So Afraid of Getting Bored

Yesterday we spent the day at a convention full of young anime fans in St. George, Utah, and occasionally found those who seemed to struggle to avoid boredom. This morning I found this timely bit of wisdom on my cousin Linda's blog (happy birthday, Linda!):

If you need attention, for Buddha's sake, learn to amuse yourself. Go read. Go make art. Go listen to music. Go watch tv. Go take a walk. Go blog, twitter, or facebook. Go learn how to do stuff by yourself. Go learn how to not be afraid to be alone with your own thoughts, especially while driving (obey that new Hands Free Law!). There's no reason to be bored, EVER. And, there is no reason to take it personally that other people are not bored. Don't rely on other people to make you happy or fulfill your needs. Your happiness is your responsibility. Being needy and whiny to get attention because you have nothing else to do will not make you more attractive to people. If you really want to be surrounded by people, do what you want without caring if people are paying attention and they will flock to you.

A Lift in Life

I'm in St. George, Utah, for a 3-day weekend; and we had an unfortunate beginning to the weekend: This evening, when we were on our way to dinner along with some friends, we, the friends, and about 9 other people (including a newborn baby, a toddler, and an eight-year-old girl who was taking the elevator to meet her family in the lobby) got trapped in a hotel elevator for 40 minutes. The experience was awful for the little girl; fortunately, one of the folks in the elevator would call the front desk periodically and have the father put through to the girl. But at least having the kids there prevented me from panicking, because I felt I had to put on a cheerful front for the kids' sake.

The Vault of Warner

WBshop.com - The Official Online Store of Warner Bros. Studios: Warner Archive

Warner Brothers has come up with a terrific way to give those interested in their classic films a way to see ones that have not yet been released on DVD. You can peruse titles from their archives; and if you see a title you like, you can order a DVD of it. Warners will then produce a single-copy DVD for you. No extras, and the company probably won't do anything to clean up the picture (although digital masters are used for the DVDs), but you'll have it.

I ordered DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE. I've never been able to make it through an entire viewing of this movie, which left me hoping that somebody will one day make a good Doc Savage flick. Still, with the '30's setting and the high adventure, it'll be nice to have around.

Smartphone Follies

Is Palm doomed if the Palm Pre bombs?

Either by coincidence, design, or some sort of Zeitgeist sine wave, at least three legal publications -- the ABA Journal, California Lawyer magazine, and an online journal -- ran simultaneous articles in the past month comparing Blackberry smartphones and iPhones as firm-issued equipment.  At least one of the articles mentioned the upcoming, not-yet-released Palm Pre; but to my recollection, none mentioned my current smartphone, the Palm Treo.  I find that odd, because in the real world I see almost as many attorneys using various iterations of the Treo as I see using Blackberries; and certainly more than I see using iPhones.

The general consensus among the three articles is that the Blackberry is the best smartphone for e-mail, and is also the choice for those who find the virtual keyboard on the iPhone a challenge, since most of the Blackberries have physical QWERTYUP keyboards.  The iPhone, for its part, is the champion for web-surfing and for viewing pdf documents, owing to its large screen.

Now we are getting articles like the one linked to above, which look at the continuing financial woes of Palm; and view the upcoming Pre as a make-or-break product for the company.  (The reasons for Palm's problems seem fairly plain:  (a) Its main product -- dedicated PDAs like the iconic Palm Pilot, later just the Palm -- have been rendered practically obsolete by smartphones; (b) its smartphone never had as much name recognition as the Blackberry or the iPhone; and (c) Palm really hasn't put out a radically new Treo in the last several years.)  From advance accounts, the Pre has the potential to eclipse both the Blackberry and the iPhone as a business device, because it combines the best of both worlds:  Like the iPhone, it has a big touchscreen, ideal for websurfing (and at speeds faster than the iPhone, according to the hype); but like the Blackberry, it has a physical keyboard, which slides out from under the screen.  Plus, it has features the iPhone apparently has never been able to master, such as cut-and-paste between functions (something the Treos have done for years). 

Apple has such a mystique, and the iPhone such a high visibility factor, that I doubt the Pre will charm the general public away from iPhones.  But it does stand to win over the business crowd, particularly once Sprint's exclusive rights to the Pre expire and it migrates to Verizon, the highest rated cell phone service.  And winning over IT folks who will buy the phone in bulk and issue it to the firm's troops is no small feat.

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San Diego Con Hotel Lottery

This year, Amy and I secured our hotel room for the San Diego Comic-Con in July early, before March 19's shotgun start to the hotel rush through the Con's travel service. It's a good thing we did; anecdotal evidence (reported as news) suggests the servers melted down.

Comics editor/reporter Heidi McDonald observes on her blog that (a) San Diego actually has a hotel room glut, with hotel expansion planned in boom years being finished in a recession; (b) the San Diego Visitors and Convention Bureau report from last year appears to show that the convention attendees contributed a small amount to the local economy (a report that seems belied when one sees the restaurants and bars around the convention center stuffed with folks wearing con badges); and (c) the Convention Visitor's Bureau's Website does not contain any information about the 2009 Comic-Con.

Meanwhile, Colleen Doran blogs that she won't be attending the con this year -- in part "because I can’t decide if I am more afraid of seeing people walking around dressed as Silk Spectre or Doctor Manhattan."

And You Thought the TRS-80 Was Ancient

An amazing look at Difference Engine #2 -- conceived by Charles Babbage in the 19th century; finally built in the 21st.

A Slambang Victorian Funfest

Jonathan Barnes's debut novel, The Somnambulist, is cover-to-cover entertainment. It's the sort of novel that demands that you pick it up as soon as you come home from work so that you can find out what happens next.

It reads very much like what Barnes writes he intended it as: a melding of the Oxford graduate's interests in Dickens novels, Conan Doyle's works, Doctor Who, etc. It also has a bit of first-novel syndrome. First novels are built like sprinters, not marathoners; the author pours in a little bit of everything he or she is interested in, often with little concern for how it fits into the overall story. Here, we've got a Victorian England story with a stage magician/detective, secret societies, socialist utopias, spies, steampunk, sexual perversion, and lots of other "s"'s, together with some mystical mumbo-jumbo and even some nods to classic monster stories and a macguffin reminiscent of Hideyuki Kurata's "Read or Die" franchise. Much of it is probably unnecessary, and on retrospect the joins are suspect.

But reading it, you really don't care, because contrary to its title, The Somnambulist moves like a freight train. It's not very deep, and you're unlikely to unlock the secrets of life from it, but it is a great deal of fun.

Dedicated to Charity

Fantasy author Emma Bull is offering a unique item for a charity auction: If you're the winning bidder, you can have Claim, the sequel to her recent novel Territory, dedicated to you.

Bad News for the Jazz Bakery

One of the best places in the LA area to hear jazz, the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, has lost its lease. The club has been on a month-to-month lease for some time; and the owners of the Helms Bakery building want to use the space for a new furniture store (to join the numerous furniture stores already in the building).

The owner promises to reopen elsewhere; and it appears the promise isn't empty, since the Bakery has been selling out shows.

I've seen several fine concerts there. I fondly remember attending a Sunday concert by trumpeter Mark Isham there; and then heading back home and watching an episode of the HBO miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. As soon as I heard the opening trumpet riff on the episode's soundtrack, I recognized it; Isham had scored the episode.

The Batcave's Showroom

A nice way to waste time: A detail-obsessive website devoted to the dozens of Batmobiles Batman has used over the decades, in comics, on the big and small screen, and in merchandising.

