Smile! You're On CandidGamera.

I got into a brief, but entertaining bout of nostalgia last night, discussing archaic video game systems. Sometimes I miss my Atari. I was shocked to find out that the Intellivision is as old as I am.

I bought Kingdom Hearts II yesterday, because I promised myself two years ago that I'd buy the game - but I must stop spending as much money as I bring in. I've cut some comics from my pull list, suspended my GreenCine subscription - I have trouble enough keeping up with Netflix, timewise - and I'm very very likely to drop City of Heroes next month.

Tonight is Notte Di Cine, or "Movie Night" translated from my mangled "Italianese".

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"Ah, the Intellivision. O'course, the original was a wooden crate full of chickens.
Didn't have controllers as such, but it came with two sticks to poke the chickens.
. . .
And the only game it had was Chicken Fight."

I don't often discuss politics here, I like to keep things light and fluffy. But I saw news this morning that pleased me. Rep. Tom Delay (R - Undead), the center of much investigation at the moment, has announced he is retiring from Congress and not seeking re-election. Coincidentally, this comes the day after one of his former aides turned states' evidence as part of a plea-bargain.

And staying on the news subject, hooray for freakin' medical science! That's going to be a nice little technique there. Since I plan to live forever, I'll certainly need replacement organs sooner or later.

Tonight is Movie Night. Wish I had a copy of All the President's Men to show.

I lack for energy today, and I don't know why. I got to bed at a decent time, but still - nada. Maybe things will pick up after lunch - they often do.

I managed to make time to watch MST3K 5.03 - Swamp Diamonds yesterday. As Dr. Forrester puts it, it's a Roger Corman experiment in padding. Just how little plot and dialogue do we need so that we can barely stretch it into a feature? There was also movie night, in which the classic modern Western Tombstone was screened. Incredibly quotable film. Lots of great cameos too. Apparently an extended version exists with nine more minutes of footage, explaining a few things - may have to find that.

That might sound like a full day for an ordinary media junkie, but I also managed to do a bit of light reading, too! Working my way through the DC Encyclopedia. I'm up to 'C' - annoyingly, they're missing 'The Calculator' and 'Cheeks the Toy Wonder'. The latter I can understand, but the Calculator? Considering how high-profile he's become? The Encyclopedia was published after the first issue of Identity Crisis - the Calculator should be there.

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"You gonna do somethin'? Or are you just gonna stand there and bleed? " - Wyatt Earp, Tombstone

Missed yesterday's entry, due to missing work while being under the weather - literally, in this case, as I think my headaches and sudden loss of all energy had something to do with the sudden 45 degree temperature drop and accompanying pressure drop. Slept late, got some things done around the house, still had movie night.

Still lacking for energy this morning, but didn't want to use another sick day. Besides - it's comic book day, so I have to come up to Morgantown anyway.

Naturally, having four evenings in the 'Burgh, I had to arrange some sort of food intake. For lunch, I could grab something fast from one of the downtown restaurants, but once back to the hotel, I had a dilemma. Do I drive, and brave the hideous traffic? No, of course not. So, delivery was required.

Asking at the front desk, they handed me flyers for a Chinese place, and four Italian/Pizza places. Not too shabby. I don't indulge in Chinese, but I did hatch the wacky scheme to get a pizza form each of the four other places - one, each night. So I could try them all.

This plan turned out to have an immediate flaw - namely, two of the pizza joints had gone out of business. The flyers were old. Curses! What was I to do while I watched endless episodes of Law and Order, and sorted through D&D books? I ordered a pizza from the third place - and it was pretty good, so I had the second half of it for dinner on the second night. On the third night, I tried a pizza from the fourth place - a fancy little Italian joint called Vincent's of Greentree - and was disappointed. More expensive, much less good. Ah! Vincent's would deliver other things - they had a fairly robust menu. So I tried some of their chicken fingers and spaghetti on the fourth night. The chicken was bland, and the spaghetti not so good. Can't win them all, I suppose.

