Books, Comics, Personal and Movies - Come read a round-up, won't you?

I'm not really feeling like doing some big, hefty posts at the moment.  Perhaps all the DCNu has worn me down.

Books:  On my quest to get to books I haven't read yet that you're supposed to read, I'm currently listening to The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.  It's read by actor Dylan Baker, who I've always thought to be really good, no matter the project he's in.  And he's doing an awesome job thus far with this book.

Comics:  I just read Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader from Vertigo Comics' Vertigo Crime line (my first dip in).  Its a pretty good detective story in the classic vein, but with a lot of modern sensibility despite its 1953 time-setting.  The protagonist/ narrator is very deeply in the closet, but its really the post-Chinatown content that keeps the 50's a setting rather than being truly evocative of the period.  Still, a good, brisk read.  And now that these books are in paperback and the price dropped, a lot better deal.  Feels a lot more like the dimestore novel this book emulates in spirit.

Personal:  My folks are off the Las Vegas for the first time.  It cracks me up.  They've been all over the planet, but I wasn't sure how to prepare them for the most ridiculous place I've ever been.  "Go to the Bellagio!" I said, unsure of what else to tell them.  What am I supposed to do?  Recommend The Gun Store to The Karebear?

Movies:  For some reason the 1984 film Streets of Fire kept coming up, so this evening I made Jamie watch the Michael Pare vehicle.  The entire movie makes so much more sense when you realize Jim Steinman, the brains behind Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II wrote some of the movie's music, and no matter what they tell you, this should have been a Meatloaf musical.  It also stars all kinds of folks you know from other projects from Rick Moranis to Robert Townsend to Willem DaFoe and a very, very young Diane Lane.

Dude, I can only wish that "what it meant to be young" for me had included shotguns, cool cars and Diane Lane.

The dialog is pretty goofy in that way tough-guy dialog from the 1980's just absolutely doesn't work at all anymore (and not because of dated slang, etc...  It was like they were just learning how to use swears back then).  And frankly, I'm not sure anybody is very good in this movie, but its absolutely interesting.