Bye-Bye Seattle P-I

Connelly: Online-only P-I will be a journalism adventure


When I was a kid growing up in Walla Walla, Washington, one of my Sunday rituals was to offer to walk to the Southgate drugstore, about a mile from our house, to fetch my dad one of the out-of-town papers -- either the Portland Oregonian, the Spokane Spokesman-Review, or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  These excursions were a win-win situation for everyone. Dad would get a chance to read the political, business, and sports pages of a thick metropolitan paper, to supplement the wafer-thin Sunday Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.  He'd also have one less kid running around the house on a Sunday.  I'd have an excuse to browse the comics rack, paperback shelf, and toy section of the drugstore; plus, I'd get to sample out-of-town comic strips, redolent with the funk of bad color ink on newsprint crushed in tall bundles trucked in from a few hundred miles away.

All that came to mind this morning, when NPR announced on Morning Edition that the Seattle P-I print edition went the way of all newsprint today -- it faded away.

The P-I will live on in a Web-only version, which I imagine will have a much lower overhead.  But Walla Walla kids won't be able to walk a mile to the drugstore to pick it up for their parents.  And there probably won't be comics.  There definitely won't be the smell.

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Depressed and in Love: The Song-List Books of Tom Reynolds

I've been having a great time this weekend reading I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE: THE 52 MOST DEPRESSING SONGS OF ALL TIME and its sequel TOUCH ME, I'M SICK: THE 52 CREEPIEST LOVE SONGS OF ALL TIME. Reynolds, listed in the books' bios as a musician, former technical director of The Groundlings, and a TV writer-producer, tackles his subjects with a mixture of sociopolitical commentary, techonological musical explanation, and sheer snarkiness that's a riot to read.

Some of the songs on his list are obvious. Who could disagree with "Seasons in the Sun," Vicki Carr's "It Must Be Him," or the Cure's "Prayers for Rain" (or any other Cure song, for that matter) as depressing songs; or "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, "Run for Your Life" by the Beatles, or "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by The Smiths for creepy love songs? (Actually, there's a noteable dearth of Smiths/Morrisey songs in the depressing songs book, even though songs like "Every Day Is Like Sunday" and "Girlfriend in a Coma" were guaranteed party-killers in the eighties. Reynolds explains in the second book that he had a whole chapter in the first devoted to The Smiths; but that he had to remove it, for unspecified reasons.)

But there's also the surprising selections, the ones extremely subjective to Reynolds. For instance, he includes the Jim Steinman composition "Total Eclipse of the Heart" among his "perfect storm" depressing songs, mainly because he finds the bombastic delivery of it exhausting. ("Listening to it is like an opera company bludgeoning you with copies of Anne Rice novels," he writes.) And then there's Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby" in the creepy love song category, which I never really thought of as a CLS but pretty much qualifies; and "Muskrat Love," both versions, which always struck me as more insipid than creepy; and "Ben" by Michael Jackson, which I never even thought of as a love song (but as one delivered to a man-eating rat, by Jacko, is creepy indeed); or even Maurice Chevalier's rendition of "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" from Gigi.

The only problem with these books is that as soon as I got them I pretty much dropped everything else and read most of both. Highly recommended.

Time Machine Collectibles

An odd connection between my hobbies and my home town: Time Machine Collectibles, a company that runs official celebrity websites for science fiction movie and TV stars, and sells autographed photos, is run out of my home town of Walla Walla, Washington.

Diabolik-al Cinema

Last night I watched DANGER:DIABOLIK on DVD. This Italian-French co-production from 1967, produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by Mario Bava, is pretty much the Platonic (but not platonic) ideal of the sixties mod European action flick. Diabolik, played by the recently-deceased John Phillip Law, is essentially the evil Batman; he dresses in black tights and a mask; he drives a black car (a Jaguar -- jeeze, those were much cooler in the sixties than they are today); he's insanely skilled; he has an arsenal of wonderful toys; he walks up walls; and he has a cave hideout that is unbelievably tricked out for a pad that no one but he and his sidekick sees. Of course, there are differences: His sidekick is not an adolescent boy, but rather a gorgeous blonde named Eva; and he's not out to fight crime -- he's out to commit it. Indeed, he blows up government buildings and kills police officers in cold blood. His only redeeming qualities are his love for Eva and his unalloyed coolness.

DANGER:DIABOLIK may not be Shakespeare, but it's a lot of fun.

He Is Legend

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the Ides of March than patronizing an independent book store and meeting a living legend?




At Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank, earlier this afternoon, I attended a booksigning by Richard Matheson. Chances are if you watched any science fiction or fantasy on the large or small screen from the fifties or sixties, you saw some of Matheson's works. That's on top of his novels that are still being adapted into movies today; his novel I AM LEGEND has been adapted for movies three times, most recently in the Will Smith vehicle a little over a year ago.

Eliza "Slap-Happy" Dushku

I've enjoyed watching Joss Whedon's series "Dollhouse" so far, despite its logic-shaky premise.

But having watched the last two weeks' episodes in a row, I have one question:

Why would Eliza Dushku co-create and produce a TV series in which she gets slapped in the face by a man at least once per episode?

Tiny Shuffles

The new, 4-gigabyte iPod Shuffle is so tiny, you must breathe carefully around it lest you inhale it.

Rumor has it that the next model will be subatomic, and exist only as a quantum probability.

San Diego Comic-Con 4-Day Passes Sell Out

Welcome to Comic-Con International: Coming up Next...Comic-Con International: San Diego 2009!

If you want to attend Comic-Con in July, you'd better hustle. The four-day passes (which entitle buyers to attend the Preview Night on Wednesday) have sold out, over four months before the event. One-day passes for each day are still available, but they are going too; the Saturday one-day passes are 23% sold. And no passes will be sold onsite.

Apparently the sour economy is not thinning the herds who attend the con.

The Split Strike Conversion Strategy Allocution

Here's the transcript of the confession Bernard Madoff made as part of his guilty plea today.

Amazing how confessors like Madoff always make it sound like they were nice guys who made mistakes and then couldn't get out of them. If you look at what he really says he did, it's plain that he didn't make any mistakes -- except getting caught.

It's So, So Wrong

Saturday Morning Watchmen


For those who want their Watchmen without all that doom, gloom, geopolitical chaos and dismemberment -- Saturday Morning Watchmen.

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Birthday of Justice

Today is US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's birthday.

How do know? Because yesterday, at a lecture by Scalia and Bryan Garner, Garner led me and 999 other attorneys and judges in singing "Happy Birthday" to the justice.

(I also got to hear Justice Scalia's William Rehnquist imitation.)

In honor of the occasion, I suggest you strictly construe everything you read today, in light of the drafter's original intent.

Did We Dig It?

If you see the WATCHMEN movie, you'll note that the credits omit Alan Moore's name (true to his wishes), as did the V FOR VENDETTA movie. You'll also note that, true to its 80's setting, the movie features some 80's pop tunes. Not surprising that they left this one out -- and not just because it was released after the period in which the movie takes place:

Barbie's Real-Life Malibu Dream House

Mattel is celebrating Barbie's upcoming 50th anniversary by hiring an interior decorator to recreate Barbie's Malibu Dream House -- in Malibu.

I'm waiting for someone to build a real-life GI Joe Adventure Team Headquarters.

