Book #1

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be writing about all of the books I read this year, and perhaps every year. I don't know how good it will come out because I'm not that good at reviewing any kind of media, other than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Perhaps I will get better as the year progresses. That would be nice.

Enemies and Allies, by Kevin J. Anderson

This book was given to me by my friend Adam for my birthday last month. I love Batman and have for a long time, but my exposure to Superman has only been through TV and movies, and of course general pop culture. I was looking forward to reading this book because I have a few Batman short story books that I read and enjoyed very much. It's kind of nice to read a story about Batman and not have to look at a lot of pictures. I know this is practically blasphemy to comics fans, but I have always been more of a story person. I catch myself quite a bit reading the story in a comic and barely glancing at the art.

The book is set in the 1950s and revolves around how Batman and Superman met and had to unite against their common foe, Lex Luthor. The basic tropes of each character are added along the way, and some of the aforementioned pop culture tidbits relevant to each character are mentioned. I did like that, and I didn't think it was overused to the point of corniness.

This being a superhero book set in the 50s, you can guess the outcome. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it very much. I usually only read books during my lunch break at work; what I read at home is usually just Entertainment Weekly or other magazines. But I did manage to get a few chapters of Enemies and Allies in at home as well, so that's usually a sign of a good book for me. My only complaint is that there seemed to be more chapters based around Superman than Batman (each chapter was headed by the Bat symbol or the Superman symbol, so you knew who the main focus of the chapter would be). Anderson really plays up the differences in the two superheroes; the almost goody-two-shoes alien Boy Scout Superman, and the dark, law-breaking Batman. That's probably why I prefer Batman, because he could actually exist, but in this day and age someone would be able to find his secret identity very quickly.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to a comics fan or a Batman/Superman movie or TV fan. You don't really need to know the backstory of each character to enjoy the book, as Anderson basically gives all of that to you during the book. But if you're not a superhero fan, you should probably read something else.

Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought. I'm definitely not a book reviewer, so I'll have to come up with a different method of writing about the books I read. The next book is about the baseball player Ted Williams, so that will be interesting. I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he is one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. And he's angry.

If you love something, set it free...

This post will be ridiculous and requires a lot of back story, but I haven't written in awhile, so here you go.

When I was a kid I played with dolls. Not Barbies mind you, I had MEGO Batman dolls, which were a little bit smaller than Barbies. I was a big fan of Batman because of the 1960s TV show that was rerun every day after school. I had Batman and Robin, and at various times I also had the Riddler, Joker, and the Penguin. I say various times because I got the dolls as presents more than once; they got lost or stolen, and I distinctly remember the Penguin losing all his limbs in the bathtub (they were held in place with some sort of string that was not water-resistant). As I got older I lost interest in the dolls, which I didn't know were called action figures until much later.

I'm not sure when the transition from dolls to small plastic action figures occurred; for me, the Star Wars figures were the first of the small ones. Before that, the aforementioned MEGO dolls and GI Joe dolls were what I knew (in addition to the KISS dolls, which I wanted but never got). Maybe I lost interest when they were made smaller.

Fast-forward to 1991, after my dad closed his bakery and I had to get a real job by myself for the first time. I ended up at Kay Bee Toys in the mall, after having failed to get a job at Suncoast Video, which is where I really wanted to work. I was Christmas help at Kay Bee, but I did a good job and made it past the holidays. The Batman movie had come out 2 years prior, which greatly rekindled my interest in Batman. When I started at Kay Bee, they were blowing out the Batman action figures related to that movie (they were actually from a DC assortment with the movie logo on them). I bought those figures and hung them up on my wall at home. Then I bought the rest of the DC line, and then Batman Forever came out, with its exclusive figure line (from Kenner). I bought all of those figures too. After that I started buying figures willy-nilly. We would get closeout figures like Beetlejuice, and I would also but figures from comic books I liked, like Spawn and X-Men.

I think the strangest collection I had was a set of 8 April O'Neill figures from various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lines. I never read the comic book or saw the cartoon series. I saw the first two movies in the theaters and enjoyed them. But I'm not sure why I bought the April O'Neill figures. I hung them on the wall with the other figures and that was pretty much all I did with them.

