Father's Day Weekend

I had my best set of consecutive days in recent memory over the weekend. Lily was staying over at her Aunt Lori's, so Jen and I had a real date for the first time in ages. We finished work, rushed home, had a quick dinner, then ran over to the local theater for a showing of X-Men: First Class. At the risk of making the predictable observation, it really was a first class film, and I'll be giving it its own post in a bit.

We stayed through the credits, but there were no extras, and then we went out to the lobby. Jen wanted to play some Ms. Pac-Man, but there was a mom there, teaching her son how to play the game. She kept continuing when she lost, to the point that I suggested that Jen put a quarter on the cabinet to claim the next game, and that went over about as well as you'd expect. We played some air hockey and I won, though I did have an assist from Jen, who kept knocking the puck into her own goal.

The games were free by the time our game ended, so Jen played some Ms. Pac-Man while I shot dinosaurs in the face. She got the high score and we were both happy. Then we went home and watched some Everwood.

The next morning, we got up and headed over to my Grammy's house where she was holding a yard sale. Jen thought she was being funny by putting a "Make Offer" price sticker on my shirt until I pointed out the two I had previously stuck on her rear.

After that it was down to the local Farmer's Market, which, I hate to say, is a lot more enjoyable without Lily begging for sweets and swerving to pet every dog. We met people from the local historical society, we saw a neat sand sculpture, and we bought some pasties for lunch.

Then we picked up Lily, went home very briefly, watched an episode of Scooby Doo and then took off for a puppet show. The Mock Turtle Marionette Company in conjunction with Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra put together a piece they called "Museum of Music". They're still tweaking it, (the director called it a "Public Dress Rehearsal") but it was pretty excellent. Actors provided narration while the musicians played well known pieces of classical music and the puppeteers controlled the marionettes as if they were performing the pieces. It was really pretty neat. I'd never seen anything quite like it.

After the show, the director described it as a "French Pastry" school of thought, meaning that if you give a kid a French pastry when he or she is young, the kid will think, "Hey, maybe the French are kind of cool," and likewise, if you expose them at an early age to Classical music in a really engaging fashion, they'll have that spark of interest as they get older and may be more receptive to it as they get older.

It was pretty great all around, though their Bach marionette was rather terrifying. It looked like Chucky and Hannibal Lecter had a baby.

"Hello, Clarice. Wanna Play?"

We played for a bit in the abutting playground and Lily enjoyed that too. Our day wasn't done yet, because we still had a birthday party to attend. It was at Rascals, a restaurant and arcade along the lines of Dave & Buster's or Chuck E. Cheese. We all had a blast. Jen went on the climbing wall,

Lily went in the play area and took a ride in the Batmobile.

I mostly kept an eye on her, but I did manage to sneak away for a couple games. Jen had been cheating when Lily played the Cracky Crabs game and punching the crabs with her hand when they popped out of the top row.

Cheater!

It's like Whack-A-Mole, except with scurrying crabs instead of moles. I finally got the high score.

A winner is me. Fuck you, Cracky Crabs.

I also won Lily a stuffed animal from the crane machine, which made me really happy, because that's one of the things daddies do for their daughters.

We did have kind of an ugly moment at the air hockey table. Lily is an only child, and that is unlikely to change, barring the malfunction of some kind of device. When she was smaller, we usually let her win, but now that she's playing games with peers, we don't always let her win all the time anymore. It's not like I flip the Monopoly board over and yell "WINNER!!!" while pointing to myself, but I think there is virtue in understanding that you're not going to win everything every time and I certainly don't want to raise a self-entitled monster. We were playing air hockey and I was ahead, 6-4. I hadn't decided if I was going to let her win or not at that point, but it was rendered moot when she turned away from the table in a pout. This trait has been in evidence for a while. Back when she had just turned three and we were playing "Don't Break the Ice", she would refuse to take her next turn if she thought she would lose. So, we're going to have to continue to work on this.

Sunday was Father's Day. Jen and Lily got me a kid's sized soccer ball and Lily made me a wonderful card. I scanned it with the intention of uploading it here, but the file got corrupted, so I'll have to rescan it and edit it into the post when I get the chance.

Edit: Here's the card. Lily did all the writing and all the drawing and she drew green hearts on the other side because she knows I like green.