We Watched the Watchmen

When watching WATCHMEN at the Landmark earlier tonight, one thought that crossed my mind was that this movie could not have been half as effective if it had been made in the late eighties, or the early nineties, as was planned then.

It's not just the improvements in special effects; that's relative, and what's cutting edge now will be hokey in just a few years. When WATCHMEN was first serialized in comic book form in the mid-eighties, the irony of a comic book -- the home of costumed heroes for several decades -- commenting on and examining the concept of superheroes in relationship to Western civilization was potent. At that point, there had been only a few superhero movies, and no high-budget major ones apart from the Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Now that comic-book movies have all but supplanted the comic book as the superhero medium (at least in the public eye), the irony of a superhero movie commenting on and examining the superhero concept (while using the conventions of superhero movies -- suspensions of physics, "bullet time" manipulation of images, and people taking superhuman amounts of punishment)is almost as potent as the comic book was back then.

Having seen the movie, my opinion is the same as it was when I saw the first clips from the film: It's still unclear whether there should have been a WATCHMEN movie; but now that there is one, this was a pretty good stab at it. It's coming under criticism as too slavish an adaptation (and indeed, numerous scenes are copied panel for panel and word for word from the graphic novel) while never coming close to the wonderful density of the actual comic. And there is no way that the entire graphic novel, along with all the supplemental material stuck in the back of each issue, could be shoved into a single movie -- some support for the argument that the film should never be made.

But you can enjoy a good book, and enjoy an effective film adaptation of it, without regretting what got cut out or changed in the transition. So it was with WATCHMEN. There were definite missteps (particularly some ham-handed use of music behind some scenes -- Mozart's Requiem should probably join Carmina Burana as classical pieces that should never again be used seriously as film music); but I found most of the film effective as a film. Particularly good were Jackie Earl Haley's performance as Rohrschach and Billy Crudup's (and some superb motion capture's) emotionally lost god Dr. Manhattan.

The question remains whether those who never read the graphic novel -- those who, unlike me, don't find themselves recalling where they were and what they were feeling when they were reading the comics -- will think of the movie.

If they thought the DARK KNIGHT movie was bleak, wait'll they get a load of this.

U-2: No Priceline on the Horizon

If you want an MP3 version of U-2's new album, NO LINE ON THE HORIZON, you could download it from iTunes -- and have a version that will play only on iTunes, iPods and iPhones -- for $17.99.

Or you could go to Amazon.com, and buy an MP3 version of the same album that will play on iTunes, all the iToys, and any other MP3 player -- for $3.99.

When Barbies are Outlawed, only Outlaws Will Have Barbies

A delegate to the West Virginia Legislature introduced a bill this week proposing a statewide ban on the sale of Barbie dolls. According to this article, the delegate maintains that the dolls can destroy a girl's self-image.

Another delegate registered his response by plopping a pink, sparkly Barbie on his desk during the legislative session.

Frankly, if this lawmaker thinks that all it takes to destroy a girl's self-image is an absurdly-proportioned plastic doll, he's underestimating America's girls.

The Big Argument

On Thursday, hundreds gathered in Civic Center Plaza (across the street from where I lived when I was in law school) to watch the California Supreme Court hear the oral arguments on the three Proposition 8 cases. Many more watched the arguments in the San Francisco Public Library, and on the Internet where they were broadcast live.

No doubt most of the viewers had never seen a California Supreme Court argument -- or any appellate argument -- before. And no doubt they had the same experience most have who watch an appellate argument -- they were completely lost.

When I and some other attorneys took a class of high schoolers to an appellate argument, we warned them before that if someone has not read the briefs, or at least knows the basics of the case being discussed, the oral arguments will seem completely foreign. That's because the case has already been argued in written briefs; the attorneys and the justices or judges will be thoroughly familiar with the briefs and the record on appeal; and the oral argument is simply designed to clarify and focus the written arguments. Thus, to most observers, watching an appellate argument is like listening to one side of a phone call.

Terribly Trendy

Amy and I were ridiculously trendy Friday night and this morning. Last night, we went for the first time to The Edison in downtown LA. The Edison is an astounding place. It's built in the location of LA's first privately-owned power plant (built in 1910), in the basement of the Higgins building. The basement was reportedly underwater for years; but some nightclub developers rescued it and turned it into a fabulous nightspot. It's a gigantic space, theatrically lit, filled with generators, turbines, brass and copper, furnaces, glass cases, and vintage silent films projected onto copper cladding. The waiters wear 19th-century clerk's suits. It's the sort of place where a woman walks around offering cigars, cigarettes, and mints; and another wearing cellophane wings on her back offers shots of absinthe.

It's also the sort of place where the bouncers at the velvet rope turn away folks who wear sneakers or t-shirts, but enthusiastically welcome those who come in period or steampunk costumes. So when in Rome . . . .






Then this morning we drove to 3 Squares Bakery + Cafe, Hans Rockenwagner's trendy place on trendy Abbott Kinney Boulevard. After breakfast, we strolled amongst the trendy galleries and clothes places.

I think I'm trended out for the weekend.

Photos by Captain Wong Wei.

Paley Festival

Tickets for this year's Paley Festival went on sale today, and some programs have sold out already.

For the uninitiated, the Paley Festival celebrates TV shows past and present. A presentation on a show will usually screen one or two episodes, and then bring creative people and actors onto the stage for a panel discussion.

I note that one of the programs is for DOLLHOUSE. It will take place on April 19. We'll have to see if the show is still on the air when that date rolls around. (Not that cancellation will affect the program. One of the sold-out programs will screen three unaired episodes of PUSHING DAISIES.)

We've bought tickets for the program on another Whedon production, DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG. There was a screening and panel on DHSAB at the 2008 San Diego Con; and the line for it went past the entrance to the room where my cousin Lee's panel for the Media Tie-In Awards was being held. Lee, naturally, asked me why I wasn't in line to see Whedon. Of course, since Whedon writes media tie-ins (most recently, his Dark Horse comics continuing his BUFFY and FIREFLY/SERENITY series), he should have gone to Lee's panel.

How to Keep Your Teen Driver Alive and Healthy

My cousin Sam Barer -- a writer about automobiles, and a parent -- has posted this article on his blog. It's a must-read for any parent who is buying a teenager his or her first car. (Hint: Buying a high-powered rare sports car for a kid who has five minutes of driving experience is a really, really bad idea.)

Digitize Me, Cap'n!

Here's a spot-on article from today's LA Times about the conflicting desires to display our books, music and movies and to tidy up our collections by storing them in digital form.

Cover Story

Given the impossibility of reading every book in a bookstore to determine which one will entertain you, book buyers literally judge books by their covers every day. In this blog post, my cousin Tod Goldberg discusses what goes into picking a cover image -- when the author is given input into that decision.

Seven Why Strange Should Be on the Silver Screen

THE COMICS READER writer Tom Spurgeon offers a nicely-written piece about why a movie version of Marvel's DOCTOR STRANGE should be made, and should be made now. One of his points:

"An element that connects Dr. Strange to Superman and Spider-Man that rarely gets explored in his comic book is the fact that the protector of the universe chooses to live in a bad-ass looking brownstone in the middle of New York City. His home is what little kids between the coasts imagine amazing-looking city buildings to be: impressive, old, stuffed with secrets. You'd want to see Dr. Strange's reality show. You know he has deeply fascinating lunches in mens' clubs you've never even heard of. You know he goes to the theater -- he was probably drawn by Hirschfeld. You know he knows the name of his grocers and spice procurers and the people that make his coffee. You know he throws amazing parties, and is invited to same -- when the superheroes have parties you know everyone's way more psyched about them than Dr. Strange is. How is this not totally appealing?"

