My buddy Jon sent me a link for a fanfilm of Batman vs all the usual suspects, pretty fun.
Which reminded me of this fan-made Superman cartoon:



And then I recently watched the Planet Hulk animated movie on DVD. Did I ever tell you how much I truly loved the Planet Hulk saga in comic book form? The movie necessarily simplifies it a lot, but is still faithful and as a bonus, ends on a happy note so if you like you can just leave it at that or read the comic that continues on to the inevitable tragic ending.

Neil Gaiman's so good, hey? Seems I'm always finding books of his I didn't even know he wrote in used bookstores. Last week I picked up a short story collection, possibly his first. Uh, what's it called? Don't recall off the top of my head and it's alla way upstairs . . . I got Michelle reading Fragile Things which is a more recent anthology, and we're both loving it. Not too long ago I bought a Batman comic he wrote, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? I find Batman comics kind of hard to read, because unlike the movies, in the comics there's like 70 years of history and continuity that you need to know (Robin is dead but Robin 2 is Nightwing and Robin 3 is in the future and she's a girl . . . )but this one was brilliant and accomplishes its purpose- which is to bring to an end both iconic Batman series- Detective Comics and Batman- with a story that would be 'true' now and in twenty years, or seventy. I didn't even know they canceled those titles (naturally they relaunched them with new numbering and all but still). Yeah. Check it out.
In other news, Pallas and I have been busy kicking ass all week. Well, we went on the big water slide a billion times at the rec center and found all our shopping list on our own and made supper all by ourselves (even if it sucked). I taught her to say "kick ass" so when we got home from kicking ass I told her to go tell mom. "Mommy, kickass! Kickass! Daddy Pallas kickass!" but Michelle thought she was saying Princess. Well, in Pallas' case, same thing.

The most exciting thing that happened at work last week was I got to read a bunch of comics. I wisht every week could be like that!
I'd heard that Age of Apocalypse was one of the all-time classic X-Men storylines so I got the Complete Epic (four volumes) from the library. Maybe my expectations were too high but I thought it was kind of terrible. Never mind that the way you could tell that the X-Men were all alternate-reality versions of themselves is because they had mullets. I dunno. The basic idea was sound, what if Charles Xavier had died before forming the X-Men? Obviously Magneto would lead the X-Men and Apocalypse would take over the world. But where it went wrong for me is all the focus on space aliens and Blastaar and the Negative Zone. What does that even have to do with Apocalypse? I dunno.
Luckily World War Hulk was better. Not as good as Planet Hulk which I loved. WWH is all about how he comes back to Earth with his Warbound buddies to get revenge for all the bad stuff that happened at the end of Planet Hulk. It had some great moments, though lots of the big things happened off-screen, ie in the tie-in comics that weren't in the WWH collection. Oh well. Hulk still smashed plenty of shit.
Batman R.I.P. was kind of confusing. Didn't really know anyone other than Batman. Even Robin was someone else.
What else. Spider-man and Red Sonja. Got that one for a laugh and it was definitely funny.
I also finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I liked it. Makes me want to make a pinhole camera detector. Among other things. Not that I'm worried someone snuck into my house to install a pinhole camera to spy on me. Does make me wonder about the classrooms where Michelle teaches, though. And the washrooms. Eew.

Now To Design My Costume . . .

