Category Archives: General

General

Where has the time gone…?

Friday, February 26th.

The last Friday of February and, in a few days, we’re into March.

Third month of the year and one year since the U.S. truly understood COVID-19 was here. Mind you, it was here already.

As I’ve mentioned before, my Father tested positive for COVID anti-bodies and the last time he was sick -and he was quite sick for a little bit of time but thankfully not so sick he needed hospitalization- was last year late January early February.

I’m quite sure he -and quite possibly several other people in our sphere, including myself- caught COVID back then and simply didn’t realize it.

Moving to today, we have reached the point where some 50 million people have gotten vaccines for COVID here in the U.S. Today the FDA is meeting to see if they will approve the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only one shot.

If its greenlit today, we’ll have three vaccines available in the U.S., Pfizer and Moderna and now the Johnson & Johnson.

Because the J & J vaccine only requires one shot and doesn’t need the extreme cold storage, that could be a big game changer and allow many more people to get their vaccine.

Hopefully we’ll hear the good news a little later today.

Oh, and everyone out there: Have a great weekend! Stay safe!

General

Stan Lee, Redux

A few days back I posted (you can read it here) about the biographical novel True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Reisman, which was released and has been promoted quite a bit.

This biography has opened up some old debates on just how much Stan Lee did with regard to the books/characters released through Marvel Comics and which have become these days a multi-billion dollar mega-juggernaut what with the success of the various Marvel movies… all of which, until Stan Lee’s passing, featuring amusing cameo appearances by him.

Roy Thomas, a Stan Lee protege who started working at a very young age at Marvel in 1965, was there for a little over half of Stan Lee’s tenure as editor/writer of the material (he left the position in 1972) pushes back against the biography and some of its conclusions. He argues the biography is a little too quick to take the word of Jack Kirby over Stan Lee and diminishes his work there. You can read the article for yourself at this link to thehollywoodreporter.com and is written by Mr. Thomas himself:

Roy Thomas, Former Marvel Editor, Pushes Back on New Stan Lee Biography

In my last posting, I noted that many years have now passed since that epoch, which lasted a little less than 10 years in total, basically from 1960 to roughly 1970.

Further, over the years since that point it was clear that memories were hazy, not just for Stan Lee, but for Jack Kirby as well, something that Mr. Thomas notes when stating the biography seems to come down harder on Mr. Lee’s fuzzy memory versus Jack Kirby’s.

If true (I haven’t read the book), that’s a fair point to make.

Further, Mr. Thomas does provide some solid written proof in the form of a couple of early plot drafts by Stan Lee which survive to this day and do indeed suggest/prove he did have a hand in plotting the first, and another earlier, Fantastic Four story.

Mr. Thomas provides this fascinating bit, taken from that column (I highlighted the part I thought was the most fascinating):

That Stan Lee was the co-creator, and not the sole creator, of the key Marvel heroes from the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through Daredevil and the Silver Surfer can hardly be in dispute at this late stage. I myself, back in the ’80s when I wasn’t working for him, had a friendly argument with him on that score over lunch. I soon realized that, as much as he respected the talents and contributions of artists (Riesman would say “artist/writers” and he’s right, at least in one sense) such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the characters introduced in the 1960s, he could never really bring himself, in his own mind, to think of them as “co-creators.” The two of us had to agree to disagree, and I never saw any use in bringing it up again.

This, to me, is the crux of the argument many have with/against Stan Lee: He took credit for the “creation” of all these characters and one can’t help but wonder how much he subsequently felt he was the sole writer of the stories as well.

I don’t doubt that in the early going of Marvel Comics Stan Lee had a much more involved hand in writing/plotting the stories. There may well be several stories, including some of the earliest ones, that Stan Lee had a big hand on.

But based on the voluminous photocopies of pages released in more recent times, one gets the feeling that Jack Kirby at least and perhaps a little later on, was doing most of the actual story plotting via drawing the actual pages and putting notes on the sides as to what’s going on. Stan Lee would then write in his dialogue/captions (and, to be extremely fair, they were often dynamite!) but to say that Stan Lee was the “sole” creator of these works, especially after the first few years, feels like taking a glory that wasn’t entirely his.