Designer's Eye for the Spy Guy

My Cousin Lee Goldberg's blog led me to this extremely cool blog spotlighting the design aesthetic of sixties spy films and TV -- futurism meets Playboy Club meets op art. There's little disagreement that SPECTRE's volcano lair from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is the apotheosis of spy cool.

Now Everyone's Watching the Watchmen

From the fall of 1986 through the summer of 1987, I was finishing my undergraduate degree at UCLA; and working Saturdays and alternate Sundays at Graphitti Comics on Gayley Avenue just south of the UCLA campus. It was a heady time to be a comics fan. Despite rising prices, comics were selling decent amounts, considering that many believed the medium would die out in the seventies. The rise of the direct comics market, in which distributors sold comics to retailers on a non-returnable basis in return for deep discounts, had fostered several competitors to Marvel and DC, including First, Eclipse, and Pacific (all gone now) and Dark Horse (which debuted in the mid-eighties and is still going strong today). Japanese manga companies began to form American subsidiaries and work with American comics companies to reprint translated manga titles here -- the roots of the manga boom that would burst upon American publishing 15 years later.

And many folks who had given up comics when they got interested in cars, or sports, or the opposite sex -- and others who had never picked up a comic in their lives -- were being sucked into collecting by the Marvel and DC comics put out by writer/artist Frank Miller and writer Alan Moore. The biggest draws were two titles that we called at the time mini-series, and that would later be deemed graphic novels issued in serialized form: Miller's four-issue THE DARK KNIGHT (later named after its first installment, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, featuring a middle-aged Batman drawn back into service in a chaotic future; and WATCHMEN, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's 12-issue thriller/alternative world/satire saga that brought an unprecedented literary depth to a story about men and women who feel compelled to dress up in tights and fight (or commit) crimes.

Both THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN would be collated into one-volume editions in the coming years, editions that remain in print to this day. (To the chagrin of Alan Moore, who reportedly had a deal in which the rights to the characters would revert to the creators once the book went out of print -- part of the reason why he refuses any involvement with the current WATCHMEN projects, and has refused to let his name appear on the film).

Cut to the latter part of the first decade of the 21st Century. A Batman film called THE DARK KNIGHT (unrelated to Frank Miller's series) has become one of the highest grossing movies of all time. Miller's own on-again, off-again relationship with Hollywood has resulted in two hit film versions of his work for Dark Horse (SIN CITY and 300), the former co-directed by Miller; and he has rounded out 2008 by directing a thoroughly awful adaptation of his mentor Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT.

And sitting across the street from the office building on Olympic where I work -- in the same place where an IRON MAN billboard stood in the summer of 2008 and a Silver Surfer billboard stood in 2007 -- is a billboard of Rorschach, the complex, noble, and deeply whacko parody of Steve Ditko's objectivist heroes The Question and Mr. A, who was the heart and soul (and most disturbing POV character) in WATCHMEN.

Did we expect, reading those brightly colored, densely written pages of WATCHMEN in 1986, that a $100 million movie version of the story would be billboarded all over urban areas in 2009? Certainly not. We actually expected to see the WATCHMEN movie made sometime around 1989 or 1990. Terry Gilliam was slated as director then; and in light of his work on TIME BANDITS and BRAZIL, he seemed the best suited to realize the work on film. Sam Hamm, who at that time had written what was rumored to be a brillian BATMAN script (a version of which was put on screen in 1989, becoming a huge hit) was attached to the project too. And with media attention focused on WATCHMEN, the movie seemed sure to be made.

Alas, it took a couple more decades, and the comics movie renaissance launched when Marvel finally succeeded in getting its characters onto the screen, for a movie version of WATCHMEN to be realized. And so I can glance across Olympic Boulevard and see, like a message to my future self from the person I was 22 years ago, WATCHMEN billboards.

Funny, on weekends I still dress the same as I did back then.

No-Cussing Week

LA County is expected to declare the first week of March a no-cussing week. I think I foiled that when I stepped out of bed this morning.

Paul Harvey: The Final Page

Another voice from my youth (and the youth of anyone who has listened to AM radio in the last 50 years) has gone silent. I didn't agree with the guy's politics, but both old-fashioned radiomen and old-fashioned storytellers are precious resources, and the loss of one is a loss to us all.

Shake It Like a Mint

My willpower is getting a workout. Shamrock Shakes are in at McDonalds. I stopped in this afternoon and had the first SS -- hell, the first McDonalds' shake -- that I've had in years. It was magnificently minty. Not a hint of chemical aftertaste. Not even that close-proximity-to-fries aftertaste I've come to associate with McDonalds' shakes. Must... resist.. . rapture...of the mint.

Score on Gore

If you've got a strong stomach, I recommend this quiz on bloodstains. I got about half right. (About 15 years ago I went to a seminar at the LA County Coronor's office about forensic science, but I don't think that that helped.)

The Talking Kindle 2 is Silenced

Authors Guild successfully kills Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature, it’s now optional for publishers


The Author's Guild has persuaded Amazon to make a feature in the Kindle 2 that reads books out loud optional for publishers to activate.  The Guild's concern was apparently that Kindles could become de facto audiobooks, and thus cut into sales of audiobooks.  (Never mind that the Kindle wouldn't provide the benefits of audiobooks, such as expressive readers).  Makes one wonder if they will seek to turn off the text-to-audio feature in Microsoft Outlook -- the one that reads your e-mail to you.

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Fury-ous Negotiating

Samuel L. Jackson's Ironclad Marvel Deal - E! Online

In the comics, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, has headlined several comics series, but his titles could never go the distance.  He has been far more successful as the Marvel Universe's favorite supporting player, showing up in other folks' comics to lend a sense of continuity.

Samuel L. Jackson, who played Fury in the post-credits sequence of IRON MAN, has signed on to serve the same function in Marvel Studios' future flicks.  The rumored deal would have Jackson portraying the SHIELD ramrod in IRON MAN 2 and at least eight other Marvel movies.

Good thing the deal didn't fall through. Marvel might have had to turn to the only other actor who has played Fury in live action -- The Hoff.

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Would You Believe -- $86.99?

Amazon has the complete GET SMART series on DVD for the perfect price: $86.99.

A Brighter Night for THE DARK NIGHT

THE DARK KNIGHT has reached a billion dollars in international box office; and it's won two Oscars so far -- including the crucial above-the-line Best Supporting Actor award for Heath Ledger. It is losing a lot of the technical Oscars to Academy darlings like BENJAMIN BUTTON, but that's still a bit of respect for the 70-year-old Caped Crusader.

Cafe Balcony Interrupted

Alas, one of my favorite wi-fi watering holes, Cafe Balcony at Arizona and Centinela, will be closing for a couple of months at the end of February. The building in which it's located was sold, and the cafe lost its lease. It is looking to relocate to Santa Monica.

I'm sitting there now, doing (or not doing) some weekend work, enjoying a cup of siphon coffee, and savoring the last days of a wonderful place to sit and blog.

Written SF and Movies: Light Years Apart

A few years ago, an article in the LA Times calendar section lamented that while science fiction has been a profitable genre for films, the ideas for SF films had run dry, leading to nothing but remakes of old films.

Which of course led those of us who have read SF novels to think of the multitude of the great novels that have never been adapted to film.