Fast forward again to 1998, when we moved to DE. All of the action figures were boxed up for over a year, because we lived in an apartment and didn't want to unpack too much, because we planned on buying a house. When we did get a house in 1999, the action figures stayed boxed up until 2001, when I decided to sell them on eBay. They were just sitting there and I didn't miss them, so what was the point? The action figure market had bottomed out by that point, so I didn't even get a good return on them, but I was happy to let them go. Or so I thought...

The only figures that I regretted selling were those April O'Neills, for some bizarre reason. Sarah says that I brought this fact up quite often. Fast forward again to last weekend. We both got flea market fever in a big way, so we decided to go to a monthly rummage sale a few towns over after I got out of work. The first table we arrived at had 4 April O'Neill figures on it. No other action figures, just her. It was the first time I had seen any in person since I sold mine. My first impulse was of course to buy all four of them. Then the wishy washy impulse kicked in, which asked why I would want these again, since I previously sold mine and had stayed away from action figures for the past 9 years? But Sarah, ever the voice of reason, said that if I didn't buy them, I would regret selling them AND not buying them. They turned out to be a dollar each, so I did buy them. Now I just have to figure out where to hang them up...

Watchmen > Dark Knight

Yeah, I said it. The only good thing about The Dark Knight for me was Heath Ledger as the Joker. How many people can make Jack Nicholson look like a piker? Watchmen was fabulous, if you're a fan of the book, I think you will love it. It also has something for everyone who isn't a fan. I just got back from the theater and looked at the book again, it's amazing how close it is. Did you know I was a geek? You do now!

You know what sucks? When you're working your ass off and people are standing around talking and are ignoring the fact that you're trying to get by them so you can do your work, while you're at work! Isn't that why it's called work? And something else is when people put their stuff on top of your stuff and you have to move it everyday to get to your stuff, because the people are too lazy to walk a few extra steps to where their stuff should be. Does that make sense? Well, not to the people who put their stuff on top of my stuff!

No substance today, it's time for bed. Moratorium on concluding emoticons is now over. Good night. -_-

Blog is currently experiencing fail, please stand by.

If you read any of my previous blogs, you may know that I am trying to blog every day in March for NaBloPoMo. Well, it's only the 6th day, and I have already screwed it up. I think I misunderstood the point of the exercise, which I believe is to WRITE everyday, not post a blog every day. I wrote two blog posts on Wednesday, because I had a lot of stuff to do yesterday and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write anything of substance (which begs the question, have I written anything of substance at all?). I saved it as a draft in Blogger to post when I got home on Thursday afternoon. Blogger called my bluff, and posted it on the date and time that I actually wrote it. I didn't notice until I got up this morning that I had two posts for Wednesday and none for Thursday. Since it was only for an hour and a half, I changed the date of the last post to Thursday, since I actually posted it on Thursday. I was thinking about this at work, and I thought that it was dishonest, which is why I'm spilling the beans on myself here. Would anyone else but me have known the difference? Maybe not. At least I think I learned something. I will still be blogging everyday, so don't think you're getting off that easily.

One of the things I did yesterday was go to book club at our county library. We read Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. I thought it was excellent; there are many amazing coincidences throughout the book, but I didn't mind those because the writing was very good and I liked the setting (pastoral England) very much. I usually don't talk much at book club, but I wanted to last night. I did try at the beginning, but I kept getting discouraged, so I shut my mouth.

Sarah and I are going to see Watchmen with our friend Adam tomorrow. I am extremely excited to see it, but I'm not getting my hopes up, as the comic has been called unfilmable by many people who would know about these things. I read the book over 10 years ago and have tried to get Sarah to read it ever since. Don't think it's because she's a girl, she's the one who got me into comics! And for you non-comics fans, this book really transcends the whole comic-geek thing, it really is a good story, it just happens to have a lot of pictures as well. Adam is also very excited to see it, so it should be a good time. We are going to La Tolteca for a late lunch beforehand, which is a really great Mexican restaurant chain.

Tonight Sarah and I are celebrating Frozen Food Day in grand style, we're having chicken parmigiana with mozzarella sticks and buffalo bites, and ice cream for dessert. Celebrate with us, it's tres healthy and very in! Also, Sunday is Be Nasty Day, so I will be ringing that one in by cleaning out the litter boxes. I'll have an extra hour to do those.