Parent-Teacher Conference

We had Lily's first parent-teacher conference on Wednesday, and it went about like we were expecting. She already knew her letters when the year began and the class is going to start covering them in January. It's frustrating for a couple reasons. I've mentioned them in other posts, but I feel like this is only going to teach her that school is not where you go to learn, but just some place you go because you have to.

I was talking to a friend whose son, while generally doing well, is facing challenges with one or two aspects of his school work. And he says he's fine with that. And I think I would be too. I don't want Lily to be some sort of manufactured prodigy like John Stuart Mill, but I think facing and overcoming challenges is an important part of growing up.

I was among the smartest kids in my very small high school, able to coast on natural talent and that led to a difficult adjustment in young adulthood, as I had vastly overestimated my own capabilities. No parent wants their child to repeat their mistakes, and it bothers me that she might.

She's still amazingly precocious, though. We were playing our version of "20 Questions", "I'm thinking of an animal". It's just what the title suggests, with one player thinking of an animal, and the others asking yes or no questions trying to determine what kind of animal it is.

Jen has played this with kids older than Lily, and they're generally terrible at it until they hit eight or ten, asking questions like, "Is it a dog?" or "Is it a bear?" without first trying to narrow it down. But Lily shows a lot of thought with her questions, trying to figure out where the animal lives, what it eats, if it has fur or feathers and other questions along those lines. Today she asked, "Does it move slowly?", which is not only a good question, but which also shows a very solid grasp of grammar.

We were having a tea party earlier today.

Me: This is great tea! I'll give you one million dollars for your recipe!
Lily: Thank you, but I already have one trillion and ninety-nine dollars already.
Me: Wow, how did you get so much money?!
Lily: I do the mayor's dirty work.
Me: Um...

She also left me speechless when we were talking about sports. I mentioned that she was old enough to join a sports team if she wanted, leading to this exchange.

Lily: I can join a sport?
Me: That's right.
Lily: Like...golf?!
Me: Um...
Lily: (Looks at me eagerly)
Me: ...I suppose?

What kind of five-year-old is interested in golf?

Legion of Super Heroes: Cry Wolf

I'm continuing my reviews of the second season of the Legion of Super Heroes animated series, with episode three, "Cry Wolf".

I don't like Timber Wolf, but the little widget on the side of the page that tracks the most visited posts says the one about him is the seventh most popular post on the site, so I guess I'm in the minority here.

Courtroom dramas are an episode that can be dropped into any series and Cry Wolf is a terrible episode that could have been a really solid one with a couple minor changes.

We open on a scientific symposium. I think it's on Heisenberg-7, but I'm not certain. (Hey-o!) Dr. Mar Londo, Timber Wolf's dad is there, showing off these new bio-golems he invented. Timber Wolf is in the audience. He rips off his disguise, jumps on the stage, wolfs out to a more feral form reminiscent of his first appearance,  beats up the bio-golems, bays at the moon and then moves in to finish off his dad, who is begging for mercy.

Then the image freezes and we see that it's a video. Timber Wolf is on trial.

On trial for sucking. The verdict? Guilty.

Cosmic Boy declares him guilty and sentences him to life imprisonment on Takron-Galtos.

Credits. Cam is pleading with Cosmic Boy and the rest, and whatever other problems the second season had, it wasn't the art direction or the animation, both of which are consistently superb. I thought this scene was particularly well done in that respect, with the shadows and subdued colors lending a very somber mood to the piece.

However, it's also this scene that shows off the big flaw with the episode. When Cam says that Timber Wolf wouldn't do this kind of thing and asks for other character witnesses, Cosmic Boy points out, quite legitimately in my opinion, that hundreds of eyewitnesses, a holographic record of the attack and physical evidence outweigh any testimony they might offer.

Timber Wolf breaks loose and most of those present pursue him. He fights them off and Phantom Girl helps him escape. There are several sloppy moments here.

Though the cool S-shield force field is not one of them.

The first is when Timber Wolf says to Superman-X that he didn't think X would vote with the rest of them.

Superman X: "I had no choice. The evidence -"
Timber Wolf: "-was rigged. "

This is actually two problems in one. The first is, well, dickhead, maybe that's an argument you should have made during your trial intend of just mounting a defense that amounted to a sullen "Fuck you" to Cosmic Boy.  The second is that the only characterization we've had so far of Superman-X is that of shouty space asshole and there's no reason to assume that he'd extend the benefit of the doubt to Timber Wolf moreso than any other Legionnaire would.

Except there is. If Superman had been in this role, everything would make sense. But he's not, though I think it was written with him in mind and it just doesn't work with Superman-X in the role.

