Cheer Up, You Melancholy Dane!

One of my favorite TV shows of the last few years is a Canadian show called "Slings and Arrows." The show ran three seasons and featured the trials and tribulations of a Canadian Theatre Company. It starred Paul Gross, of Due South fame and was funny, touching, heartfelt... and just a great show.

I've written about it before. I've even referenced it in Love and Capes once or twice. Now, Amazon is offering for pre-order Slings and Arrows: The Complete Collection. It's a steal at $41.99, kind of a three-for-two deal. I can't recommend it enough. I'll probably be buying it as gifts for people over the next year. I'd buy it again myself, but I've already got the individual sets. Heck, if the all-new extras are worth it, maybe I will get one for myself.

Seriously, you can't go wrong with this one.

I Wish They All Could Be Celtic Women

I try to live by certain rules. Do unto others, never get involved in a land war in Asia or go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, don't interfere with a normal, living culture, and, of course, don't buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving. After all, you can't complain that Christmas decorations are almost showing up before Halloween if you participate in the madness.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. I've already bought one Christmas present (because it involved shipping, eBay, and the lives of several Bothan spies) and then I went ahead and bought another. I bought my mother tickets to see Celtic Woman. It would have been nice if they were performing closer to Christmas, but even with all my vast Councilman power, I can't change their schedule.

So we went out to dinner and then to EJ Thomas Hall, where the Celtic Women were performing. I've heard their PBS concerts and liked them a lot. In fact, PBS got me the tickets. I pledged some money in one during one of their incessant pledge drives and got what were promised to be "excellent"" tickets. They were, in fact, excellent tickets. Tenth row, just off to stage left. Not bad at all.

The concert was very good. My mom said she liked going to a show where she knew all the words. I didn't, especially since I trip on some of the Gaelic songs. With those, I could have the lyrics in front of me and not be able to follow along. But, it was a great show. All five Celtic Women did a great job, and EJ Thomas Hall is a great place to see a show. I would have bought a CD there, but I'd already done so back in LA some months back. Man, I loves me that Amoeba Music.

It was also nice to hang out with my Mom for a while. She's busy in a way that makes me look like a slacker, and is probably where I get my maximum burn lifestyle from. We talked of many things: The impending writers' strike, her job, my job, home equity loans, brothers and, of course, Ireland, where we should both be returning to next summer.

I recommend seeing The Women if they're coming into your neck of the woods. But even if they're not, that doesn't mean you can't take your Mom out.

The Weekend With Links

Another Boo at the Zoo is in the books, and it was another good time, aside from my currently withered drawing hand. It's like Dumbledore after wearing the ring. I'm a little wired, though, and have some randomness rattling around in my giant brain cavity, so I thought I'd share.

The Zoo is between half an hour and an hour away from my house, depending on traffic and what day of the week it is. It was on these prologed Zoo trips that I got hooked into podcasts. I always love listening to the Comics Pants guys. They do a topic, rather than current news, focused show. It makes them a little more timeless, so I can save it to listen to anytime during the Zoo trip. Their podcast is a recorded version of those sometimes silly, sometimes sublime conversations that you get into at comic conventions.

I'm also a huge fan of the This Week in Tech network. This Week in Tech is a great podcast in and of itself, and This Week in Media covers a lot of interesting stuff. That includes the upcoming writers' strike which is becoming more and more likely to impact upon my day. And yes, that's a veiled reference to some of those things that I Can't Talk About, but isn't it good to know there are still such things churning in the background?

The Zoo is a fun for a bunch of reasons, but one of the big ones is the people. The kids are fun, and a lot of the parents are, too. It's fun joking around with everyone. My current favorite was when my Zoo-assigned assistant asked me if I wanted some coffee. I said "hells, yeah" and he asked "What do you take in it?"

"Cream, sugar, and Bailey's." Oddly, the Zoo had no Bailey's.

I ran into an acquaintence of mine from high school, Mike, and his two lovely kids. I also worked with Mike at the News-Herald, and then we both left, he to become a golf pro and I became a full-time freelance cartoonist. Such chance meetings are a nice bonus of doing the Zoo thing.