Interestingly, Mark Evanier, who one could look at as a protege of Jack Kirby (he was around/working with him following his leaving Marvel Comics), was interviewed for the biography but had no opinion about it because he hadn’t read it yet. Nonetheless, he had this to say about the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creative relationship (the full post which I took this excerpt from can be found on his website, News From ME – Mark Evanier’s blog):

But my conclusion is that the comics we know to be created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, not necessarily as 50-50 efforts and certainly not with Jack supplying only the visuals. I think Jack did a lot more than Stan — at least on the pages — and until fairly recently, got a lot less credit; likewise, Stan and Steve Ditko, Stan and Don Heck, Stan and Bill Everett, etc. The disparity in financial reward was even greater.

But that doesn’t mean Stan did nothing or did nothing well. I have witnessed way too many Stan/Jack debates in my life and I think all are dead wrong if they lead to the conclusion that either contributed zero. This view has occasionally made me feel unwelcome on Stan Lee forums and in Jack Kirby chat groups. And just as I reject that notion, I reject the argument that neither would have amounted to anything post-1961 without the other. They were two men of extraordinary skills…just not the same skills.

A lot of folks don’t want to hear about the battles and the quarrels and the screwings. They just want to enjoy the body of work…and I sometimes wish I could stop there. Instead, I think I’ll stop here…for now.

Perhaps that’s the best summary of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary place in entertainment history.

General

First color photograph of a car…?

Articles like the one I’m about to link below absolutely fascinate me.

Presented on jalopnik.com and written by Jason Torchinsky, he believes he has found…

The very first color photograph of a car

I’ll spoil the article a bit but I think Mr. Torchinsky is probably right.

This is assuming, as he does, no other photographs are found from before that time taken by the same gentleman (I don’t want to SPOIL the whole article, but the person who took the photograph is indeed one of the giants of that sort of stuff).

One more SPOILER, the photograph in question. From way back in 1906…

Absolutely fascinating stuff!

General

Frantic days…

How does the saying go?

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.

My wife’s last week, in a nutshell.

On Thursday, February 11, my eldest daughter and she flew off to Austin, Texas. She was simply accompanying my daughter back to her home after spending a good deal of time here with us and, we hoped, well after any COVID-19 craziness with the traveling during Christman/New Years.

The flight there was fine. My wife, who has already gotten both Pfizer vaccines, accompanied her on the flight, got to Austin, and all was fine.

The trip was meant to be very brief. She would fly back home on Monday, February 15. One week ago today.

Mother nature, alas, had other plans.

For those who’ve been in a cave the last week, an icy blast hit the middle of the country starting on Sunday February the 14th. Snow fell, the roads iced up, and Texas was quickly exposed as a state that, thanks to deregulation, had an electric grid that simply wasn’t up to the chill.

Worse, for many water pipes froze and burst and roads were undriveable. Austin -and it seems the entirety of Texas as well- doesn’t have a good snow clearing and/or salting system. As someone who lived in Canada, what I saw on the news and heard from my wife about the situation there was something which would not have caused a problem for people in my (very) old stomping grounds.

But in Texas, it proved paralyzing.

The flight scheduled for Monday was cancelled. She rescheduled for Wednesday but, as the situation played out, it was clear Wednesday wouldn’t work either. The roads remained incredibly dangerous to drive on -there was absolutely no chance they would risk driving to the airport and even the Super Shuttle service was not going- but it didn’t matter: The airports were essentially closed and all flights were cancelled.

Thursday, we hoped, she would finally be able to travel home but the weather reports were grim, along with the general news. People were losing their power and water and the weather was bitterly cold.

Anticipating losing water, they collected snow in my daughter’s bathtub to use for the toilet. Eventually, their water was turned off.