I got to sort of be a vigilante today. Michelle got me some custom bookmarks for Father's Day so we had to go to the SEC Wal-Mart to get them. I waited in the car with Pallas while she went in and got them. Then this guy runs by full speed, kind of a gangly strung out looking dude. Weird. Shortly after a green-vested Wal-Mart employee comes running after him. Just another day at Wally World right? Michelle comes back and tells me how this guy set off the alarm just in front of her and the elderly greeter had to call security, which explains why there was such a large gap between them. So that was interesting and I tell her what I saw and we headed off to Indigo to take advantage of their 4-for-3 sale.
Then I saw the guy still running, over by the Alberta Research Council! So I told Michelle to let me out since I thought I could cut him off. She didn't really want me to but I talked her into it. Off we go! Even though he was the equivalent of a good block away I totally had a bead on him and ran an intercept pattern, or as we superheroes call it, a Maneuver 2-B. I had him! I so had him. I was about to tackle him but a conveniently placed pond on the ARC campus provided his escape. He jumped in rather than face my righteous wrath! Even though I briefly considered jumping in after him I thought it would be just as effective to keep an eye on him till the security guard caught up.
"What are you gonna do now?" I said in a less ridiculous voice than the one Christian Bale uses as Batman. I have more of a Michael Keaton vibe about me, I think. At least that's what Wolverine told me once.
"Leave me alone!'' said the hardened criminal. I think he was going to cry. His jacket had come off and was floating in the water in front of me. "Geeze I hope he doesn't drown," I thought. The Wal-Mart guy finally caught up and took over, telling me he'd be sure to activate the Bear Signal next time he had a dastardly villain to catch. At least I think that's what he said, he was a little out of breath.
Anyways, the pond he jumped in can be seen in the first second or two of this video.
Also- I really shouldn't have gotten involved. I'm a Dad now for goodness sakes! But I have a really hard time resisting these types of situations. From now on no more vigilantism! I am hanging up my cape.
Oh yeah, we totally got some sweet stuff from Indigo! Three Star Wars trade paperbacks, and a bunch of books too. Sweet!

Dear Facebook:
Everyone knows your new version sucks so I don't even need to go into that. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, like I got used to all the other less-better versions of things that were just fine how they were (remember several versions of Blogger ago?). One small request though- I would appreciate it if the buttons actually worked when you clicked them. Buttons like Post! and Confirm (as Friend).
Anyone can make a button that doesn't do anything- look:



Yours truly,
http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=626851200

And completely unrelated, exact opposite in fact since this doesn't suck at all, check out Jane Austen's Batman. Brilliant.

This red panda doesn't look very happy but she is only wrestling with her sibling, like cats sometimes do. See?
Have you been over to Starwars.com lately? They have a whole scene up from the Clone Wars movie that you can watch. Nearly as cool as this Clonie Bear Mistytang did for me!
Last night, driving home from The Dark Knight, Michelle told me she had never seen Batman (Tim Burton, 1989 ). So we rectified that tonight. After 19 years I guess it's okay to say that movie is a little dated. I still remember the overjoyedness that followed seeing that movie for the first time with Jon. I wonder what 14-year-old Homie Bear would have thought of The Dark Knight. As much as I loved it as a 33-year-old adult, I'm glad I got to grow up in a simpler time when Burton's vision was seen as revolutionary and cutting edge. Maybe my dad thought the same thing about Adam West.

Top 5 Movie Guys of 2005

1. General Grievous. Did you notice that he has FOUR arms? And a lightsaber wrested from the cold fingers of a slain Jedi for each one.
2. Batman. Only two arms, but two batwings to make up for it, as well as a very stern countenance.
3. King Kong. He's the giant gorilla spawn of gollum. Nuff said.
4. Willy Wonka. He made me laugh. "Ha ha ha ha. You're really weird."
5. The White Witch. Somehow she convinced two polar bears to pull her chariot for her. Too bad she forgot to ask them to protect her from Aslan.

What a great list! It's strange that General Grievous is the only new-to-2005 character on it, and even he is from a 28-year-old franchise.

I have some bad news to share with you- Bruce my fish is dead. Actually I don't know for sure but I am forced to surmise this due to a number of facts I will share herewith:
a) When I went over to the House of Poo the other day to transport Bruce, he was not in his aquarium.
b) Bruce is unable to survive outside of his aquarium.

Thus, I must conclude that he has passed away. Sigh- I use this detached clinical language to hide my sadness, which is profound. Anyways, I gave the tank and other gear to my friend Sherry, who will hopefully have better luck with fish than I have had.

Ode to Bruce

You were an electric blue cichlid
You had a mini-castle where you hid
You ate all the suckerfish that cleaned up your tank
So I stopped buying them and your home got all rank
You had sharp little teeth and were very vicious
You didn't play very nice with the other fishes
I named you Bruce like Lee and Wayne
I hope your death didn't cause you pain
But maybe you didn't die you escaped
A fish vigilante like Batman, caped
Fighting some crime living in a cave
Bad guys don't scare you since you are so brave
Yeah, it's good to know that you're still out there
Watching out for innocents everywhere
So here's to you, my old friend Bruce
Have fun living your life on the loose