Here, John Scalzi discusses why your favorite SF novel will probably never be turned into a movie.

Who Drinks the Watchmen

WATCHMEN Nite Owl Dark Roast Coffee

Organic Coffee Cartel is selling an odd item of merchandising for the upcoming WATCHMEN film: a limited edition run of organic coffee, "Nite Owl Dark Roast," in a collectible can.

OCC is promoting this as the "World's First Movie Tie-In Coffee." I have to disagree. When we were in Japan in 2007, UCC Coffee was selling canned iced coffee in cans emblazoned with characters from the animated movie NEON GENESIS EVANGELION 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE. I collected several of the cans.

The Skinny on Vaio Lifestyle PC

If I didn't already have a netbook and a 15.4" laptop . . . .






If anything can entice recession-wracked folks to buy a new notebook computer that costs more than $500, it's the recent Fry's ad of a guy pulling a Sony Vaio lifestyle PC out of the vest pocket of his sportscoat. Now that is a slick-looking Babbage engine.

Photos are from Gizmodo.com

Video Spying

I'm very glad that books such as THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TV SPYS are still around. In an era in which you can google the most obscure two-episode TV series, and find treatises about it in Wikipedia, video of it at Hulu, and multi-stanza fan poems about it at twoepisodeseriesfanatics.com, one might legitimately fear that encyclopedias of genre TV on honest-to-god paper would become anachronisms. Fortunately, that's not the case.

I'm a sucker for TV reference books. I got this one delivered at work yesterday, and by this morning I'd read several entries. The author, Wesley Britton, neatly balances his roles as historian and fan -- the entries are neither breathless nor boring. I do take issue with his definitions of some shows as Spy shows -- I think characterizing THE SAINT, WONDER WOMAN, and THE X-FILES as spy shows is stretching -- but at least he starts his book with a working definition of spy TV that justifies his choices.

I'm also glad to see my cousins Lee Goldberg, Tod Goldberg, and Burl Barer repeatedly mentioned -- indeed, Lee's blurb takes up half the back cover. I like to think that the history of video spies cannot be written without mentioning my family.

L.A. County Courthouse Seizes Arsenals

Enough Weapons to Oufit a Small Army Seized at Courthouses

This is not a comforting report to those of us who frequent LA County courthouses.  If these are the weapons that are seized, how many get through security?

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Antique Rayguns with Attitude

WETA, the New Zealand special effects house and prop manufacturer, sells these cunning old-fashioned prop rayguns. The merchandise itself is pricey enough to discourage the idle buyer, but the smart-ass sales pitches are hilarious.

Metatextual Buccaneers

Those who have read the graphic novel WATCHMEN (a growing number, since publicity for next month's movie has made sales of the 22-year-old graphic novel soar)will recall TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER. The backstory was that because superheroes were real in the WATCHMEN world, superhero comics never became popular. Instead, pirate comics became all the rage. In the background of several chapters of WATCHMEN, a young boy free-reads an issue of TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER; and its nightmarish tale becomes an ironic counterpoint and a Greek chorus to the actual storyline.

TOTBF won't quite fit into the upcoming movie; but in a bizarre yet cool move, the WATCHMEN director is releasing an animated direct-to-DVD TOTBF feature to coincide with the movie release. Here is the trailer:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

In Brightest Day

Comic Book Resources > ReTales - 2-12-2009

In this era of blockbuster comic book movies, with the actual comics themselves receding in importance, we can forget the grip a comic book can have on a young fan.  Here, comics shop owner and Comic Book Resources columnist Jud Meyers tells of the day when, as a kid, he sneaked out of his home in Long Island and took an unauthorized trip to DC Comics to speak his peace about what was happening in GREEN LANTERN.

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Putting the "T" in Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day yesterday, Amy and I decided to skip the hassle of the Valentine's Day dinner, and instead opted for an afternoon tea at the Tudor House in Santa Monica.





The service was great; the food, tea and champagne were quite civilized; and the setting (a sparkling afternoon by the sea) was hard to beat. Oh, and the company was nice, too.

Kindling the Heart

After selling out its initial version of its Kindle e-book reader (and building up a substantial waiting list), Amazon has put out a second version, which is reportedly smaller, lighter, and has a larger capacity.

One somewhat unexpected market for the Kindle: Judges. Most federal courts (including all of the ones in California) require court papers to be filed in electronic (pdf) form; and according to anecdotal evidence, federal judges have been acquiring Kindles to allow them to review court papers away from their chambers.

As for me, I still read books the old-fashioned way: on paper.

Apple vs. Palm: the in-depth analysis - Engadget

For those who care about the future of smart phones: a lawyer reviews the patents that might be at issue in the saber-rattling between Apple and Palm about whether the forthcoming Palm Pre infringes Apple's iPhone patents -- or whether the iPhone infringes some of Palm's patents.

Blossom Dearie, R.I.P.

SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK premiered when I was about eight, and it played a large part in my early education (addicted as I was to Sat-Am TV). I learned my multiplication tables from it without even realizing that was what I was being taught.

I've been fortunate enough to see in concert the main musical force behind SR, Bob Dorough, as well as Jack Sheldon, the gravelly-voiced trumpeter behind "Conjunction Junction" and "I'm Just a Bill." But I never got to see Blossom Dearie, the wispy-voiced chanteuse who sang "Unpack Your Adjectives" and the ethereally-beautiful "Figure Eight":

Embedded Video

Ms. Dearie died last weekend at the age of 82, after several decades of performing live and on record. But her voice will keep on teaching kids forever.

It Could Stop a Clock

There's something about a clock that speeds up and slows down, and yet keeps time and looks fabulous, that appeals to me.

Embedded Video

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Coraline: Unlocking the Papered-Over Door

Some years ago, I bought Neil Gaiman's book CORALINE in hardback, but somehow never got around to reading it. More recently, I bought the hardback graphic novel adaptation of CORALINE, by P. Craig Russell, but I haven't read it yet either. This weekend, Henry Selick's stop-motion-animated movie adaptation of CORALINE opened in 3-D in theaters; and in light of the critical acclaim for it (and my admiration for both Gaiman's writing and Selick's skills) I figured we'd better go see it.

I'm very glad I did.

CORALINE is one of those extraordinary movies that uses a high level of craft to make you completely forget about the craft, forget about the 3-D gimmickry, forget that these are wooden figures being painstakingly moved by hand a few millimeters between frames, and just get sucked into the story.

The movie plays to both Gaiman's and Selick's strengths, in that it combines the ancient with the modern. Gaiman often puts modern characters through the paces of old stories and fairy tales, where a likeable (though usually not entirely) character enters another world and must learn and use the rules of that world. Selick works with the ancient art of puppetry; and stop-motion animation, one of the oldest kinds of visual trickery in film (one that is possible only with film), which gives the movie a tactile reality that computer animation cannot (yet) achieve. Yet he also uses the more modern technology of 3-D (far more advanced than the old red-blue-lensed cardboard glasses) and high-definition photography to make his imagery even more vivid.

Selick puts out few movies, likely because they are so time-consuming. (The lasting merchandising value of his NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, however, shows that his work can be commercially valuable.) Each one he does is a treat.

And hey, how many fantasy films (let alone stop-motion-animated ones) are set in Ashland, Oregon?

As for Gaiman, one can hope that the newly-Newberry-awarded writer's work achieves more box office success here than the last film adaptation of his work, the enjoyable but underperforming STARDUST.