But Thursday the 18th, the third scheduled day for my wife to fly back, was cancelled out and, while outside getting more snow for the bathtub, my wife slipped on some ice, fell, and broke her arm in two places.

Yeah.

Luckily, by Thursday the roads were better to drive on versus even the day before, and my daughter and wife were able to go to an emergency clinic. My wife thought maybe she didn’t break her arm but an X-Ray quickly proved she had. Luckily, again, she didn’t break her wrist but a little below it, which meant she likely didn’t need surgery.

A temporary cast was made to keep her arm stable but a more permanent cast couldn’t be put on until the swelling went down, three or four days later.

By this point, my wife had her flight scheduled, for the fourth time, for Saturday the 20th.

By then the cold snap was in the process of going away and the flight took off on time and she arrived home a little early, though it was quite late at night when we finally got her home.

We spent Sunday relaxing as best we could and, this morning, headed to a Hospital which had an Orthopedics department and were able to see us.

She got herself another set of X-Rays and -finally, good news!- the break was relatively stable and didn’t require any surgery.

In a little over one hour, she was back outside ready for me to pick her up, sporting a nice blue cast over her right arm.

Meanwhile in Austin, my daughter’s water was back Sunday night and its looking like things are somewhat getting back to normal in that beautiful city. Better yet, she was able to gas up her car today (she was getting very low) and it looks like some of the grocery stores are filling up with foods.

Meanwhile, horror stories about Texas are still coming in, from the incredibly inept Governor and Senator Ted Cruz’s idiotic attempt to flee the state for Cancun. There are heartbreaking stories of people who froze to death, including an 11 year old boy, and one can’t help but shake one’s head at all of this.

In light of these tragedies, my wife breaking her arm and my daughter’s inconvenience is a small thing indeed versus the suffering others have faced.

It shouldn’t have happened yet it did.

I really, really hope that the voters of Texas remember this the next time elections roll around.

General

Perseverance…

Yesterday came the excellent news (for once, right?) that the Perseverance rover  had successfully landed on Mars. There were two images almost immediately released, the first one of the surface it landed upon…

The first image captured by NASA's Perseverance rover of the surface of Mars after its successful landing on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.

And the next one was an incredible look at the rover taken by its jetpack as it was being lowered to the surface of Mars…

This shot from a camera on Perservance's "jetpack" captures the rover in midair, just before its wheels touched down.

Whew.

Well, the Perseverance rover is down safe and sound and looks like there was no damage to the mechanical device.

What will follow will surely be incredible.

Compared to other rovers that have landed on Mars, this one has some very impressive technology within. We’re going to get HD images for the first time and… sound. Not only that, the rover has a detachable helicopter-like device which will fly around and Mars, also taking what are sure to be incredible images of the planet’s surface.

As if that weren’t enough, the rover will collect samples and check to see if there are indeed any living creatures in the soil.

Want more information on what’s to come? Check out this fascinating article by George Dvorsky and presented on gizmodo.com…

Here’s What’s Next for Perseverance Rover’s Journey on Mars

It’s going to be a fascinating next few months and years!

General

Texas…

How the hell does this happen?

How the hell does a state as big and robust as Texas essentially go down for the count because of a winter system?

I’m in a rather unique position, on the outside looking in but on the inside my wife and daughter are there, “enjoying” the situation right this moment. They’ve been lucky. Their electricity hasn’t gone out yet, but as of yesterday their water was turned off.

In-freaking-credible.

They dare not go out to stores since Monday (not that many of them were open) but yesterday they did and later on, when I talked to my wife, she said it was scary driving along the road to a nearby supermarket to get some much needed provisions given they had to drive along some hilly terrain and feared their car would slide on the ice in the road.

This is the city of Austin, a beautiful, wonderful city, but like almost all the rest of Texas, they’ve been gripped by the incompetence of years of deregulation. They also don’t have, it appears, any snow shoveling trucks or other equipment to deal with a winter storm of this magnitude.