She did all the writing herself and put hearts in the place of letter "O" because she loves me so much.
We did take a brief detour into Bizarro World. Around our house, things are usually like this:

Lily: Can we go outside and play?
Me: Ugh. Outside? Wouldn't you rather stay in here and watch cartoons instead?

I like soccer. It's unique among my interests in that for everything else, I've always had something of a natural aptitude, but not so much with soccer. But I stuck with it, and over the years, I got to be, if not a great soccer player, then at least a competent one, by virtue of sheer tenacity. I thought it would be fun to kick the ball around, but she wasn't interested. Ah well. C'est la vie. We've got some nice weather ahead of us. I'll take it along with us next time we go to the park.

Happy birthday, blog!

It was one year ago today that I started blogging here. I had started my first blog on Myspace on June 11, 2006, in the run up to the birth of my daughter. I stayed there for a little while, and moved to Livejournal and then to Facebook before deciding to bite the bullet and start an actual blog here on June 20th of last year.

That's pretty much it, other than to say thanks for reading to those reading this.

Legion of Super Heroes: Legacy

This was another fun episode. I touched on it briefly in another review, but since I'm getting more into Legion blogging, I thought I'd dedicate an entire post to it. The theme of the episode is best summed up as "being an outsider", and I think it tells a compelling little tale.

Superman rescues Alexis, the richest girl in the galaxy, a pretty young lady about his age. Also, there are second-string supervillains, the Scavengers, raiding various tech depots. The two plots converge about halfway through the episode.

At first, Alexis and Superman seem like a pretty good match. They sneak into her office to play video games. They talk about the expectations people have for them, and their fear that they won't be able to live up to them. They're just two young people enjoying each others' company and having fun together. I really like the character design for Alexis.

There is something there that shows a certain cruelty in her features even when she's happy.

Of particular note to her character is her robot butler named Wodehouse, named for the author of the Jeeves & Wooster books.  I snapped a screenshot of my favorite Wodehouse scene. He's paying off Lobo after Alexis steals his bike.

The Legion Abstract is a much better blog than this one and it has some really excellent speculation on the relationship between Brainiac 5 and Superman, the analysis of which has really informed my understanding of this series.The site makes a convincing argument that there is more going on than is apparent on the surface.  The reviews are very good, but they lack the profanity and misspellings you get here. (Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in any way with the Abstract. I just think it's a great read and an excellent resource.)

I like how we get more characterization of Brainy and Superman's relationship. My daughter insists that Brainiac 5 is a girl. And of course that perfectly coiffed hair notwithstanding, animated Brainiac 5 is a robot, and therefore has no sex. What he does have is gender. People usually conflate them, but an old anthropology professor was big on emphasizing the distinction. Rather than poorly paraphrasing her, I'll just take it from the World Health Organization, which defines the difference like so:

"Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

(If I thought that anyone actually read these Legion of Superhero posts, I'd say this one is surprisingly informative for something that quick summary of an episode of a children's show.)

So while Brainiac 5 doesn't have the biological parts that would make him male, he self-identifies as masculine.

However, there are really times when it seems he has a crush on Superman. Exchanges like this

Lightning Lad: She's out of your league.

Brainiac 5: No one's out of Superman's League!

do nothing to disabuse the viewer of this notion.

And the more I think about it, the more "crush" seems like the right word. Superman is this older hero out of legend, and it seems that Brainy, more than anything wants this hero to be his friend, scheduling patrols together so they can hang out. It's a kind of a worshipful affection and while crush usually implies some sort of romantic attraction that's not in evidence here, I still think the word is apt.

Apparently, Brainiac 5 is everybody's favorite Legionnaire. Though I didn't know this (I would have guessed one of the founding members), I wasn't all that surprised. With fans of genre works, especially younger ones, intellectual development often outpaces emotional development (though we usually wind up pretty okay as adults), and that's what we see in this episode. Brainy is brilliant, but also petulant and sulky. When Superman chooses a night on the town with a pretty girl over one patrolling for supervillains, Brainy snarks, "And for your information, there's no Alexis in team."

Oh, snap!

(Speaking of good lines, at one point Phantom Girl quips about Brainy, "Ooh, someone needs a grouchy chip removed!" I love Phantom Girl!)