Photographing That Which Is There and That Which Isn't

Here are a couple of fascinating photographer sites that I've come across, mainly because the photographers have photosets dealing with  cosplay.  Eric Hoeber
creates black and white prints with an old fashioned large -format camera.  Ed Pingol is a wedding photographer who features stunning color photos on his website.

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Quiet Capitol

Earlier this week, business took me to the state capital, Sacramento. I snapped these photos of the capitol building. It was just as quiet as the photos showed -- no one going in or out. I guess the stress of dealing with the state budget has worn everyone out.

Two things I noticed about the neighborhood around the capitol building: everything shuts down at 5 pm. Even the local Rite Aid closes at 5. The only exception: watering holes. The other is that the city seems way too small to contain all of the legislators, bureaucrats and lobbyists that inhabit Sacramento.

He Was Innocennnnnnnnnnt

news from me - ARCHIVES - February 03, 2009

Mark Evanier blogs about BRANDED.  I have to admit that I remember the opening credits to the series far better than I remember the series itself.  And in fact the credits are practically a mini-episode in themselves.  Particularly memorable are Chuck Conners's superior breaking Conner's sword across his knee (I remember wondering why army swords were so flimsy that they could be snapped like that); and the deep-voiced singer stretching the word "innocent" to match the song's meter.

I found Chuck Connors's earlier series, THE RIFLEMAN, to be more memorable.  Any guy who could raise his son as a single father, and yet handily dispatch bad guys with his rapid-fire Winchester rifle, was pretty darn impressive.  The Rifleman would certainly never let his rifle get snapped across some officer's knee.

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Steelers Win Nailbiter Superbowl

As the scion of a structural-steel family, I'm happy to see the Steelers win an unbelievably close Superbowl. I'm glad that I managed to catch all of the history-making plays (including Harrison's 100-yard run), despite being stranded for about 40 minutes at Starbucks during the Third Quarter.

I'm surprised that (to my knowledge) the upcoming WOLVERINE movie didn't have a Superbowl trailer (Lamarr Woodley's Wolverine tattoo doesn't count).

One thing that I regret about Superbowls: the losing team always gets ushered off the gridiron without a word or interview -- even where, as here, they come within a few points of winning.

Joe Knows

Saw the Superbowl ad for G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA.

They may actually get me into the theater to watch this thing.

Super-Commercial Sunday

I'm sitting down to watch the annual Super-Commercial Sunday.

I think they're supposed to play some kind of football game during the breaks.

Community Organizer and Comics Collector

An Onion story after my own heart.

Tod Goldberg: Hypothermia For History

While I was whining about finding a TV for the inauguration, my cousin Tod was actually at the inauguration, freezing cold and all. (Why can't they amend the constitution to provide that the inauguration either (a) occur in May or (b) take place in Florida, California, or Hawaii?)

Thunder-Joe!

When I first saw the Sean Connery Bond movie THUNDERBALL, I thought that the climactic underwater battle looked like something dreamed up by a kid playing with his GI Joes.  (In fact, I seem to recall that the GI Joe frogman costumes and accessories were inspired by that scene in THUNDERBALL.)

Apparently I'm not alone in making that association.  In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Stephen Sommers, director of the upcoming live-action GI Joe flick, says:

"I always loved the old Bonds . . .  In a very contemporary way, G.I. Joe is inspired by the memory of the kind of movies I saw when I was younger. I remember being in the theater for Thunderball and the big underwater battle at the end of that movie just blew my socks off. In G.I. Joe, there's an underwater battle under the polar icecap that's Thunderball times 10!"

Almost makes me excited to see the movie -- even though it's, y'know, a Stephen Sommers movie based on a bunch of toys.  (And not even the original, manly, full-size GI Joes, either -- it's the tiny, barely-articulated Joes from the '80's.  Sigh.)

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Important Safety Tip About Home Offices

A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran » Archive » The Home Office: Important Safety Tips

Comics writer/artist Colleen Doran advises those who work out of owned homes to beware of mortgage agreements and insurance policies that forbid doing business in the home.

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Will This MADness Stop?

news from me - ARCHIVES - January 23, 2009

Mad Magazine is a survivor.  When the great EC Comics line of the early '50's died a gory, hideous death, slain by a Comics Code designed to put EC's best-selling comics out of business, Mad survived by transforming itself from a color comic book to a black-and-white larger-format magazine -- and became a gigantic seller.  Mad survived its eventual sale to EC's competitor, DC Comics.  It survived the leaving and eventual deaths of some of its most distinguished contributors -- Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Will Elder, publisher Max Gaines, Don Martin.

But will it survive the general malaise in the magazine industry?

Mark Evanier conveys the news that Mad is going to quarterly publication, and that its various ancillary publications are being axed.  Eventually, Mad the magazine may go away, leaving only Mad the brand name.  Alfred E. Newman could lose his trademarked smile at last as he is laid off.

If the economy is going down the toilet, we need some toilet humor.  Let's hope Mad survives.

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Consider the Keyboard

Datamancer.net - Technical Art and Steampunk Contraptions

For those who think computer keyboards are doomed to be merely functional hunks of plastic, take a look at the Web page of this artist who creates stunning custom-made keyboards out of brass, wood, and old typewriter keys.  These are far too expensive for my tastes, but they're beautiful to look at.

So is his fully-functional wood , leather, copper and brass laptop -- complete with wind-up key.

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Watching the Inauguration

On Tuesday mornings, if I don't have court or an out of the office meeting in the morning, I like to go to the gym before work. This past Tuesday, I went a half hour early so that I could get to the office before 8:30 am and watch the inauguration.

In years past, I had picked up a couple of portable TVs -- a tiny pocket one that barely picked up a color picture, and a slightly larger LCD one that has inputs for cable and RCA jacks. I had intended to bring the latter to work; but when I plugged in its AC adaptor the night before to test it, I heard a hissing sound, smelled burning plastic, and saw smoke billowing from the adaptor. (It was like the pre-credits sequence in MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, minus the cool music.) I tossed the adaptor and decided to use the tiny TV.

Alas, when I got to work and started the TV up, the picture punked out about five minutes in. (Since the TV will be utterly useless, not just functionally useless, once we go to all digital broadcasting, I tossed the TV into our office building's electronics recycling bin.)

CNN.com came to the rescue. I watched the inauguration on my computer monitor. (Since I was unable to work on the monitor and watch at the same time, I took the chance to file piles of paper around my desk.)

Even though we've had the ability to broadcast live TV over the Internet for a decade, it still amazes some people. One of my co-workers looked into my office, shook his head in amazement, and wondered aloud why we have TV anymore.

First Family Book Signing of the New Year

This afternoon, I bicycled up to Westwood for a book signing at the Mystery Bookstore featuring my cousin, Lee Goldberg, and his writing partner, Bill Rabkin.



Lee was publicizing the latest media tie-in book he wrote, MR. MONK IS MISERABLE (which is enjoying anything but miserable sales; it's in its 3rd printing).








Bill was promoting his first tie-in novel for the TV series PSYCH.

I intended to head home and blog about it in detail. But in the time I biked the four miles from Westwood to my neighborhood (all downhill), took in dry cleaning and had dinner, Lee had already driven back to his home base in the valley and written up his own blog account, complete with photos. The man plainly knows how to write on a deadline.