It’s amusing -to the point of volcanically infuriating– that governor Gregg Abbott has the cojones to state -on Fox “News”, natch- that somehow the electrical problems were caused by those Green Deal initiatives, including Turbines. Or that Rick Perry, one time governor, stated that… hell, its in the title of the below article, which also presents Mr. Abbott’s head spinning stupidity about Green energy (the article below is by Katie Shepherd and presented on washingtonpost.com):

Rick Perry says Texans would accept even longer power outages ‘to keep the federal government out of their business’

Never mind, Mr. Abbott, that countries with far harsher winters have turbines that work perfectly fine. Never mind that freaking Antarctica has functioning turbines. Oh no, they simply don’t work in winter weather, right?

Except…

The wind turbines account for some 10% of Texas’ total power grid. The failure is across the board, from fossil fuel to nuclear.

And the reason for this major failure?

Deregulation.

Seems Texas has their very own power grid and they don’t want no bothersome federal regulations intruding on their profits.

You know, the regulations that would have mandated protections to the grids in case of things like… oh… severe winter weather.

This is why wind turbines in places like Antarctica and Norway function despite winter weather which is much more severe and long lasting than that found this week in Texas. Their equipment is winterized while Texas’ equipment is obviously not.

But, hey, it works well on the right wing propaganda sites to blame people like AOC and Bernie Sanders -people who have absolutely zero to do with Texas- for the problems some 20 years of Republican rule have created, right?

Oh, and of course in the middle of all this and not to be outdone, Ted Cruz shows he’s willing to lower the bar even more for Texan Republicans (the below article is by D. Roche and presented on Newsweek.com)…

Ted Cruz accused of flying to Cancun amid Texas outages as photo goes viral

The photo:

Image

Yup, sure does look like our good “friend” Ted Cruz aboard an aircraft heading to Cancun for a pleasant vacation while some of his constituents are quite literally freezing and/or starving to death.

Sheesh.

I really, really hope the people of Texas remember this when elections next come up.

POSTSCRIPT: My daughter in Austin just sent me this. Sounds right!

General

Rush Limbaugh…

The two Golden Age of Hollywood superstars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had what could be described -in the nicest way possible-a contentious relationship.

Joan Crawford, left, and Bette Davis, right, in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane

Putting it more bluntly, they were bitter rivals who spent a lifetime going after and trying to one-up each other. Incredibly, they even managed to make one film together, the cult classic horror film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? , made in the later parts of their respective careers, but even that didn’t bring them any closer.

When Joan Crawford died in 1977, Bette David had this to say about her passing:

You should never say bad things about the dead, only good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

General

And now we can move on…

Posted this morning about the end stages of the second Impeachment of Donald Trump and now, several hours later and into early evening, the matter, at least in the Senate, is complete.

By a vote of 57 guilty and 43 not guilty, Donald Trump avoids being convicted. To be convicted, he would have needed 2/3rd of the Senate to vote guilty and, if I’ve done my math right, that would have required 67 guilty votes, ten more than we had.

The Republicans who voted not guilty did so by and large on the technicality that because Trump was no longer President, he couldn’t be convicted.

Which is, of course, a big load of BS.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives while still in office and for actions performed leading up to January 6th… which, again, was a crime committed while still in office.

Then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, loathe to start the trail and no doubt already seeking an excuse to not convict Trump, postponed the Senate trial until after Biden was sworn in. Then he had the balls to say on this very day that he wouldn’t vote guilty for a conviction because Trump was no longer in office….!

But even that excuse is crazy: If Joe Biden, on his last weeks in office, decides to do something similar and causes the deaths of several people, then I suppose he too wouldn’t be convicted in the Senate because his time in office has run out?!

So I suppose if I were working at, say, at a bank and robbed it on the final week I worked there and my actions were discovered after I left the job, I couldn’t be tried for the crime because I’d already left the job?

Really?

Just… incredible.

And yet…

As I said in my earlier post, I’m kinda glad its over.