Most of my weekend was Zoo based, but I did get the chance to see 30 Days of Night with the Mikes Cubed on Saturday. I haven't read the IDW series, but thought it was a decent movie. There are a couple scenes where people who should be running aren't, and I think it's missing at least one crucial bit of dialogue. It's not a spoiler (I wouldn't do that) but how does Josh Harnett's character never ask his brother exactly how he escaped the bad guys.

All right, that's weekend wrap up. Hopefully I'll have some art eye candy to post soon.

Harry Potter was really Keyser Soze? Did Not See That Coming.

Just kidding.
I finished it this afternoon.

After what I wrote before, don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything. In fact, I’ve carefully thought everything out so that I won’t accidentally reveal anything. I know if a fan of the Potter books is reading this that the littlest thing means something and something I’d think is clever would be blantant to them.

Anyway, I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. It’s rare that any story, let alone the final chapter of a series, is so satisfying. I’d put it up there with the endings of Deep Space Nine and Farscape. in terms of, well, satisfyingness. Heck, it was better than the ending of DS9, because that one always bothered me that they couldn’t use any footage of Jadzia Dax at the end. Stupid union rules.

I also appreciate that JK Rowling avoided the problem I’ve often had with another author whose work I enjoyed, Tom Clancy. Clancy would write these eight hundred page tomes every two or three years, but he’d never recap anything to jog your memory about some nuance you might have forgotten. JK, on the other hand, finds very invetive ways to remind you of what you may have forgotten.

And, I know I’m wired weird. Heck, I choke up at Doctor Who a surprising amount. But there were some big emotional moments that hit me more than I thought they would, especially just from the written word. Very powerful.

Okay, that’s it. Two thumbs up. Four stars. Clap clap. It was a good series with a great ending, and I’m very glad someone introduced me to Harry Potter.

Phoenixes Other Than Jean Grey

I saw Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix last night. I won't spoil anything, although I really think that anyone who cares has probably already read the fifth book.

Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite of the series so far. For the most part, it was a bunch of characters who should be talking to each other not doing so. They also tended to act to advance the plot, more than acting in character. The book also ends with one of the longest bits of exposition I've read in a while.

And I understand and appreciate what Rowling was doing. Harry's a teenager and one who's had a ton of bad happen to him. He deserves to become petulant and sullen at some point. But appreciating the attempt and thinking that it works are two different things.

(I want to take a moment hear to plug like crazy Creative Screenwriting magazine's podcasts. They're a how do and how come of how movie scripts come together and how they come to film. They did a podcast on Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Men's Chest, which while I liked okay, it just didn't click for me after I saw it. When I heard the podcast from the writers, I had a new appreciation for what they did, or at least tried to do. I still don't think it succeeded, but that's okay. It's always better to attempt to reach too far rather than not far enough.)

So, having said that, I really liked the movie of Order of the Phoenix. Paring down the script as much as they needed to make it a two hour film helped get rid of the characters-not-talking issue I had. There's a lot of story that got lost or just a brief nod, admittedly, but it holds together nicely. And, I have to say, I think the music really stepped up a notch, being the first one since the John Williams score to stay with me after we left. The military-esque march as they're flying over London sounds great, and heralds the beginning of a war, too.

I think the Potter films leave a fair amount of room for the director, too. The first Chris Columbus film was pretty well just shooting the book, and with the warm gold fill light and loving pans, and worked pretty well. The second got a little too Chris Columbus-y (how many shots of kids screaming at the camera can we have?). But the third felt like a Potter story and yet Alfonso Cuaron brought a new flavor to it. The fifth one had the same "still Potter, but with different seasoning" to it.

The fourth movie? It felt like it was just going through the motions (…walking through the part…) and had no character to it. It was kind of stale. So I was glad to find I liked the fifth as much as I did.

Being the fifth movie in a series, I probably don't need to recommend it much. Either you're on board or you're not. But, if you are a fan, I think the fifth installment will do right by you.

Bah Wah Grah Na Weep Ninny Bong!

Transformers was an interesting experience. I was incredibly jazzed for a movie that I had absolutely no expectations for. How weird is that? I really wanted to see this film, and didn't care how it was going to turn out.

