Humor, Arf Arf

Surely I'm not the only one who finds a sign with the word PISO on it standing in front of a row of urinals funny, am I? 

Moscow Mitch Is Ready

The Return of Rubicon

I was a big fan of the Rubicon television series which ran for one season in 2010 (June 13 – October 17, to be exact). I savored every one of those 13 episodes. And I was disheartened when I heard that the show had been canceled, and that that cliffhanger ending would never be resolved...but at least I would always have those 13 episodes, right?

And then they just disappeared. You couldn't stream them, you couldn't buy them, you couldn't even watch re-runs. 

I searched in vain for years...literally. And then they popped up on a platform that I didn't have access to...a Playstation thing. I seriously thought about buying the hardware to make that software purchase possible, but I ended up not going there. SUREly it would come back to Amazon or appear on DVD, right?

Nope.

And then a few months ago I read that you could stream the entire series if you got AMC Premiere, and I was ready to sign up...until I discovered that in order to get AMC Premiere, you have to have a streaming service that has AMC. Which I don't. And I thought about switching to one that did, because I really wanted to watch Rubicon again, and it had been So Fuckin' Long, and I had just watched TWO movies in which Dallas Roberts had had a part which whetted my appetite.

And then, lo, a miracle occurred: 

Rubicon popped up on Amazon. Streaming only, but for purchase.

Well, I know how that shit goes, so I hopped over and started buying episodes right quick. And just as I downloaded the sixth episode, I saw that something was amiss. Episode Seven was only available in HD, which seemed weird (all of the previous episodes were available in both HD and SD). And Episode Eight was Currently Not Available. I looked further. Epiode Ten was also Currently Not Available. Now tell me...if you have a thirteen episode season and two of those episodes are not available, does it make any sound?

So I went on a quest for a way to contact Amazon about it. It wasn't easy, but eventually I found an option to Chat, and I got down to it. And the person with whom I was chatting solved my problem lickety split...and added the two "missing" episodes to my library gratis! Yowza. 

So now it's time to get watching. Looking for company, though, because pleasure shared is pleasure squared. What are you doing this weekend?

The Bookshop

Full disclosure: I was pretty drunk...so you might want to question my judgment on that account...but I'd also leaven that with the fact that usually when I'm drunk I have a very, very short attention span...and when I try to watch something I usually fall asleep after ten minutes. But as I was flipping through the channels, so to speak, I saw a movie called The Bookshop on Amazon Prime Video, and since I like bookstores, I decided to have a look. Well. One hour and fifty-three minutes later I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked up Isabel Coixet, who had directed and written the screenplay for this movie, and then looked up Penelope Fitzgerald, who had written the novel the movie was based on. I am looking forward to spending a lot more time with these women.

As for Isabel...I thought she did a brilliant job here, and I want to see more of her work. For your shopping convenience, here's a guide to her work:

As Director:
Light on Broken Glass
It Snows in Benidorm
Foodie Love 
Gelato di Neve
Elisa & Marcela 
Amodio 
The Bookshop 
Proyecto tiempo 
El espíritu de la pintura 
No es tan fría Siberia 
Spain in a Day 
'Normal' 
Un corazón roto no es como un jarrón roto o un florero 
Parler de Rose, prisonnière de Hissène Habré
Endless Night 
Learning to Drive 
Another Me 
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
Yesterday Never Ends 
Marea Blanca 
Escuchando al juez Garzón
Aral. El mar perdido
50 años de 
 La mujer, cosa de hombres 
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo 
I Elegy 
Invisibles: "Cartas a Nora"
Paris, je t'aime: "Bastille"
The Secret Life of Words 
Marlango 
¡Hay motivo!: "La insoportable levedad del carrito de la compra" 
Viaje al corazón de la tortura 
My Life Without Me 
A los que aman 
XII premios Goya 
Things I Never Told You 
Demasiado viejo para morir joven 

Mira y verás  

That's a whole lot of love...and I'm guessing that most of it won't be easily accessed...but I'm going to see what I can see, because I thought Ms. Coixet's work on The Bookshop was just brilliant. The way she would move from a highly emotional scene to a shot of birds flying or grass being moved by the wind, for instance...which gave the viewer a moment to reflect before going back to the story...it was just perfect, really.

And as for Penelope Fitzgerald...I am going to the library today to pick up an Everyman omnibus of three of her novels. Here's what she did:

Biographies
Edward Burne-Jones 
The Knox Brothers 
Charlotte Mew and Her Friends: With a Selection of Her Poems 

Novels
The Golden Child
The Bookshop
Offshore 
Human Voices 
At Freddie's 
Innocence
The Beginning of Spring 
The Gate of Angels 
The Blue Flower

Short story collections
The Means of Escape

Essays and reviews
A House of Air

Letters

So I Have Thought of You

A good amount of work, but if it strikes you as not so prodigious, here's an interesting bit of context: Penelope didn't start writing until she was 58 years old, and she died at age 83. The LFPL has quite a few of her books, so if I get hooked I'll be able to put a pretty good dent in this list.

But as for this movie, this so-called The Bookshop? Well.  There is not a single kiss in this movie, but it is most assuredly about love. There is not a single punch thrown, but it is most assuredly about hatred and violence. It is written and acted with humor, dignity, and realism. I completely forgot that I was watching a movie for most of this movie. And--the big tell for me--not once did I pause the movie in order to see how much time was left.

And there were some superb lines, such as: "Understanding makes the mind lazy." (This brilliant line was uttered by the character Edmund Brundish, played to perfection by Bill Nighy.)


I'd have to say that IMHO, this was a perfect movie. I am looking forward to watching it again in the near near. Sober this time, as I don't want to miss ANYthing.