While it wasn't hard to suss out what Alexis was up to, I actually didn't figure out who she was until I saw the logo satellite. Sometimes I'm amazingly obtuse.

The conclusion is predictable, but really well executed. Tired of Superman picking his Legion buddies over her, Alexis fakes a distress signal in the "Aalt cloud" (The first time I watched this episode, I thought they said "Oort Cloud"), and while Superman is off investigating that, she breaks into Legion HQ with a powersuit and a bunch of the Scavengers, and tries to kill the Legion so she can have Superman all to herself.

The Legion fights competently, but they're just outmatched by these upgraded Scavengers. I particularly liked the way Brainy fought, like a long-legged ninja, though I don't know why he didn't just transform into his Coluan War Form and just smack the shit out of everybody.

 Superman bursts through the wall just as Alexis is about to dispatch the defeated Legionnaires and defeats everyone easily, he punches out the Scavengers and carves up Wodehouse with his heat vision.

"I'm Superman, Alexis. I smash through a wall at least once an episode."

He turns his attentions to Alexis, who turns her suit's weapons on him. His line "Alexis, stop! You can't hurt me!" as he pushes against the beam, just cements this as a great Superman story. He can't be easily hurt by guns and bombs, and that's why the good Superman stories don't deal with those kind of challenges for him.

(Click here for more of my thoughts on what makes Superman great.) They deal with choices. Here, he has to choose between living up to his responsibilities or taking the easier, more comfortable path. And he makes the right choice, because he's Superman.

The suit overloads and explodes and Superman rescues Alexis from the fireball. She survives, though she loses her hair, which is an awesome nod to silver age continuity. The last scene is Alexis in her prison cell on Takron-Galtos (and how awesome is it that Wikipedia has an entry for Takron-Galtos?), her hair partially regrown, using a screwdriver to repair Wodehouse's head.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: The Illustrated Roger Zelazny

I usually don't cover collections, but The Illustrated Roger Zelazny is something of a special case. It reprints a couple classic Zelazny stories, (A Rose for Ecclesiastes, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of his Mouth and the Furies (thank goodness they included the Furies, because God knows that's a hard story to track down) and an entirely new tale called Shadowjack, about the earlier adventures of the thief of the same name, and they're all lavishly illustrated by Gray Morrow  whom I 'm sad to see committed suicide because he could no longer draw due of the progress of his Parkinson's Disease.

I don't have a lot a lot to say about the stories themselves that haven't been covered in their individual entries. Shadowjack isn't bad, just generic. It's your run of the mill fantasy thief adventure. I would have much preferred Shadowland, the story outlined in  the The Road to Amber, Volume 6 of the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, which tells how Jack's world became divided between lightside and darkside. That had Morningstar, who was consistently awesome.

I have the little Ace paperback version. The art is really quite nice, with a very distinctive 1970s vibe to the style. In addition to the illustrated stories, I've already mentioned, there's also a Zelazny Tapestry, with several different pictures depicting scenes from Doorways in the Sand, Damnation Alley and Today we Choose Faces. (Specifically, the topless girl on a bike reminds in the Damnation Alley picture reminds me of a very similar scene in Vanishing Point)

The DitS image really is both beautiful and captures the essence of the book, with Rhennius machine, the reversed penny and the star-stone all juxtaposed together with a young man whom I assume must be Fred. (This also reminds me, I want to redo my Doorways review, because I think it fails to capture what I like about the book.)

The Faces picture is disturbing in a beautiful way. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Whatever, it's a memorable piece.

(And I know, this would probably be a better post with images, but I generally don't like to use anything other than the cover art for Zelazny posts, particularly for something like this, where the art is most of the point of the work)

In addition, we also have some full color paintings of Amber characters, which, while still very nice, I tend to like less than those in the Visual Guide, as the 70s feel works less well here. (Though I do like Eric and Corwin on the rear cover.)

Also of note, Moire is depicted with pale green skin which will fuel discussions that occasionally arise.

Also, Brand really looks like Marvel comic's Loki in some of the paintings.

Zelazny's commentary with each section is great, but you can probably find most or all of it in the Collected Stories. I like it, but I think it's ultimately a novelty. There were other Zelazny works in visual media (such as the comic in the 90s), but not a lot of them, and I wish there had been more adaptations like this.

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