We see Timber Wolf running off, and they catch him, but he turns out to be Chameleon Boy, which was actually fairly well done. Even though Phantom Girl and Cam helped Timber Wolf escape, Cosmic Boy doesn't do more than wag his finger at them disapprovingly.

Meanwhile, in New Metropolis, Timber Wolf gives a Deckard-like narration as he looks for clues. He tears up the apartment of an acquaintance of his father, "Yin Des Neerg" (which is an anagram for Sidney Green), and this scene goes a long way towards illustrating what's wrong with the second season. They tried to make it more "realistic", but it lacks the verisimilitude of the first season. For instance, when 's ransacking Neerg's closet, Timber Wolf comes across a collection of lab coats. And that's fine, as far as it goes. Lab coats are shorthand for scientists in visual media after all. When I worked in a laboratory, I had a lab coat.

But here's the thing. I had a lab coat. As in one. And I left it in the lab at the end of the day. It wasn't the only clothing I owned, as seems to be the case here. You can't see it that well in this still, but Neerg's closet is filled with nothing but lab coats. It's a trivial detail, but it's characteristic of the problems that crept in with the second season.

Neerg comes home, apparently unable to hear a wolfman tearing his apartment apart through the door.

Then the Legionnaires arrive. They have this brief exchange,

Cosmic Boy: "I don't want to hurt you, Timber Wolf."
Timber Wolf: "Well, that makes one of us."

which doesn't make much sense. I would assume that Cosmic Boy's original line was something like, "We don't want to fight," because, as written, Timber Wolf's reply suggests that he doesn't want to hurt himself, which is the kind of thing that should go without saying.  Anyway, Timber Wolf attacks Cosmic Boy and Superman-X and the fight spreads to the bar below. More Legionnaires show up, and Cosmic Boy manages to put down the idiot ball long enough to put up a good fight. First he blocks the exit with two video games, then pulls loose some bar stools and batters Timber Wolf with them. And again, I have to express my admiration for the animation here, because that scene just looks brutal. 

"All right, Brin, I'm just going to need a stool sample"

 He wolfs out, escapes and is picked up by Neerg (really Cam in disguise). Cam makes fun of Cosmic Boy, which is kind of funny,

and Phantom Girl gets some quality snark in.

"Melodrama and self-pity. A toxic combination."

 They head to Heisenberg-7 where Timber Wolf announces that he's going to do what he does best. I don't know what that is, but one would assume that it isn't pretty.

So they go back, Timber Wolf sniffs around and realizes that he was there. Again, if he were really interested in mounting a defense rather than being an aggrieved martyr, this is probably the kind of thing he should have done when he was first accused. A bunch of science police show up, but he smacks the shit out of them and upon escaping, decides to exile himself to Rawl.

He stomps around the jungle for a while, and there's a neat continuity nod to ans they show the old facility, now overgrown with vines. (At least, I assume so. I don't care enough to go back and rewatch the Timber Wolf episode.)

Timber Wolf smells his dad and confronts him. Dr. Londo tells him that he sent a bunch of nanites into Timber Wolf's brain and controlled him in order to frame him for murder, so that Brin would have nowhere to turn and be forced to rejoin him. Timber Wolf refuses and destroys a bunch of bio-golems and turns feral just as the Legion shows up. He smacks Phantom Girl around in his rage, and she winds up helpless and unconscious for the second episode in a row.

Seeing her like that snaps him out of it and he turns on his father and destroys his mind control headband. At the end of the episode, they're on the Legion Cruiser, and Timber Wolf says he's not sure he can go through this alone again, but Phantom Girl assures him that he won't have to.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: The Game of Blood and Dust

I like The Game of Blood and Dust, but I can never remember if it's "Blood and Dust" or "Dust and Blood". It's got a novel enough concept, nameless players take on the roles of "Blood" and "Dust" and introduce three changes apiece to the time stream as part of their game, and I think he could have just introduced the clever concept and coasted on that, but he didn't.

For such a prolific science fiction author, Zelazny never wrote a huge amount of time travel stories. I think Roadmarks is the only one that deals with it as a central concept, though If At Faust you Don't Succeed, Creatures of Light and Darkness and The Changing Land each touch on it peripherally. (In the introduction to Go Starless in the Night, Zelazny says that story was written as a non-traditional time travel story, though I don't personally don't consider it one. It's about a man who journeys into the future through suspended animation and if we include Starless, we might as well include This Moment of the Storm and Isle of the Dead, both of which deal with a very similar concept.) Maybe I'm overlooking one or two others, but it was never a huge theme in his work, which is a shame, because when he wrote it, he wrote it well. (Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot Divine Madness, possibly the best of his short stories!)


In the story, the players Blood and Dust alter history, saving certain personages, eliminating others, until we get to the end and wind up with a world pretty similar to our own. (Though not identical, as the the past was altered so that the assassination of Lincoln in Chevvy's Theater was a success.) This is something that Zelazny touched on with Roadmarks, where Red was trying to change the timeline so that the Greeks won at Marathon, as they did in the real world.

