The iPod Touch

A few weeks ago I finally got around to picking up one of the new iPod Touch units. I had an earlier iPod, the red and black U2 edition that came out in 2004. This one, however, is a big leap forward. It is a virtual portable home entertainment unit. What a great little device! I am able to download and catch up with the podcasts I listen to like G. Gordon Liddy's show and Joe Rogan's show and even watch tv shows like American Horror Story and Ice Road Truckers. I've downloaded books onto the unit and was able to read free ebooks on publishing and the writings of Confucius. All that and having more than 4000 songs!

Colds and Flus going around

I don't get sick very often. Someone I once knew gave me the useful advice to take a shot of rum straight when I feel those beginning sensations of getting sick. For the most part, that solution has worked well. Last week, I started feeling sick during the day at work and had no access to rum until I got home and by then the sickness was well-entrenched. That one was a rough one and knocked me out for the most part. I've shaken off the actual sickness but am now contending with a case of laryngitis and have no voice. It's been weird going around the last week with no voice, having to whisper. Oh well, it seems to be a rough season!

Borders RIP

Well, the time has finally come. The end of Borders has just about arrived. Even though I've only known about the retail chain for fifteen years, it has been in existence for about forty. They had an excellent selection of books and certainly a fair percentage of my large book collection came from a Borders store somewhere. Up to the early part of this year they had five stores in Manhattan and another store in the Glendale part of Queens that I shopped on occasion. Now there are only two in Manhattan and the Glendale store, all in the last stages of liquidation. As I write this, the store in Penn Station has two days left and the remaining stores pretty much should be done within the week.

Marvel's New Universe

I've been rereading my old New Universe comics. These hold up real well. The New Universe was Marvel's creation (actually Jim Shooter, then Editor-In-Chief of Marvel) to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Marvel Comics (or more specifically, of Fantastic Four #1 that is considered the launch of the Marvel Universe that continues to this day). The New Universe was an ambitious release of eight comic series, all of which took place in their own self contained history with nothing to do with the other titles published by Marvel. It was meant to take place in 'real" time, meaning a twelve issue monthly run would be the equivalent to an actual year, unlike the regular comic universe where ten years of a comic can still not equal to a year in the character's life.

It's hard to believe, but it is now 25 years since the launch of the New Universe. I remember how it was a pretty big deal and some friends and I went to the local newsstand to see how many of the titles we could pick up. I was too late to get Star Brand #1, which was the series that launched the line but I did find most of the other first issues as they came out. The titles were: Star Brand, Spitfire And The Troubleshooters, Justice, DP 7, Psi Force, Marc Hazzard: Merc, Nightmask and Kickers Inc. I have issues of all eight series. Nightmask didn't catch my interest and I never made it past the first issue. Kicker Inc. struck me as a lame Fantastic Four knockoff, sort of if the Fantastic Four played football and I didn't go far with that series either. Star Brand was not a great comic by any means but I ended up with a fair number of issues. I did like Merc, the main character didn't have super powers but was just a well-trained soldier, who was as the title stated, a mercenary. Spitfire was sort of an Iron Man knockoff, albeit a female lead. It was a good series and I still have most of the issues. I liked Justice about a New York cop who gained superpowers due to the same "white event" that led to Star Brand getting his powers. That's another comic I stuck with to the end. DP7 and Psi Force were both variations of the X-Men but I liked both series a lot. They were my favorites of the New Universe line. I stuck with them to the end. DP7 had the benefit of being written by Mark Gruenwald, one of my favorite Marvel writers and one of the writing heavy hitters until his untimely death about fifteen years ago. He stuck it out to the end of DP7.

