Well the week of craziness is just about over, and as I quote The Ramones in my blogs' title, I'm here to reflect on the week that was. My parents are set to fly back to CT tonight, so let me try to run down the highlights thus far:
Tuesday night: The parents' flight from CT gets delayed due to a large scale power outtage that affected all radar systems in Southern California airports. Planes heading to LAX, Burbank, etc were almost univerally grounded or diverted, including my parents' in-theory direct flight from Bradley in Hartford to LAX, which got diverted to Salt Lake City late Tuesday night, and didn't take off for until hours later, meaning that my mom and dad didn't arrive until almost 1 am PT (aka 4 am ET). Yikes!
Wednesday: I took the day off from work, had lunch with m parents, met up with my visiting brother at Universal Studios' theme park, then the two of us met my parents for a family-style Italian dinner at Bucca di Beppo.
Thursday and Friday: Went to work as usual, then again met up with my parents each night for some dinner / obligatory nagging.
Saturday: Dayum - it was literally 110 degrees in the Valley! Not realizing until after the fact just how hot it was, we headed down to Old Town, Pasadena for some food / shopping. The heat was so unbearable though that you could seriously barely walk outside. So after a lunch in which about ten glasses of lemonade were consumed by each of us, we headed out, relaxed, and met up later for dinner.
Sunday: Slightly cooler but still scorchingly hot, we went to Brentwood for lunch with two relatives of mine who for various reasons I have never actually met. For the first time in my life, I met my grandmother's brother Josh and his wife. Everyone was a little nervous about the meeting, but it turned out to be a great experience to meet and connect with this part of the family that until now I had only heard of but never met for myself. I now know that I have a pretty closely-related great uncle and aunt who live less than half an hour away - so yeah that was quite an interesting afternoon. Sunday night we grabbed some quality retro diner food at Mel's in Hollywood, then went to a showing of Pirates 2 at the El Capitan theater, which is owned by Disney and was all decked out in pirate-themed props and artwork and decorations. Basicall, the theater is more like a play-house than a typical movie theater, but it does make everything pretty dramatic, when you're watching in such an elaborately themed environment. Anyways, Pirates was jsut as entertaining on the second go-round for me, and my parents both enjoyed it as they had not yet seen it. Of course, Pirates is a damn entertaining movie, but it's also a long-ass movie, meaning that once we got out of the theater, got to our car, and spent over half an hour getting out of the Hollywood and Highland underground parking garage, and got back to my apartment, it was pretty late. Which brings me to today ...
So yeah, it's been an eventful week. That meeting on Sunday though ... I mean, every family has their infighting, sure, but to see a guy who has been all but totally cut off from the rest of my family for more than two decades, that is pretty crazy. I'm just glad that that relationship is kind of getting normalized a bit and it may be a decade or two overdue, but it looks like things are getting on the right track, which of course is nice to see.
- What else is going on ...?
Of course the big thing this weekend was the San Diego Comicon. I've yet to actually go (maybe next year), but a number of my friends went either on their own or through work. As cool as it would be to go, the heatwave combined with reports of overcrowding almost made me want to steer clear. And as cool as it is that so many film and TV studios have hopped on the Comicon bandwagon, it sounds like it is almost becoming a little overwhelming in terms of how much they dominate the show floor. Still, it is all kind of a roundabout way of validation - the Geeks won! Comics are pop culture! Superheroes are big business! But in all this sales of comics themselves are still relatively stagnant and insular, even though they still remain a source of captivating stories, astounding artwork, and unbridled imagination and creative voice.
So here's an interesting announcement from San Diego, for those looking for a reason to make the jump to comics. Richard Donner will be writing Superman comics! Yep, Richard Donner, director of the original Superman movie, will be writing Action Comics along with currently hot comics scribe and former Donner assistant - Geoff Johns.
But is this even a good thing?
Anything that draws publicity to the comics can't be all bad - but Donner - he isn't even a writer by trade, and for good or ill his name means nothing to most people under thirty-five. That's not a knock on Donner, just a statement that Donner's name mostly holds appeal for the guys already reading comics every month - older dudes nostalgic for their youth. If Donner can come in and along with Johns do a kickass story, then great. But I wouldn't put any great hopes in Donner's name selling comics to a mainstream audience that wouldn't normally buy - certainly not more than a Hollywood-turned-comics writer guy who's a big name NOW, like Joss Whedon or Kevin Smith for example. So what Hollywood people WOULD I love to see do comics, who I think would give instant name value and mainstream attention to the medium. I was about to write down some names like Quentin Tarantino and Peter Jackson, but ultimately it's not the name of the writer, but the distribution, marketing, and price of comics that are really keeping them out of the mainstream (a place that Japanese manga quickly penetrated). My point is, I guess, that rather than coasting on the licensing revenue they make from movies and TV, it's time that Marvel and DC and the rest seriously reexamine why the comics themselves are not selling on par with the latest bestseller novels despite the popularity of the characters.
OTHER STUFF:
- Still have to see Clerks II this week, and soon Monster House and Lady in the Water (that one more for the curiosity factor ...).
- I am now psyched for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. That trailer brought me back to the days of sitting at home, playing the TMNT videogame, chomping on pizza, and yelling things like "Cowabunga!" and "Totally Tubular!" Oh wait, that was yesterday ...
- Also, reading some early reviews of Jack Black's Tenacious D movie has me looking forward to it possibly more so than any other film on the horizon. It sounds hilarious - and features the likes of Meatloaf and Ronnie James Dio! Rarely do most comedies make me think that they will be an instant classic from advance buzz alone, but this fall there will be two likely contenders for Funniest Movie Ever -- Tenacious D AND Borat! It's a-nice.
- One more trailer opinion - The Fountain, by Darren Aranofsky, looks sweet! That one's gonna be epic.
And I'm out - tonight = one more night of dinner with da folks, then collapsing in exhaustion as the heat causes me to up and go stir crazy. Back soon with more.
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