I've talked about how I like seeing certain movies with my group of friends. This one was funny, that way. My closest two friends and I all had wives or girlfriends who absolutely did not want to see this film. I didn't want to take up a weekend with it. So I suggested the Tuesday night pre-premiere (before they announced a Monday release). It was perfect, I figured... they could put their kids and wives to bed around nine and head out to see a 10:00pm show. The next day was Independence Day, so none of them had to work. Why, it was artful in how perfect it was.

What I didn't expect was how perfect it would be. When all was said and done, we'd bought twenty-one tickets. Two of my brothers came. A couple of friends brought their kids, despite the lateness (and more power to them for that). My cousin was there. A whole batallion of Dulzers showed up.

Counting the after-movie trip to Steak and Shake, it was just five hours of pure fun. And, on a perfectly clear, cool night with the 80's Transformers soundtrack blaring on my convertible driving down an empty street, it was also the hardest time I've ever had driving closest to the speed limit.

So how was the movie? Does it matter, really?

It's decent. Enough of a plot to hang things on, decent characters and decent acting, great effects, great action, and everything I could have hoped for. There was a fair amount of clever to it, too, from working in a catch phrase to quoting the Transformers movie, to one character's interesting way of communicating.

Sure, there was a plot hole or maybe two, but none glaring enough that it took me out of the film, and none I couldn't explain away. I really don't have any complaints about it. Except, well…

Jazz. He wasn't my favorite toy, but he was one of my favorite characters in the cartoon. "Do it with style, or don't do it at all" was his catch phrase, and I really liked that. And, in the cartoon, he was voiced by the late, great Scatman Crothers, who could take the Autobot's few lines and give them a great spin. Darius McCrary voiced him in the film, and while he's a fine enough actor (I liked him in Committed) but, well, he's no Scatman.

Still, if that's my biggest problem, that's no problem at all.

Kneel Before the iPhone!

So, did I get one? No.

Do I want one? Hells, yes!

Will I buy it? No.

From everything I've been reading about the iPhone, it's living up to its expectations. I really think that the iPhone will raise the bar for cell phones in general. There's a lot of slickness and ease of use to it that people have been craving in a phone. Look, I like my RAZR just fine. It's a really good phone. But it's lousy at pulling e-mail where it won't read some and won't display attachments. Voice mail is decent, but man the visual e-mail on the iPhone will be so much better, so that I can skip old messages.

Heck, how cool is it that you can just buy the phone off the shelf. No asking Chad to grab a phone from some samples, assuming he's not with another customer, and then begin the long phone activation process. Now you can do that from home.

I think the limitations of cell phones are the keypads. Current cellphones have to make everything work using the number keys and a couple of extra buttons. Think of that T9 for text messaging, or triple clicking a button to get the letter "C". The iPhone dodges that problem by creating a redefinable interface where if you need different buttons, you can generate them. (Incidentally, this technology was the theory behind the displays on the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I think that's brilliant. And, if you can't text by feeling the buttons, that's okay… maybe it'll cut down on the text-and-drive people.

The other thing about it is that it's not for everyone. If you don't travel, don't have a job where you need an array of communication options, then just get a regular cell phone. But, for those of us that travel to a comic book convention every couple of months and run our own business, the idea of being able to check my e-mail from the shuttle from the airport to hotel it's going to be great.

So you're probably wondering why I don't have it yet, aside from having had plans to see Ratatouille (which, by the way, was excellent) that kept me away from an Apple store? Well, it's a first-generation product. I'll let people shake it out for a while and let the fine folks at Apple make it even better. I don't like that it lack voice dialing features, as that's something I use all the time. Yes, I talk and drive from time to time, and being able to say "Call Dad Mobile". And, I think a physical "press to talk" button will be needed, rather than the touch screen, because you'll need an equivalent of the flip-to-talk feature that I have on mine.

And, my Alltel contract doesn't expire for a little while yet. I need to let that lapse as well. I'm waiting for the next revision, which I think will be killer. And if the next generation comes out before the end of the tax year, so much the better.