They are Legion

This past Thursday's episode of SMALLVILLE was a valentine to fans of the fifty-year-old DC team title The Legion of Superheroes. The episode guest-starred the three founding members of the team -- Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy (yeah, I know, but it was the fifties). And although previous SMALLVILLE episodes featured watered-down versions of DC characters, this was indeed the Legion from the comics --goofy code names,flight rings, 31-Century slang ("Grife!"), references to the Legion of Substitute Heroes, and all.

By my calculation, this is actually the fourth version of the Legion to appear on TV. The Legion had guest appearances on the '90's animated Superman series and the recent Justice League animated series, as well as its own two-season animated show on the CW. But this was its first live-action adaptation.

The Legion's appearance on this show was apropos. The Legion (specifically, these three Legionnaires) first appeared in the Superboy comics series as a group of far-future teens who were inspired by Superboy's 20th-Century feats; and Superboy remained a member of the Legion for about a quarter of a century. And SMALLVILLE is the spiritual descendent of the Superboy series, although Clark Kent has never been called that. On the other hand, the Superboy who appeared in the comics with the Legion was a teenager, like them. At this point in the long-running SMALLVILLE series, Clark is in his mid-to-late 20's; and agewise is more of a Scoutmaster to the Legion kids than a peer.

Nevertheless, the appearance was a treat. I'd like to see a follow-up episode where Clark Kent heads to the future and meets the rest of the Legion. But depicting the entire Legion would probably blow an entire season's worth of the series budget.

The Splice of Life

What Is a Comma Splice, and How Do I Fix It?


For those who want to improve their writing, I recommend this article about the proper use of comma splices.  A comma splice is a combination of two independent clauses, using a comma as a connector.

Sometimes it's proper, sometimes it isn't.

Hat tip to Emma Bull for the link.  Emma gets extra points for noting fan-fiction writers' fondness for comma splices.

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More Anime Los Angeles Stuff

For anyone who can't get enough of seeing me make a fool of myself in costume, the Manticore Society blog has photos of the Steampunk costume gathering at Anime Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago.



More photos can be found on the blog "All That Wanders."

Andrew Wyeth and John Mortimer, R.I.P.

This has been a bad week for older creative people.

Spidey Helps Obama; Obama Helps Spidey

My comics retailer, COMICS INK of Culver City, was good enough to save me a copy of this past week's issue of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which reportedly sold out the day it was released. That's because it included a backup story in which Spidey, covering the inauguration as news photog Peter Parker, springs into action and foils a (really stupid) plot by his old enemy The Chameleon. The story obviously plays off of Obama's comments during the campaign that his favorite super-hero is Spider-Man.

As an old fan of Spidey's habit of trash-talking villains, I must admit I laughed out loud at his quip as he smashed Chameleon in the chops: "Ya hear that, Chameleon? The President-Elect here just appointed me . . . secretary of shuttin' you up!"

Mondays are Blue Again

The first issue of the new BLUE MONDAY miniseries by writer-artists Chynna Clugston is out, after a multi-year hiatus for the BLUE MONDAY characters. Clugston seems to have benefited from the time away from the series, because her already-impressive art is sharper than ever. It shows more attention to design and to balance of whites and blacks in the interior art. As for the story, Clugston continues to depict early-90's teens obsessed with mid-80's music who are relatively smart, but nevertheless do dumb things -- much like real teens. That judgment part of the brain takes a while to develop. Highly recommended.

Kona Vacation: The Wrap-up

If anyone has been following my posts about our Hawaiian vacation, I'm sorry to leave you hanging. The combination of a spotty Internet connection and a desire to actually experience the vacation rather than merely blog about it limited my posts while we were on the island. And unpacking, catching up with work, and general exhaustion prevented me from finishing up until now.



On Friday the ninth we went on a whale-watching cruise aboard one of the Body Glove boats. This is the time of year when humpback whales come to the waters off Hawaii to make little (well, relatively little) whales. Hence the numerous whale watching excursions heading out into the bay.

During our three-hour cruise, we ended up seeing only one humpback


but we got a great look at a pod of melon-head whales (one of those critters that, like a killer whale, is sorta a whale and sorta a dolphin) which, the guide said, were rarely sighted in that area.



After the trip, our wanderings brought us to an oddity: The Starbucks in Kailua Kona -- which, by the way, doesn't serve Kona coffee.



The next morning we went on a snorkel trip on the Fair Winds II. We had initially been booked on a trip to an area where we had never snorkeled; but that trip was canceled, and we went to the place we snorkeled the last time we were at the Big Island: Captain Cook's monument.

But we had no complaint. The crew took good care of us, and we had some great snorkeling. Amy saw a moray eel, and we both saw numerous tropical fish, including some huge parrotfish. Plus, during the trip, we saw about four humpback whales, including a mother and calf -- several more than we saw on the whale watching cruise.

Sunday morning brought the only storm we had during our stay -- a two-hour blow with 30-knot winds and heavy rain. During the storm, we saw two men snorkeling in the choppy waters directly off the rocky outcroppings of the shore. The two men managed to make it up onto one of the outcroppings. One man ran and sheltered behind a wall while the other was still struggling to pull himself up onto the rocks. If they were friends, I hope the friendship ended right there.

After the storm was over, the weather was beautiful. We rode our bikes back into Kailua and dropped them off at the rental place, hit the local Hilo Hattie store for souvenirs, and took a last amble through town.





That afternoon, we watched the sunset from the resort's pool area. We saw the sun go down in a perfectly clear sky -- and as it disappeared, we saw the green flash.

We finished up the day at Bongo Ben's for dinner, and then reluctantly packed.



On Monday, we drove the 100 miles back to the Hilo airport, and flew home after a great vacation.

Farewell, Hawaii. We will be back.



You can find more of my photos from the trip here.

Patrick McGoohan and Ricardo Montalban, R.I.P.

Today brought the sad news that two giants of the big and small screen, Patrick McGoohan and Ricardo Montalban, passed away this week.

McGoohan was brilliant as Number Six in THE PRISONER, a secret agent in the predecessor show, SECRET AGENT (duh), Dr. Syn in Disney's DR. SYN ALIAS THE SCARECROW, and numerous heavies in movies.

Montalban was, of course, Mr. Roarke, Khan Noonian Singh in STAR TREK, a villian in the NAKED GUN movies, and a pitchman of rich corinthian leather. More recently he parodied his movie persona in recurring roles in animated TV series, such as Rodrieguez on FREAKAZOID and Sr. Senior, Sr. on KIM POSSIBLE.



Montalban also said something on a TONIGHT SHOW episode that has stuck with me. Never look down on someone who has a foreign accent, he advised. That's someone who can speak more than one language.

Mazel Tov!

Congratulations to my brother Steve and his fiancee Dawn, who are getting married in May.

Kona's Moonlit Waters

Taken at about 4:30 this morning.

Vacation Reading

I find book exchange shelves in vacation spots vaguely romantic. I imagine the beaten-up paperbacks within to have traveled the globe, snatched up in moments of repose during adventure-filled journeys.

As usual for one of my vacations, I've dragged with me more reading material than I can consume (particularly since I've added to it, as discussed below). I brought Michael Chabon's THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION (I'm halfway through it), Max Allan Collin's A KILLING IN COMICS (a whodunit set in the comics biz in 1948), three graphic novels from Phil and Kaja Foglio's "Girl Genius" series (sat around for a couple of years because I couldn't find the time for them), and a couple of volumes of manga. I've just about finished the Girl Genius books, have cracked the Collins book, and have already read one of the stories in the Westlake omnibus book I bought today. It's wonderful to have time to read.

