Is anyone else watching James Ellroy’s LA: City of Demons? Or a better question might be, why am I still watching this? The subject matter is wonderful with great clips and photos about the crime from the time. They bring out interviews with people who were involved and generally do a wonderful job covering the topics. Then what’s the problem?
The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
I’ve heard a lot about Gene Wolfe over the years, but I’ve never read anything from him. I’ve heard several modern writers (including Neil Gaiman) praise Wolfe as being one of their favorite writers as well as their inspiration for becoming authors. So, I decided to start reading Wolfe with his best known work, The Shadow of the Torturer
Stranger Than Fiction movie review
One of the interesting things to watch with actors is the desire for comedic actors to be taken seriously and for serious actors to be seen as comedic. On one hand, I applaud their desire to stretch out their talents to new realms, but on the other hand it does cause some bad movies. Will Ferrell took his turn with a dramatic role with Stranger Than Fiction
And I’m done watching The Cape.
The show isn’t getting better. It isn’t getting funnier and it’s ratings are going down quickly, so we know there won’t be a season two (especially since season one got cut from 13 to 10 episodes). Tonight’s leading idiocy:
Chess hires a wheelchair ridden villain and his partner to track and kill The Cape. They set him up and hit him with a bug so they can track and follow him. They follow him to a meetup with Oracle. And the partner goes in with a camera in his hat. The camera is set up in the front of his hat, so that the partner (sitting at the bar) has to turn and stare at Cape and Oracle to record what’s going on. Neither of them notice the strange guy in a hat staring at them in the diner. The guy is literally sitting at the bar staring at them and neither notice.
Oh, and we learn that the cape that The Cape wears, can stop bullets among other tricks. This is starting to be like a low budget Greatest American Hero
Webcomics I Read
We are in the midst of a revolution (heralded by Scott McCloud) of comic strips. Online is such an easy way to make a comic strip accessible that many, many people are trying it. The technology is also available to allow the creators to try and make money from various sources (ads, donations, collected editions, sketches, merchandise, etc) to support their strips. With all these new and exciting comics available, I wanted to share some of the online comics that I follow. NOTE: This will not cover newspaper comic strips (such as Doonesbury and Dilbert) that can be read online or in a newspaper. So, let’s see what’s out in the comic world.
Robot Chicken review
For awhile, I assumed everyone knew about Robot Chicken
Deadpool Max by David Lapham and Kyle Baker
I’ve never been a big Deadpool
Neal Stephenson on Space Stasis
Neal Stephenson has a post in Slate on space stasis:
It is illuminating here, though utterly conjectural, to imagine a dialog, set in the offices of a large telecommunications firm during the 1960s, between a business development executive and an engineer.
Biz Dev Guy: We could make a preposterous amount of money from communications satellites.
Engineer: It will be expensive to build those, but even so, nothing compared to the cost of building the machines needed to launch them into orbit.
Biz Dev Guy: Funny you should mention that. It so happens that our government has already put $4 trillion into building the rockets and supporting technology we need. There’s only one catch.
Engineer: OK, I’ll bite. What is the catch?
Biz Dev Guy: Your communications satellite has to be the size, shape, and weight of a hydrogen bomb.
Harmony by Project Itoh
When I saw the author’s name was Project Itoh, it made me wonder if this was from a group of some sort. But when I read the author information in the back, it mentioned that Project was the nickname for Keikaku Itoh. Also, sadly, he died of cancer after revising his book Harmony
Is Superman the only superhero TV star?
With the news that NBC has reduced the number of Cape episodes from 13 to 10 (deservedly so for losing viewers from Chuck‘s low ratings) and No Ordinary Family‘s ratings heading downhill, is it fair to ask if superhero shows on TV are gone forever (or for awhile)? If we look at the recent history of superhero TV shows (non animated TV shows), we’ll see that in the last 20 years, there have really only been two successful superhero shows: Smallville
When was the last time a non-Superman superhero show survived? Greatest American Hero