I really do think that Zelazny was one the best science fiction short story authors of the 20th century, and this one has everything I like about his craftsmanship. We get the concept, he doesn't over explain it, but instead tells enough to explore it, and then quits before we're bored with it. His pacing is simply magnificent. As Brand says in Sign of the Unicorn: "Sequence and order, time and stress! Accent, emphasis."

I've raved before about the notes in the Collected Stories, and this is another story they enrich. During one round of the game, Julius Ambrosius and Abou Iskafar are killed by the contestants, and I never knew if they were historical figures of whom I was unaware or if they were entirely fictional creations made up for the story. (If you're playing at home, they're the latter.)

In the introduction to the story, Zelazny says that story had its genesis in a solicitation by Playboy, where they would run one science fiction story a year and they'd all be illustrated by Philippe Druillet. Playboy never went through with the project, and the illustrations were never made, but Zelazny said he occasionally wondered what form they would have taken. I do too.

Weasel's Big Adventure

Lily is aware of the existence my blog, though I'm not sure how much she understands. She'll occasionally say something like "Don't post this on your blog!" but I think she's just repeating something she's heard from Jen.

However, she was very proud of some of the pictures from the weekend and she actually asked me to put them up on my blog. Who am I to say no?

For the first part of our weekend, we went up to the Steel Stacks, the cultural center that went up on the site of the old Bethlehem Steel location. The big blast furnaces are still standing and look really neat. Also, it's nice that a theater in the area is showing convenient midnight movies again.

Somebody needs to set up a Fallout LARP here.

We wound up going for a program on Native Americans, but Lily wasn't all that interested, so we just wound up doing coloring at one of the tables.

I like this sequence of pictures, because you can see the first one, she's thinking about what to do and in the second she's doing it.

Plan your work...

...and work your plan.

(I posted the second on Facebook and a friend observed that it looks like Weasel is copying off Lily's paper.)

Jen's mom was there, and she'd never been to the local casino, so they took off together and Lily and I went to our comic store to get her comics. We had a nice time there. The owner was kind enough to hold a copy of Legion: Secret Origin #1 so we got that and our free flight ring.

The flight ring was a little big for Lily, and I suggested that we loop it through a chain so she could wear it around her neck, but she decided to give it to Weasel instead. We decided that "Princess Weasel" was a member of the Legion of Super Pets.

I personally don't think this is great picture, but Lily really loves it, and this is why she wanted me to post it online.

Another shot of Weasel.

That was it for Saturday. On Sunday we went to our annual family Jump-In-The-Leaves party and Lily had a blast with her cousins. In the car, she described a crossover between the worlds of Teen Titans and Danny Phantom. (Each of the teams has a vegetarian, so they went to Raven's room and exchanged recipes.) 

Things kind of fell apart at bedtime. Between Daylight Savings Time and a couple hours of jumping in the leaves, Lily conked out before six. Had she fallen asleep an hour later, we would have let her sleep through the night, but we figured that she'd wake up in the middle of the night if she went to bed at that hour.

So we woke her up, and she was in such a grumpy mood, at one point proclaiming, "I hate everything in life!" which is such a funny sentiment coming from a pretty little girl dressed in pink.

I sat down on her bed and stayed with her as she drifted off. There's a trick to this. She's a very deep sleeper, but she's also very sensitive to us leaving if she's not all the way asleep. Jen and I have to get off the bed s-l-o-w-l-y, otherwise she'll feel the shift as the mattress rebounds. I feel like Indy with the idol on the pressure plate in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Despite the lousy Sunday, we had a great morning. Lily was a perfect angel, and she loudly proclaimed to everyone at the bus stop that she had the best mommy in the world. Jen said she wished she could copy this morning and replay it every day.

Watching cartoons with Lily: Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam

I suppose I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and my productivity has fallen off. So, in an effort to snap myself out of it, I'll try to post more regularly, though these posts may be shorter than usual.

I've been watching a lot of cartoons with Lily recently. My friend Eric recommended Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam and it's a pretty solid story. I streamed it through Netflix.

It's a retelling of Captain Marvel's origin. (And there's a whole convoluted thing here. The title is Superman/Shazam, but the hero in question is actually named Captain Marvel. Shazam is the name of the wizard who gives him his powers and the magic word he yells to assume his super-powered identity. Shazam is an acronym for the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.)

Anyway, prepubescent Billy Batson wakes up in his ratty apartment, then hustles off to meet a mild mannered reporter for a great Metropolitan newspaper, who is writing an expose on the lousy conditions faced by homeless kids. On the way there, Billy encounters some bullies shaking down Tawny, a homeless man. He stands up for his friend and gets a black eye for his trouble.