The Return of The Warlord...and Mike Grell

I'd recently read  (in Previews) that Young Justice was going to dump Superboy into Skataris in its thirteenth issue, and that Mike Grell was going to be involved, so I made a mental note to check that title in February, when The Blessed Event would happen. But I get a little bit jumpy, so when I saw issue #11 on the stands, I picked it up for a look-see. And I flipped through the pages until, quite near the end...

A glimpse of The Warlord. Not a Mike Grell glimpse, but still...you know. It's been a little while. So for those of you who share my passion for Mike Grell's "I'm Much Tougher Than David Innes" Hero, you might want to pick this one up. And if I know my comic books, I'd bet that we'll get another glimpse of The Man in issue #12...which will be along in January. And then in February, we get The Full Monty:

(That's the alternate Mike Grell cover, so I guess I'm going to be at the comic book store on Wednesday of that week, because I don't want to take a chance on missing out on that one.)

And for Young Justice #11? Well, it was written by

Brian Michael Bendis, who is not my favorite guy these days. I find his dialogue to be tedious and affected, as well as confusing. Granted, this is part 5 of the "Lost in the Multiverse" story, so some confusion is inevitable given that context, but even so...I really couldn't even follow this thing from panel to panel at times. I kept trying alternate ways to read the page, and found that none of them seemed any better than another. That's not a good sign. The art was pretty okay. Nothing spectacular, nothing I'd stop to look at otherwise, but competent and not ugly, which makes it head and shoulders above 80% of the books on the stands these days. 

So I'd say you should only buy this one if you're a really devoted The Warlord fan. But you might want to keep your eyes out for #12, just to be sure. And most certainly for #13.

Peace out.

Jingle All the Way

Это снова мы

12/10/2019

Hmpf. What's up with that?

Interesting, too, is that while I do have quite a few political / anti-Trump blogposts, it doesn't look like those are the pages that are being hit. In fact, my Top Ten currently includes only one "political" post--December 8's "Bouncy Tits For Trump." Which probably has more to do with Bouncy Tits than Trump...and which was also a post I promoted via a Twitter tweet. So...are the Russians suddenly interested in comic book reviews? Is it just a Bot Thing? It puzzles my will.

Какого хрена вы, ребята, хотите?

Bouncy Tits For Trump

Assuming that it stays up, you can see the whole video online at

https://twitter.com/TomiLahren/status/1203048899210035202

...but just in case it disappears, here's an abbreviated version with the salient data:

Point being?

Well, there are a couple of points, actually. 

No pun intended.

(1) What this woman is saying is bullshit, but who the fuck cares? She's blonde and has bouncy tits.

(2) There is no way in hell that this tit bouncing is "accidental," so while I would normally be against making the kind of comments I have made here and on my Twitter feed, in this case I feel no remorse whatsoever. If a woman is going to exploit her sexuality in order to make a political point, then she makes that fair game. It just pisses me off that people are willing to go this route. What the hell ever happened to logical discourse and dignified comportment? How did that become stupid slogans and sexual innuendo?

Of course, we are talking about Tomi Lauren here. This is pretty much her whole wheelhouse. But she pretended to be a news anchor for awhile, and I find that to be ridiculous. Let's put it this way: can you imagine a male news anchor or pundit exploiting his sexuality in order to make a point about his political views?

Obviously not. Because that would be undignified and absurd.

P.S. In fact, if a male anchor or pundit did that kind of thing, he'd be mocked, reviled, and probably driven out of the industry. I was thinking about that this morning when it hit me: that's how little respect we have for women in this society. No matter who they are or what they achieve, they're still just a pair of tits to a large number of people. And that is just shameful.

Derf Backderf

Well...ComiXology Unlimited just saved me another $20.

It started earlier today @ Half-Price Books. I was looking for a birthday present for my son, so I was checking out the graphic novels and comic book collections (there's a difference, y'know). And I happened to see a large book entitled Trashed, and something about it looked familiar, though I couldn't put my finger on it.

That ugly, frenetic style of drawing...where had I seen it before? I took a glance at a couple of pages, and yep, it was a True Story kind of thing...about a guy who worked on a garage truck. Of course I had to buy it. And then I saw that it was a Slave Labor Graphics production, which made me think that it would be good, because I always thought highly of SLG's books. And then I saw that it had been marked down to $1. Say what? Well, there  you have it.

And then it hit me: the artist / writer (Derf Backderf) was the guy who had done a strip that used to run in L.E.O. way back when. I didn't remember liking the strip very much, but when I got home I started reading Trashed anyway. And? Yowza. It was very gross at times, for sure, but it was also laugh out loud funny several times. And it was strangely touching, too...in a "you don't always end up where you think you're going to end up in this fuckin' life" way. So when I finished, I decided I needed some more Derf Backderf in my life, and I went over to Amazon to see what I could see.

And Amazon had quite a few things that interested me. Including a much longer version of Trashed. How much longer? Well, the version I bought was a respectable 48 pages long. The Amazon version was listed as being 256 pages long. And a mere $10 in the Kindle edition. Remembering that ComiXology often had the same stuff for a cheaper price, however, I went over there to check on it and...there it was on ComiXology Unlimited. I could borrow it for free, man. And what else did I spy by the light of my eye on CU? Derf's 270 page My Friend Dahmer. So I will soon be reading some more Derf. And if these books are as good as the thing I read earlier today, then I'm going to be needing some more of his stuff, too, and it looks like it is there to be had. Amazon lists a couple of other interesting looking books.

More news as it happens, but for now, I definitely recommend checking out Trashed. You know, you can get a one month free trial of ComiXology and read a bunch of good stuff before you have to decid whether to shell out the bucks or not. It took me awhile to come around, but I finally committed and have been really happy with it. There are tons of things I've wanted to read. Definitely a good deal...especially in these $3.99 per issue comic book days.