I suspect there will be other legal issues Donald Trump will face. Those that were injured during the riot, for example, will likely go after Trump in court. The relatives of the officer that died during the insurrection will likely sue as well.

Is Donald Trump protected from these suits?

I don’t know.

But even if he skirts them, he’s still got plenty of legal heat coming his way for other things.

As I also said in my earlier post, maybe he’s a masochist and just likes to have people coming after him.

Whatever.

He’s no longer the President of the United States and, hopefully, never will be. Even more hopefully, the majority voters who put Biden in the White House will continue to vote out these cowardly Republicans.

There is a way forward.

Let’s see if we get there.

General

Impeachment Part Deux…

As of today, Saturday the 13th of February, it appears the Impeachment trail of Donald Trump in the Senate is all but over -unless there is a decision made to call witnesses- and after concluding arguments, a vote will be taken whether to find him guilty.

It also appears that this vote will go in Trump’s favor and he won’t, despite all the voluminous evidence against him, be convicted of fomenting an insurrection.

Today came this piece of news (the article is by Sara Boboltz and is presented on huffingtonpost.com):

Mitch McConnell Will Vote To Acquit Trump In Impeachment Trial

Mitch McConnell is the senior most member of the Republican party in the Senate and, until the election, was the Senate’s leader. According to McConnell, his decision was a “close call”.

Yeah, sure.

At this point, its just as well the Senate/Congress ends this farce. Despite overwhelming evidence the Republicans want no part in having Trump convicted of anything and they obviously fear their voting base’s reaction should they do what they should… if they had a backbone.

If you can vote to convict President Clinton for a freaking blowjob -which several senators still in the Senate did- surely they would have the courage to…

...nah…

Oh well.

End it and let’s move on.

I suspect there will be further legal actions taken against Trump and what’s left of his miserable life will be spent fighting these actions.

Maybe he’s a masochist and enjoys that.

Either way, I’m more than ready to move past him and forget he ever was a thing.

Hope the rest of the country does the same.

POSTSCRIPT:

Holy crap… no sooner do I post this, figuring the impeachment trial was over, that this happens (the article is by Igor Bobic and presented on huffingtonpost.com):

Senate Votes to Admit Witnesses in Trump’s Impeachment Trial

Wow.

From the article:

House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said his team would like to hear from Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month.

Herrera Beutler on Friday provided new information about a phone call between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Trump on Jan. 6.

The push to subpoena witnesses follows a bombshell report on Trump’s conduct while the Jan. 6 violence unfolded. According to CNN, Trump reportedly responded with mockery when McCarthy called him pleading to call off his supporters — prompting a “shouting match” between the two men.

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump told McCarthy, according to a CNN report published Friday.

The conversation was confirmed directly by Herrera Beutler.

Huh!

The news that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a phone call during the January 6th insurrection wherein McCarthy told Trump to call off his people and Trump supposedly said he didn’t care to, is pretty heady stuff and essentially proves the case for impeachment.

Senator Sheldon Whitehorse (D) tweeted that McCarthy should be deposed under oath to get to the truth of this matter.

Under oath, eh?

About time they did that with some of these slippery characters.

Certainly interesting if they do.

General, TV

Too much information…

A while back, when Facebook was first becoming a thing, I recall there was an article imploring people to be careful with what they posted on the then rising platform.

Specifically, they noted that some people posted information about how excited they were about going on an upcoming vacation which took them away from their home. When the vacation was over and they got back, these people were shocked to find that their home/apartment had been broken into while they were gone.

What happened? Well, it seemed the thieves were scanning postings on Facebook and realized they had an unoccupied home available for them for X number of days and simply broke into it knowing the owners were away.

Sadly, I saw some friends of mind doing this same stupidity, posting on Facebook that they were eager to head out to, say, a Disney trip over the weekend, essentially telling anyone reading their post that their home would likely be left vacant while they were gone.

Which brings us to Gina Carano.

Don’t know who she is? Maybe this will help:

Image result for gina carano mandelorian

Gina Carano is an ex-MMA fighter turned actress who played Cara Dune on the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, the very popular set in the Star Wars universe TV series.