More Pittsburgh musings tomorrow.

Movie Night went well last night, and the movie selected by the attendees was Eurotrip, by a landslide. I was initially somewhat reluctant, my memory of the film having faded to the point where I didn't recall just how funny it was. My fear was unjustified, though, as it has so many great little bits in it, that all were entertained. It's not high art, but if you don't laugh at the "robot fight" sequence, you have no soul. I also demonstrated Dragon Quest 8 for my friends briefly.

Today is comic book day - and it's a big one, too. Lots of new stuff coming out, plus I need to pick up more storage supplies. My Superman books have been properly indexed, and now it's time to move on to the next set. Flash or Green Lantern, I think.

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Is Skeet Ulrich the poor man's Johnny Depp, or is Johnny Depp the rich man's Skeet Ulrich?

Last night was movie night, which featured Ghost in the Shell 2, complete with a slightly "off" translation that provided some amusement. It's a very pretty movie though. I also managed to have a lengthy chat with Eric regarding our two upcoming D&D campaigns. Going back through all the in-depth notes I've made so far for the new world really stoked the desire to play.

I mean, for crying out loud, I described what sort of novels and books were favored in one of the countries. That's detail! Hopefully I can free up some time soon (by borrowing from my video game time-budget, no doubt) to finish the core of the new campaign into something playable.

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"Then we shall show them what they can see." - Quotable Eric

Well, last night was a hoot - movie night got cancelled, but I was able to unlock VS Special mode in Soul Calibur III, meaning now I can kick Debbie's butt with any weapon I want. I also did my packing for the short Turkey Day vacation which will leave me unlikely to add to this chronicle.

Most importantly, I finished off another box of my comic collection, fully indexed, organized, ordered, bagged, and boarded. This was significant to me because the 'theme' for that box was the Justice Society of America.

Now, half of you just went "Who the heck is the Justice Society?", the other half just went "That's one of those comic book superteams, right?", and Kurt just thought "Well, they're no Legion.."

The Justice Society is a Reese's milestone in comic book history. By which I mean - they represent a collision of chocolate, and peanut butter. After the debut of Superman in 1938, costumed superpowered crimefighters were on the rise. Everybody and their brother was cranking out new comic books with original superheroic characters. Most titles were anthology-style; you'd get one big name as the headliner, with several additional heroes featured in other stories. And initially, All-Star Comics was one of those anthologies. It was sort of unique in that its stars were already headlining other anthology titles. However, a few issues in, something neat happened. They put all the guys in All-Star Comics together. In the same scene. They'd actually formed a group - more a "club" where they talked about their adventures at first, but soon enough they would actually be working together.

The closest thing to a team-up that had happened before was Batman and Superman sharing a cover. So this was a new idea - but a really simple one, in retrospect. The Justice Society was born. Who was in it? Almost everybody. The guideline DC (then National) used was that there would be 8 'active' members, and anyone who had their own solo title (as Superman and Batman had recently received) would only be an honorary member.

Apparently, the idea was popular. Teams started cropping up all over. Unfortunately, superhero comics stumbled in the post WW2 era, and took a few years to get back on their feet, but when they did - the Justice League, an updated Justice Society, was born. And then they brought back the originals, too.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Society

So last night, the troops gathered at my demi-palatial estate to engage in the watching of Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. For those of you who haven't seen it - it's based on Frank Miller's comics, and is essentially an ultra-noir. The noiriest noir to ever noir a noir. Distillate of Noir. My friends seemed to enjoy it mostly, though the overabundance of groin-related violence did cause a few cringes.

I love the exaggerated violence and dialogue. It's a real hoot. My favorite thing in the entire movie is Bruce Willis's narration, describing some clumsy work, '..like a palsy victim doing brain surgery with a pipe wrench.' Damn, now that's a simile!

Now I need to get through this week's Netflix selection, and an MST3K episode.. And it's comic book day!

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Noir is a funny word, too.