“I preferred Free Comic Book Day before it went commercial”, I told Maribou. She rolled her eyes.
In any case, we did our own little part for Free Comic Book Day (I did, like, 4-5% of the labor) and when the time came for us to do a quick run through the comic book store and pick out stuff that we hadn’t gotten around to yet, it was the best part of the afternoon.
The books that I picked up that excited me the most were Batman-adjacent rather than Batman books proper.
“Gotham Central“, they’re called. They explore the whole idea of what it’s like to be on the police force in Gotham and how Batman shapes and impacts something as protecting and serving people who aren’t particularly likely to be rubbing elbows with supervillains.
There’s a small anecdote given in the early part of the first book that talks about one of the policemen’s experience of the board with all of the various cases on it. There was a cop who put “Batman” up on the board as well. Someone gets killed by Two-Face or Mr. Freeze or the Joker and the cops can’t close the case, he usually moved the name of the victim from under the officer who was officially signed the case to under Batman’s name.
This was not seen as a particularly good thing by anybody involved, of course. Everybody resented the heck out of it.
So this is almost like a Hill Street Blues collection of stories that take place in Gotham. It’s not about Batman, it’s about being a cop in a city that has Batman in it. Batman doesn’t take care of all of the murders, robberies, kidnappings… the cops rarely have a slow day of their own. These are collected stories about those days.
If you enjoy police procedurals, you should give this title a look.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Finished A Burnt Out Case and I gotta say, not Greene’s best. That isn’t to say it’s bad, just not quite there. But, I trip to Greeneland is always worth taking. So, got back on 1Q84, which I got distracted from years ago at 200 pages in. But with a little refresher it is going smoothly, just opened the book to the book mark and away we went.
On a side, not, I had been having a little trouble with my vision lately, but chaulked it up to waiting on new glasses. Well, I started getting double vision, and the new glasses didn’t help. So, can’t drive, have to close one eye to do anything and feel like I have a six beer buzz all the time. On the plus side, I might get an eye patch! Go back to the eye doc on Tuesday.
Boy this is suck.Report
I went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 yesterday.
First a complaint about the movie theatre, I saw it at the Kabuki. The Kabuki used to be owned by Sundance (yes Robert Redford’s Sundance) and was a civilized way to go to the movies. They served food, they served beer, they had a good range of movies and they did not bombard you with previews and advertisements before the movie.
AMC decided they wanted to compete with Alamo Draft House and they bought the Sundance theatres.
There were no ads but we got bombarded with about 12 previews which added up to about 30 minutes before the movie started.
Though I suspect I am alone in my crusade for a civilized way to do movie theatres because it leaves money on the table and who can do that. I like going to see movies in theatres though because I like the group experience of watching and joint emotion.
The actual movie was entertaining but in the end was just a solid B. There were lots of funny bits but Marvel has turned all of their movies into such a well-made thing that it feels too polished and the polish is a little bland feeling at the end. The most interesting special effect was the appearance of Young Kurt Russell at the start of the film. I felt the same way about the appearance of Young Michael Douglas in Ant-Man.Report
This is not intended as a knock against GotG 2, because I did enjoy it, but for me the best part of the movie was the stinger mentioning “Adam,” referencing Adam Warlock and a direct tie-in to Infinity War.Report
I liked the old Kabuki. We have something similar in my neighborhood — a tiny indie theater that serves liquor and is just plain nice.Report
This is a good Sunday debate
http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/whats-the-best-rolling-stones-song-of-all-time.htmlReport
They concluded that it was “Gimme Shelter”, right?
Let’s find out.Report
The author put it at #2 despite conceding that it was #1, because he wanted a nicer song to be at #1.
Of all the lessons you’d think we’d have learned by now, you think we’d have learned that we need to stop doing that sort of thing.Report
My personal faves are Play with Fire, Mother’s Little Helper, Paint It Black, and Miss You.
Start Me Up is ranked too high.
I generally prefer uptempo Stones songs.Report
Let’s see where they put Start Me Up… Hrm. #18.
Given that Tattoo You wasn’t that great of an album (come on, it wasn’t), the issue is whether Start Me Up was the best song on that album… and… Hrm. I think the case could be made that Hang Fire was better. Maybe Waiting on a Friend… but that’s a testament to how meh Tattoo You was.
So, yeah. I agree. I’d almost put half of the songs from their 1968-1972 period above that one.
Look at these albums!
Beggars Banquet (1968)
Let It Bleed (1969)
Sticky Fingers (1971)
Exile on Main St. (1972)
Any of those four albums alone have more masterpieces than most Greatest Hits albums.Report
I don’t have an issue with the 1-2 choices, it is certainly debatable. But… 3 and 5 are mixed up.Report
I think that he originally had Sympathy as #2 and Gimme Shelter as #1 but he thought he’d do the world a favor by crowbarring the other ones in there.Report
If nothing else he avoided endless rounds of “what about (x), it’s my favorite stones song!!” “why is it your favorite song” “well i hear it on the radio all the time” “do you hear any other stones songs” “well no”Report