Happy New Year

The clock has struck midnight here in Central Time.  That border has been crossed and the new trek begins into the field of the unknown.  2014, whatever it was, can now recede into memory.  In time, only so many things that occurred this year will we stamp with the number.  With any luck, we will have learned something from it all, and we'll be better from both what the year gave and took.

May the coming year bring you new reasons to laugh, people with whom you can share, and new endeavors to accomplish.   May the changes to come be faced with courage.  May the gifts to come be received with grace.

Here, in the earliest of the next 8766 hours or so ahead or us before we do this again, let's enjoy the newly minted year and another chance to do it well.

I'll raise a glass to the days we won't get back from the year left behind, and drink to what the coming days can bring.

Here's to hope.  Here's to a New Year.

May Your New Year's Eve be Norma Desmond Good

3 Movie Day: Sorcerer (1977), Spaceballs (1987), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

With the holiday season on, today was the first day without guests or an event to attend to since before Christmas Eve.  I did have a few buddies over, including PlacesLost and SimonUK, but it was in order to eat some pizza and watch a movie.

Sorcerer (1977)

Simon picked up the BluRay of this one recently, and I'd seen the trailer at the Alamo last winter and had been looking to see it ever since.  The movie may be most infamous for opening against Star Wars in 1977 and, thusly, doing pretty poorly at the box office.  Undeservedly so, as many who have seen the movie were big fans.  But it's also an interesting  juxtaposition as Star Wars would go on to define what Hollywood would spend the next forty years trying to recreate as blockbuster/ tentpole/ extremely profitable popular entertainment, and this was a smaller movie with precious little dialogue about men driving trucks through the jungle.

Coming Back From Outer Space

Hey, y'all.

Hope everyone is doing as okay as can be.

So, as some of you know, while I ceased formal blogging at this URL, I never really left the internet.  I kind of decamped to tumblr, twitter, facebook and whatnot.  But, I'll be honest with you.  It ain't never really been all that much fun.

Serving it up since 2003.

Y'all hang on.  I'm working on it.

Jeff the Cat Merges with The Infinite

If you think he's thinking "I didn't do it", you are right.

Jeffrey George Taylor The Cat, better known as "Jeff the Cat", passed today.

He will not be remembered fondly by many.  He had... personality.  But Jeff was my little buddy, and I am going to miss him very much.

We didn't get along the first few years he lived with us, and I was, frankly, ready to get rid of him at the drop of a hat.  Oddly, during that time, he saved my life.

I had an old oscillating fan, and one day I was working away on my computer in the era before laptops, and Jeff was circling my feet as cats do.  Suddenly, he bolted out of the room, and I thought that was a bit peculiar so I turned around and the fan was a pillar of oscillating flame.   I don't know if I would have died, exactly, but we would have certainly had a lot more property damage and many more problems if Jeff hadn't alerted me to the fire.

Still, we didn't really get along.  But at some point when we lived in Phoenix, Jeff started hanging out with me in the mornings while I was showering and getting ready.  And then started hanging out with me in the evenings after Jamie went to bed.  And soon I had a little yellow shadow wherever I went.

I will never know why he picked me over Jamie.  For years, she was far nicer to that cat than myself.  But for the past decade, he's been my constant sidekick.  And made it really hard to organize comics by walking all over them, chewing on comic bags, knocking over action figures and generally letting me know that if I was sitting on the floor, I was really supposed to be playing with him.

I am not sure I'll know when to wake up without him coming to get me.  Or how I'll know when it's time to go to bed without him giving me a pointed look around midnight each evening.  Or how to read a book or magazine without him rubbing his face against the edges and suggesting "hey, if you want to just stare at something, I'm your huckleberry".  Or how one watches TV or movies without a cat making himself at home on your chest or on your leg.  I assume I might now float away without the extra few pounds of cat to weigh me down.

We were with him when he went, and he went quietly and peacefully.  15 years is a good, long time, and for some time, as he's gotten older, my biggest concern was that he not live poorly if we could help it.  We owed him, and I didn't want for him to have a single bad day.

We'll miss you, little buddy.  You were loved very much.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

...to return

This site is on indefinite hiatus.

We will return.  Keep your eyes on the sky.

The Official Signal Watch TL; DR "Man of Steel" Discussion

I went to the midnight show of Man of Steel and returned home in the wee hours.  I left kind of a rambling initial reaction here.  I went to work, I came home.  I've seen the movie again (in 3D IMAX with Simon, Angela and Jamie), and I've had time to process the film much, much more.

And, since that first post, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach commentary on the movie.  As this will be one of my final posts going into hiatus, we might as well talk about this movie as the intersection between the two major topics of this blog: film and Superman.

A Tour of the Signal Watch Fortress of Solitude

I saw online some folks were doing tours of their Superman collections. Well, it seemed like a SUPER idea to participate.

My Fortress is in disarray at the moment as I'm currently consolidating my collection and removing large portions of it.  I'm going to humblebrag and note that what you see here is only part of what I had on display until recently.  I'm really winnowing it down to Superman and Wonder Woman these days.

I started collecting Superman stuff in college, and I don't have much in the way of vintage. So the collection takes you from the late 90's til now, I guess.

your entry from the hallway to the Fortress

"Superman: Unchained #1" Review

This comic was $5.  Five dollars.  Five hundred pennies.  Half of ten dollars.  It is worth roughly $2.25, on a very good day.

I'm realizing how spoiled I've gotten by reading $1 online comics from folks like MonkeyBrain.

Jim Lee likes to draw Superman sort of hunched over.  I don't really know why.  He also likes to draw his head sort of unusually small.  Also, as Co-Publisher of DC Comics he can apparently greenlight the single dumbest, least narratively driven, least impressive, most expensive fold out insert in a comic.  Ever.

I really needed a huge image of space debris to tell the story.  Thanks.