She played the character (past tense) because Disney has decided to part ways with her (the below link is to an article by Ed Mazza and was posted on huffingtonpost.com)…

The Mandelorian star Gina Carano axed after “abhorrent” social media posts

Like the Facebook postings I mentioned above, there remains to this day a big problem with people feeling the need to post their thoughts and, in the case of Ms. Carano, posting thoughts which expose her as… well… a person who maybe has fallen under the sway of alarming elements within society.

Look, I know not everyone out there is going to share my mostly liberal leanings. I know there are those out there who are very logical, well balanced, yet may have diametrically opposite political views to my own.

The world comes in all flavors!

But… if one begins to write outlandish ideas, far right screeds, and shows themselves to be in league with -or at least sympathetic with- some of the more out there ideals, and especially if you’re an actor who works for a company that doesn’t like the idea of hiring anyone with any dirt or controversy in their “character”, then maybe its best you keep some of your opinions to yourself.

In the case of Ms. Carano, she is clearly a person who espouses right wing ideals, but its one thing to have such ideals and another to go too far. In this case, going too far for Disney was comparing the current political climate in the United States -and against those who espouse right wing ideology- as being like living in “Nazi Germany”.

While it appears this was the post that precipitated Ms. Carano’s firing, she’s been posting uncomfortable material for a while now (the below linked article is by Joanna Robinson and Anthony Breznican and found on vanityfair.com)…

As Gina Carano and Star Wars fans clash, hero worship turns to scorn

From the above article:

Two months ago, Carano made dismissive remarks about trans pronouns. She’s also shared unproven theories about both the presidential election results and COVID-19 mask mandates. The hashtag #FireGinaCarano began trending Saturday, after Carano announced that she was setting up an account on Parler, a social media platform that has recently become a hit with Donald Trump faithful. 

I find myself, again as a liberal individual who values free speech, rather uncomfortable with the idea of punishing people for certain free speech.

Again: If you are a conservative and into right wing ideology and can present well reasoned arguments for your philosophies, there’s nothing, IMHO, wrong with that even if I may totally disagree with your points.

However, there comes a point where one takes it too far.

I don’t know Ms. Carano, only the items linked above which got her into hot water and eventually fired, but I do know this:

I’m uncomfortable with people who espouse the idea that COVID-19 is a hoax and/or actively -and proudly!- endanger others by not wearing a freaking mask when in public. I’m very uncomfortable with people who allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy under the lie that an election was stolen despite no evidence at all to prove this and 62 lawsuits, all but one of which were dismissed because Trump’s team couldn’t prove their heated rhetoric.

And I’m uncomfortable as hell with people who feel entitled to “protest” and create an insurrection by forcing their way into government buildings, the worst example of which was what occurred on January 6th.

I’m certain most -perhaps even all!- of these people do not view themselves as bad guys, but they are.

And they are because they allowed themselves to be convinced of multiple lies by an -admittedly!- charismatic man who played them all for his own benefit.

But…

Free speech can have consequences and Ms. Carano is experiencing them.

You can have your opinions and you can hold them very dear to yourself.

Realize though that by stating them out loud, whether in an interview or posted on Facebook or Twitter, there can be consequences.

If I hire someone at my business and it turns out they were involved in the events at the Capitol on January 6th, I’d think really hard -and ask plenty of questions before hiring them.

If I’m a multi-million dollar conglomorate like Disney and spend millions on a TV show, the last thing I want is to have one of the actors courting controversy and making fans unhappy by their mere presence.

Personally, I haven’t seen a single episode of The Mandelorian and have no idea how good Ms. Carano was in her role. I did see her in the movie Haywire, where she essentially played a female James Bond-like character, and I enjoyed her in that role.

I hope she takes this moment and instead of lashing out, dedicates herself to read and watch more legitimate news articles and gain a truer understanding of the world around her and not the conspiracy-twinged world of these right wing platforms.