So how cool is it to be Steve Jobs this week? He releases the iPhone and Ratatouille on the same day.

How Big a Geek Have I Become?

A couple of years back, I was introduced to the Harry Potter series. The series has been really solid, with the exception of the speed bump that was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but got back on track with the sixth book. Of course, that's just my opinion, and I'm still looking forward to the movie of it this summer regardless.

Anyway, I thought I'd share how much of a Potter geek I've become. I was actually at one of the midnight releases, ironically before I was a fan of the series, just because I was hanging out with some Borders employees. I'd love to go to one for real, and in fact have been invited to do caricatures at a couple… but the book comes out the same week as Comic-Con in San Diego. That night I'm sure I'll be at the Hyatt bar doing the schmoozing thing.

But, I really want to get it. Heck, a couple days after San Diego, I'll be up in Los Angeles, with some pool time and a cross-country flight back to the Buckeye State ahead of me. I needs me the book. I'd just buy one on Monday, but there's all these cool pre-orders on Amazon, so…

Well, I've ordered the book via Amazon and it will be shipped to me at my Los Angeles hotel. It'll be waiting for me when I check in, and it'll be part of my post-Con recovery.

See, I'm not just a geek about comics and Star Trek.

Picks and Clicks

I'm adding a new category here to the Thom Zahler blog, one that I call recommendations. I don’t really want to get into writing full-blown reviews for too many things. If I don’t like it, I’m probably not going to talk about it. But there are a lot of cool things out there, and when I stumble upon one, I’d like to share it with you.

Here, I’ve got two. One was introduced to me by Christine, the oh-so-tasty Caribou Coffee granola bars. I’m a fan of their coffee (though my Starbucks baristas and baristaettes keep me coming back to there), and am now a fan of their snack bars. I’m hooked on the mint chocolate ones, which have just the right amount of coffee bite, and at 175 calories, they’re not crazy bad for you.

The other is a CD I bought from iTunes recently. I’ve been a big fan of Captain Tractor since I stumbled upon them on a Due South soundtrack. But they’re a Canadian band, and their CDs are hard to find in the States. Apple’s iTunes knows no such boundaries, though, and you can snag their CD in digital format for just $9.99. Their album North of Yellowhead is the first complete album I bought off iTunes, and man, do I like it.

It’s hard to explain the Captain’s sound. Kind of Celtic/rock/Canada/folk. It’s punchy and, more importantly, a lot of fun. These guys don’t take themselves seriously. Heck, to coincide with the album’s release, they even made their own North of Yellowhead beer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t dispense across the computer.

So, coffee bars and Canadian CD’s. I recommend ‘em both.

It's Not Fair!

Thanks to the guys on Comic Pants, I've gotten hooked on the Tokyopop manga series Battle Royale The basic premise is the standard bunch of people on an island who have to kill each other until one is left with a twist: the contestants are all relatively innocent high school students. The fact that none of the students wanted to be there really gives it an edge. The series also shares Lost's penchant for flashbacks, which works really well.

I asked for a couple volumes of the remainder of the series for my birthday. My Mom surprised me and bought them all. I've been parceling them out since, really wanting to finish the series but not wanting to rush through it. Last night, the rubber band in my brain broke, largely due to the Adventures in Sanitary Sewers I'm having at Fortress Zahler, and I decided to veg out and read the rest of the series.

I get to the last issue, and about twenty pages from the end, my Spider-Sense starts going off. Something's wrong. My fears are realized as I get to the end: This isn't the last volume. It's the second last, and Mom didn't get the last one.

Now, let's be clear, it's not my Mom's fault. Heck, I'm impressed she bought them at all. Mom's not a big comics person, and while she's absorbed a lot of comics knowledge from me, her buying specific comic series is like sending me to buy car parts. I only know what I have written down. There's no way she knew she was one shy. Heck, I didn't know she was one shy.

It's all good, anyway. It's nice to find a series that draws you in enough that you get upset you haven't reached the end. And I'll be buying the last volume off Amazon pretty soon, so I'll be set. But, as I'm avoiding working on anything large right now, I thought I'd share my pain.