It was not a good sign when, a year after the launch of the line, four of the eight series were cancelled and no new series came into being. Spitfire, Nightmask, Kickers Inc., and Merc all got the ax. Star Brand went to bimonthly status and Jim Shooter was gone as Editor-In-Chief of Marvel, strongly rumored to be out because of the less than stellar success of the New Universe. He has an interview about the whole situation here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010509182726/www.comicbookresources.com/features/shooter1/index3.shtml

A last ditch effort was made to save the line with the introduction of the one-shot issue, The Pitt that featured a supposed nuclear strike (that turned out to have been caused by the powers of Star Brand by accident) destroying the city of Pittsburgh, leading to World War 3 and the subsequent one-shot, The Draft and then the four-issue limited series, The War and tying together all of the remaining series. The angle didn't work as the line limped on to cancellation in early '89. Entertaining stuff however, an idea with lots of potential that didn't live up to its promise it still is worth checking out in the back issue bins. All can be had for cheap. Funny how my friends and I thought that Star Brand #1 was going to be worth a fortune!

Airboy/Eclipse Comics

I dug out my old issues of the comic from the late '80s Airboy. It ran fifty issues from 1986 to 1989 and is kind of lost in the shuffle of comicdom. Too bad. It doesn't deserve to be. Airboy wasn't Marvel or DC, it was a smaller comic company called Eclipse. I used to like Eclipse, they put out a lot of quality comics, they were small but they got talented writers and artists. Airboy was written by Chuck Dixon who was one of my favorite Batman writers. I used to read quite a few of their comics back in the day. I lost touch with their comics by the time I went to Emerson and I just recently looked them up to see what happened to them. They had a bad flood that ruined a lot of inventory (unlike Marvel or DC, they added to their income by selling back issues of all of their comics). That, coupled with Image coming out in the early '90s, with Spawn to compete directly against Marvel and DC, squeezed them out of the market and they faded away. Too bad. I still have a lot of their stuff.

E-Readers

A few months ago I picked up the Kobo e-reader from Borders. It's a small, light unit and can store a considerable amount of e-books on it. The battery life lasts quite a while, actually I've gone a few days without charge and I read a lot. The screen isn't great though and you can get a headache reading for too long a time. When I saw a coworker's Barnes and Noble Nook Color, I knew I had to get one. So now I've had it for two weeks and I love the picture on it. Reading magazines, especially those like Reader's Digest and Guitar World, which have lots of color pictures, couldn't any better. The online capability is easy to access when one is in a Wi-Fi spot (not so with the Kobo). It's easy to download books. The only flaw with the Nook color is the battery life, not nearly as long as the Kobo. Of course it has a lot more going on, it's almost like a tablet.

Role Playing Games

I was going through some of my old role playing games that remain in the basement of my parents' house and was reminded about how much fun they used to be to play and collect the accessories (modules, guidebooks). They bring me back to the mid-'80s and were a great tool to expand one's imagination.

I ended up collecting so many role playing games at the time that some of them I never played with anyone. They just looked nice or I was simply interested in comparing their game play to other games. The ones I played to some degree or other were:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (of course)
Star Frontiers (probably the game I played the most)
Middle Earth Role Playing Game by ICE (probably the best designed system I've seen; their modules were works of art, especially with the mapping of the lands)
Indiana Jones (this one was a lot of fun)
Marvel Super Heroes (this was probably runner up to Star Frontiers in terms of how much I played it with my friends, we had a lot of fun with this, and since I was a big comic collector at the time, the modules and supplements made good references to events in the comics)
Paranoia (a game involving rebellion in a brain washed society)
James Bond (yes, there was an RPG based on the Bond films, it had very nicely done modules based on some of the movies)
Boot Hill (a trip to the old west)
Dr. Who (my favorite show at the time so it was an easy call to get this game)

Then there were the games I bought or acquired by trading with people that I never got to actually play with people but were in my collection:
Traveller (I always wanted to get more into this game, it looked like it had well developed universe to play in but it was more difficult to find supplements and modules than many of the other gaming systems)
Man, Myth And Magic (sort of Roman Empire meets King Arthur's Court)
DC Heroes (like with the Marvel game, this one had a lot of good supplements) Gamma World (the aftermath of a nuclear war)
Top Secret/Top Secret SI (spy stuff like the James Bond game)

I think that's pretty much it for what I had. By about 1987 the people I used to play RPG's with moved on and were more focused on video games. With no one to play with my interest waned as well but it's still fun to pull them out from time to time. Some of them I don't have anymore, they were lost over time but many I still do.

