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Tuesday, September 21, 2021

State of the weblog address...

Linus: Oh, well. It was a short summer, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: And it looks like it's going to be a long winter

For some reason I always think of that line from one of the more obscure Peanuts animated specials this time of year. September 1969 release, I was just months from being born then. And more relevant a few weeks ago when I started to write this.

Anyway, if anyone is still reading this... I'll resist the natural urge to ask "Why" and just say "Thank you". And feel free to chime in if there's anything you'd like me to post about.  I know this exists mostly for my own amusement and future reference, but that's no reason anyone else shouldn't be amused or informed by it as well.

So, let's go around the horn on some topics I think I might want to discuss here, but history shows I won't get around to.

So a TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION starts in a few days. There was a time in my life when that's all that would be on my mind at this point. Instead, I didn't even know that it was a thing until a few weeks ago. I kind of liked the first ad I saw, which I didn't even realize was FOUNDATION going in. I allowed myself to get unreasonably enthusiastic for a few minutes, until I looked it up and saw who the writer/producer was, not someone to be excited about, and the second ad I watched was less interesting. I'll probably still watch it, having learned no lessons from I, ROBOT and THE BICENTENNIAL MAN, maybe waiting until the first half of the season is over (I have Apple TV+ free for a few more months. Unfortunately you can see why they have to offer it for free, since it has easily the worst interface of any of the main streaming sites).  Before that, I should probably write some more about Asimov here, for posterity. His writing, in particular the original FOUNDATION trilogy, was a big part of my life in my teens, though it's been a while since I revisited it.

Other TV I've actually watched which might come up, TED LASSO is still enjoyable, if less so than the first season. The last year of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE was pretty decent. SCHMIGADOON was an entertaining diversion. The "last" year of BOSCH was a bit meandering, but okay. LUPIN started off pretty good, didn't really deliver on the promise with the back half, but was okay. JUPITER'S LEGACY, kind of hard to believe that got made and released. INVINCIBLE was decent in places, but all kind of inexplicable. I did discover and love TASKMASTER after the producers started putting it on-line. Other than that I mostly still watch older stuff. Watched all of STAR TREK - DEEP SPACE NINE a few months ago, most of it for the first time. Better than I expected. Carried on to watching highlights of VOYAGER, also mostly for the first time, and it was mostly worse than I expected. 

In politics, the superfluous Canadian election just wrapped up, with the Liberals winding up with a minority government almost identical to the one they won just two years ago.  Let's see if this one lasts the full four years. For me, that was close to the ideal result. In general my views on most issues lie a bit to the left or the Liberals, but maybe not quite as far left as the NDP or Green Party (or in some cases even further left than any of them, but tempered by being realistic enough to know the country will never go that far left in my lifetime). So a Liberal party pulled to the left by being forced to get the cooperation of the NDP for a majority puts most things closer to my liking. For the local riding, I voted for the Liberal, although as usual I ended up regretting it. Federally this is a pretty safe Liberal riding, has been ever since I moved here back in 1988, so I could probably get away with voting for the NDP or (when they run a candidate) Green without risking helping a Conservative get in. But I'm never 100% sure (especially with the riding picking Doug Ford in the last provincial election), so in this stupid first-past-the-post system I always play it safe. And then the Liberal wins by 35%. There really needs to be a better system...

In comics, I'm still on my new paper acquisition moratorium (which means I don't buy anything printed within the last ten years, except under certain circumstances (one of those circumstances is "if I feel like it", so it's not that strict)). I still manage to read a lot of new stuff, in both print and digital, thanks to the local library and the occasional digital sale. And until the pandemic hit I could hit a local hotel conference room convention every other month and pick up a stack of cheap back issues. And I own an unholy amount of old paper which I really should get around to reading to re-reading if I'm going to justify holding on to it all. 

I haven't been reading as much comics for the last little while, for a variety of reasons. My eyesight went a bit south just prior to the pandemic, I probably need some prescription reading glasses at some point. Been delaying going to the eye doctor, even after things opened up. For now, reading in bright lights or with off-the-rack glasses helps somewhat.  Also, I kind of get disgusted by the comics industry every now and then (for obvious and justifiable reasons), and let it bleed into my love of comics. One story about vileness or stupidity in the industry can sour me on reading comics for a month. I know, I shouldn't do that, I'm going to try to avoid it in the future. Anyway, a few things that probably deserve a closer look are some of Rick Veitch's recent comics, some DeMatteis work, a few of the things Joe Hill is "curating" over at DC, the long overdue O'Neill/Moore CINEMA PURGATORIO book, all sorts of stuff.

Never really get into music on this weblog. I decided to be a middle age cliché and get a turntable, first time I've had a working one in well over a decade. A pretty cheap model, but enough for me to finally get the vinyl out of the basement. It's about fifty records, mostly bought in the 1980s, a few later, plus a few dozen more left at the house by my brother. Nothing too interesting, almost (but not quite) everything readily available on-line now, but some interesting nostalgia bait, plus the listening experience is definitely different. In almost all ways inferior, but definitely different. Might start posting about one record a week as I listen to what I have and decide what is worth keeping and what can safely be disposed of. 

Slowed down quite a bit on watching movies over the last few months, after a brief period of averaging two a day. Maybe I'll get settled into a comfortable medium. Of some stuff I watched recently, I still think that SUPERMAN (1978) is a great, only slightly flawed movie. I'm finally going to get around to watching the "Donner cut" of SUPERMAN II soon. I thought TENET was pretty incomprehensible on first viewing, and I'm not sure good enough to earn a second viewing.  WONDER WOMAN 1984 was very disappointing, after the first movie was as close as a modern super-hero blockbuster has been to being good.  I thought A QUIET PLACE PART II was okay on the merits, but quite a letdown compared to the first. 

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