When he gets to the diner, he digs into the breakfasts Clark Kent bought for him. Kent notices the bruise and asks about it, and Billy says that he's beginning to think that being good isn't worth the bother anymore. Clark admits that being good is hard and being bad is the easy route.

As if in answer, Black Adam floats down outside the diner and shatters the window with a clap of his hands. I really like Black Adam. Arnold Vosloo, probably best known as Imhotep from the Mummy movies, oozes alien menace. He reminds me a bit of Zod in Superman II. He doesn't know much about this alien world in which he finds himself, only that he is destined to rule it. A phrase that leaps to mind is that of a cultured brute. That brutishness extends to his appearance. Superman is a lot sleeker than he's usually depicted in DC animation and I'm convinced that's in order to contrast him with Black Adam's stocky build.

Anyway, Adam moves in on Billy, and Clark orders him to leave the boy alone, and then gets smacked through several walls. He picks himself out of the rubble, takes off his glasses and pulls open his shirt to reveal the Superman shield.

Cut to Black Adam's implacable pursuit of Billy through the streets. Just as Adam is about to kill the boy, Superman shows up and rescues him. Black Adam gets all the good lines and while Superman's dialogue is a little weak, I think it still gets the meaning of what it is to be Superman across loud and clear.

Black Adam: You fight for the Wizard?
Superman: I fight for those you can't fight for themselves!

They spar a bit, and seem evenly matched until Black Adam realizes that Superman is especially vulnerable to his magical lightning. And this is what I mean when I say the feature understands Superman. Here he is, outmatched, with the life of just one little boy at stake. But he never wavers, even when his foe hits him hardest where he is weakest. Black Adam burns him with the magical lightning, then buries him hundreds of feet underground by driving Fawcett City's version of the Washington monument on top of him.

Billy runs, finds the Wizard and is granted his powers. I was never a huge fan of Captain Marvel (though I always had a bit of a crush on Mary Marvel and that cute little skirt of hers), but I like that they exist to oppose the seven deadly enemies of Man. There's something about a hero who fights against the worst part of human nature that's really appealing to me.

Back in the real world, Black Adam has defeated Superman. Billy shows up, transforms into Captain Marvel, and his characterization here is great too. His absolute joy as he learns his now powers is infectious.

Superman rallies, the pair face off against Black Adam. Adam is taking a beating so he triggers a flood, and Superman has to disengage to stop it. Marvel chases Black Adam to the city, where he takes a hostage, and if there was one thing I didn't like about the movie, this was it. The hostage is the only woman in the movie, and all she does is whimper.

Danica McKellar is credited as Sally, and I don't even know why they needed a real voice actor for the part.

That aside, it's a good scene with a great exchange:

Captain Marvel: Put her down!
Black Adam: You want to be a protector? Then protect the soul. Revert to your mortal form and I will prove a benevolent deity.
Captain Marvel: And then you'll just kill me.
Black Adam: I will.
Captain Marvel: Shazam.
[turns into Billy]
Billy Batson: Now put her down.
Black Adam: See? Like an ant.
[Black Adam throws woman into the sky]
Billy Batson: No! Shaz...
Black Adam: [covers Billy's mouth] Your last breath wasted on the wrong word.

You get Billy's decency there and Black Adam's alien menace. He made that choice with full understanding of the consequences. It's so good, I'm almost willing to overlook the Byrne hold. As Black Adam is just about to kill Billy, Superman lances him with heat vision and descends with the woman in his arms. Billy transforms and makes short work of Black Adam. Captain Marvel picks him up out of the crater and prepares to finish him off and there is another exchange that I like.

Black Adam: It changes you, does it not? The power.

Superman: That's enough.
Captain Marvel: No, I have to. To protect them.
Superman: How? By being like him?
Captain Marvel: By being stronger than him.
Superman: Then be strong. Be good.

Tawny shows up, and threatens Black Adam with ten thousand year exile. Unable to bear the thought, and having just spent the last five thousand years flying back to Earth, Adam cries Shazam and reverts to his human form, aging five thousand years in an instant.

And that's the end. Clark's story hits the paper, and things seem to be improving for Billy and other kids like him. The bullies from earlier see him and push him against the wall. They taunt him and dare him to say "...just one word."

Billy looks up, smiles and the camera cuts away as he begins saying something. Lightning arcs across the sky and the credits roll.

Lily liked it. It's a little more violent than Jen would probably be comfortable with, but I was watching it with her the whole time, and she followed the plot pretty easily, and changing into an adult superhero is such a wish fulfillment fantasy for a kid that she loved it. At the end, I didn't need to explain to her what Billy said. She mouthed the word right along with him when he said it.