Hawaii 2009 -- Days 3 and 4

The scene from our lanai, a few hours ago:




Yesterday, after experiencing lousy service at Green Flash Coffee for breakfast (20 minutes to get our drinks -- we got them after our breakfast sandwiches had been prepared -- and one drink was just poured coffee!) we went to Kahaluu beach, where I did some snorkling. There was an amazing variety of sea life just a few yards offshore. That day, like today, started out sunny, but clouded up in the afternoon. We finished the day with steaks at the Kona Inn restaurant, where we witnessed the restaurant's amazing belt-driven ceiling fan system (there is a central motor that drives a series of belts operating all of the ceiling fans).

Today, Amy went horseback riding in the morning. (I opted out of that, since it's been just two years since I fell off a horse during my last Hawaii visit, and broke my wrist.) Before leaving, she had a much more positive experence at Green Flash Coffee. (Guess we just hit them at the wrong time.) While she was riding a horse, I rode my rented bicycle east through Kailua, and then north along Highway 19 until just before the Kona Airport. (The highway shoulder is quite accommodating for bicyclers -- there are special lanes for bikers to use in crossing the on-ramps). I visited a number of stores, including Kona Bay Books. There, I engaged in a vacation tradition from my childhood -- I bought an "old" book (Donald Westlake's LEVINE, in a 25-year-old paperback edition) and an old comic book (an issue of World's Finest from 1967, with a silly-but-entertaining story). The chatty lady at the bookstore remarked that mine was the second Westlake book she had sold that day. She hadn't realized that Westlake passed away last week, leading to various tributes and to folks like me picking up his books.

This evening, we had another delighful dinner experience, at Huggo's on the Rocks (at the same seaside location where Java on the Rocks serves breakfast). Nothing says "vacation" quite like sipping fruity frozen cocktails under the light of tiki torches with the sea roaring below you and a live band playing acousting Hawaiian music (with a hula dancer, yet).

Some photos can be found here. More will be posted when I get to a faster, more reliable Internet connection.

Owning the USA (Network Media Tie-Ins, That Is)

As readers of this blog may know, my cousin Lee Goldberg writes the tie-in novels for the USA Network mystery series MONK. His brother Tod writes the tie-ins for another USA mystery series, BURN NOTICE. Now an unofficial Goldberg -- William Rabkin, Lee's writing partner for over tweo decades -- has put out his first media tie-in novel for yet another USA mystery series, PSYCH. Yep, Goldbergs across the USA.

Kona Vacation -- Days 1 and 2

Right after the Anime LA convention, Amy and I boarded a plane on January 5 and flew off for our 2008 vacation -- delayed to early 2009. We wanted to go back to Hawaii, and since we had last been on the Big Island in 1999, we decided to go back -- this time, to the Kona side of the island. That's where I'm posting these deathless words.



Monday was spent entirely flying to Hilo, and then driving the 100 miles from the Hilo airport to Kailua-Kona. (They don't call it the big island for nothing!) Our arrival was complicated by two factors. First, the key we were left in a lock-box would not open our unit. (That was rectified that night, thank goodness.) Second, we arrived after 9:30 pm, and discovered that most of the restaurants close up no later than 9. We ended up at the local Bubba Gump Shrimp location, which fortunately was open late.

Today was absolutely gorgeous. The temperature has hovered between the upper 60's at night and the upper 70's during the day, all with that intoxicatingly balmy Hawaiian atmosphere. The weather today was clear. We are in a second-floor condo with the waves crashing against lava rocks below us. It is stereotypically Hawaiian.



We began the day by hiking over to Java on the Rocks for breakfast. This is an alfresco restaurant/bar right next to the lava-rock coastline, with the waves crashing nearby. (It becomes more of a bar in the evening.)



I had a magnificent cup of Kona coffee, and we shared a plate of tropical fruit.

We were joined at breakfast by an inquisitive gecko, who walked around on both Amy and me.





We then walked the rest of the way into town, and prowled the shops. I had an ulterior motive of replacing a long-billed baseball cap I bought in Kona back in 1999. The hat had blown into the Pacific the last time I visited Hawaii, in 2006. But long-billed baseball caps have passed out of fashion; the store where I bought it didn't have any. But I did buy a different hat, a pair of Crocs, and an aloha shirt (I have so many of those that a shirt must really speak to me to be selected). We had lunch at the Kona Canoe Club, overlooking the bay; and damned if we didn't see dolphins leaping and spinning in front of us. Talk about putting on a show for the tourists . . . .

We rented bicycles in town and rode them back to our complex, after signing up for a few activities (nimbly dodging the offers of discounts if we merely devoted a few hours to time-share presentations). We then walked to Lava Java for dinner. LJ is a wi-fi watering hole plus; it serves up not only coffee, but breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. I had a delicious mahi mahi entree in some kind of sweet coconut sauce. We then walked into the center of town again and back to the complex. All together, we walked three miles and bicycled another mile, not counting the walking around we did in town. Got to burn off those calories . . . .

What I Did During New Years' Weekend

I attended Anime Los Angeles, held at the Airport Marriott. This turned out to be an excellent location; the con didn't have the space problems previous Anime LA cons have had.

Some things about this con were similar to previous Anime LA's. Our friends from out of state attended, and even stayed with us the night before the con. Other friends were there too.

What was different was that, for the first time, I decided to join in the fun and attend in costume one day. One of the trends in costuming is "steampunk" -- Jules Verne style costumes that postulate some form of advanced technology in the 19th or early 20th century eras. For some reason, that appealed to me. Hence, the costume -- which, with the exception of the bowler and the walking stick (both of which I acquired at the con) all came out of my closet.

More photos later.

What Did I Do Over the New Year's Long Weekend?

I'll blog about it later. But here's a clue:



Photo by Kevin Lillard.

The Devils under the Sea

DIAL B for BLOG - THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMIC BLOGAZINE


The latest edition of DIAL B FOR BLOG -- the beautifully-laid out and illustrated blog that celebrates comics from days gone by -- profiles one of the more unusual comics of the Silver Age, SEA DEVILS  The Sea Devils were a quartet of skin divers who had no super powers, and who operated in a fairly realistic world -- except that they regularly encountered aliens, giants, and other fantastic creatures undersea.  Probably the biggest factor in the series's relative success (it lasted 35 issues, along with three tryout issues in SHOWCASE) was the phenomenal art of Russ Heath, particularly on the covers where he used various tonal effects to give the covers a painted look.

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Follow-Up: Viacom Reaches Deal with Time-Warner by Making America's Children Cry

Viacom pursued its contract negotiations with Time-Warner in one of the lowest ways possible: It went after its youngest audience. And it worked. Per the LA Times:

Viacom had purchased newspaper advertisements, featuring a tearful Dora the Explorer, and placed an on-screen crawl on its channels to alert viewers to the impending programming blackout. The ads encouraged viewers to complain to Time Warner Cable.

The tactic worked -- parents reported having to soothe children who were upset over the prospect of not being able to watch their favorite shows on Nickelodeon, including "SpongeBob SquarePants."

"Our family will cancel Time Warner if a suitable agreement is not reached," threatened Debra Cooper, a mother of two who lives in San Diego. "I admit SpongeBob's laugh drives me nuts, but he is part of our family, as is George Lopez, 'Home Improvement,' 'i-Carly,' and all the rest."

Cooper said she called Time Warner Cable twice Wednesday to lobby for the channel. The company was inundated with calls, and executives from both companies put their holiday plans on hold to return to the negotiations.