. Lily had a pretty great time. There were some snarls, like scary/gross comics or Lily getting fixated on a Wizard of Oz Barbie doll. I told her that we could buy it on her birthday or for Christmas, but she was worried that another kid might buy it in the interim. In a gesture I really appreciated, Nick passed me a note asking if he wanted me to hold it behind the counter. Had he said it out loud, she would have certainly offered her opinion, but since he was doing it in secret, he allowed me to decline without having her melt down. Lily liked the "Dog-man" toy on the register and I was like "That's no dog-man! That's G'nort!"

Though on reflection, I could see how that mistake could be made

We talked about who the best superhero was. I said Superman, Lily said Batman, and Nick thought it was a toss up between Deadman and Squirrel Girl.

World's Finest

When we left, she said, "Bye, it was nice meeting you, I hope people like your comics!"

Later on in the evening, we watched the Fear Factory episode of the Legion of Super Heroes, followed by Cinderella. It might cost me some geek cred, but I couldn't help put notice again that it's an extremely well put together film. The pacing is superb, and Lady Tremaine, the Wicked Stepmother is one of the all time great villains.