Justice is finally served

Well, the US (as far as we know if you don't believe the endless conspiracy theories) finally tracked down the hated Bin Laden and put an end to him. As Jim Lampley excitedly yelled out when George Foreman, a heavy underdog, knocked out undefeated Michael Moorer at the age of 45 to win the heavyweight championship, "It happened! It happened!" It needed to happen and it's an operation that ranks with the great military operations. That his death occurred doesn't solve the dilemna of terrorism but it is a strong step in the right direction and sends an important message that those who think they can harm the US and its citizens and get away with it, are wrong. Bin Laden could not be allowed under any circumstances to get away with the acts of violence against this country that he was partly, maybe even mostly responsible for. Another major player in the terror atrocities of 9/11, Ayman Al Zawahiri still remains unpunished and should meet the same fate as Bin Laden at some point.

It boggles my mind, however, that there are people who would justify these acts of extreme terrorism. They downplay what happened or take the attitude that "America had it coming", an attitude that I find despicable and unacceptable. On a particular forum that I frequently contribute to had a discussion about Bin Laden's demise. I posted:
"Oh, I am sure there will be plenty of conspiracy theories about this one. This is great news, though. The only good terrorist is a dead one and now he will be able to join Hitler, Stalin and other reviled figures on the roller coaster ride to hell. Next stop, Ayman Al Zawahiri!"

To which some person from Iceland responded:
"And who will be next after him, and after him and after him...Ohhh, just kill em all right?" (Brilliant, as if Bin Laden should just be allowed to get away with contributing to the murder of thousands of innocent people)

I responded:
"If they conduct mass carnage for their demented purposes, then yes exactly."

He came back with this lame distraction from the point about whether US policy in Iraq since 2003 was mass carnage as well. Unfortunately that post was removed from the thread. We went back for awhile with some threads that were removed and then he backed off from his sympathetic toward Osama views. I finished with this before the thread was closed:

"Sorry then that I don't want to hug those who would try to destroy my country or inflict pain on my countrymen. There was no justification, I don't care how many pretzels someone might twist themselves in to try, there is NO justification to turn a great plaza like that with its skyscrapers into a hole in the ground. With Bin Laden's money he could have used it for great good, unfortunately he had other purposes in mind. Hurray for him leaving this earth, too bad it didn't happen before Sept. 11, 2001."
__________________

The Kobo ereader

I took advantage of the fact that Borders is closing some of their stores to finally delve into the realm of ereaders. I picked up a Kobo ereader for $60, which was a real bargain. I have so many books that my shelves are overflowing and I have books lining the floor. It's a big mess. Therefore it's nice to have a unit that sort of acts like an iPod of books. I can store hundreds (and if I get an SD card, thousands) of books on this unit. Nothing beats having a book in your hand (and I read a lot of nonfiction which sometimes involves flipping back and forth between text and endnotes) but it was nice on a long bus ride like I took today to have to only carry this little and very light ereader. The Kobo also comes with a hundred classics already preloaded so I was able to reread Sun Tzu's Art of War. Add in something like a nine hour lasting battery and this unit was quite a steal at $60!

Philadelphia

Tuesday I was off from work so I took the bus down to Philadelphia as I try to do once or twice a year. This year I might head down there more than two times as I would like to go to the Museum of Art and also see the inside of the Eastern State Penitentiary . It's a nice city to go to for a day trip, very pedestrian friendly, and while not New York City in terms of things to, has quite a few places in its own right. It has a lot of great architecture as well.

The Reading Terminal Market is probably the single most impressive collection of eateries that I've ever seen. It has farm fresh food, much of it from Amish farms. There are several places that make some really impressive Philly Cheese Steaks (I went to Carmine's this visit). The Famous 4th St. Cookie has the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had and it is easy to get overwhelmed by all of the other kiosks in the market. There's Chinese food, Amish food, Middle Eastern food, just about anything imaginable. Next time I go I plan to take advantage of the Jambalaya.

Then there is the Italian Market, hidden away in an out of the way section of the city in South Philly. That is the location of the famous Cheese Steak competitors Pat's, King of Steaks and Geno's. Both are very good. I've been slightly favoring Pat's but maybe I'll give Geno's another shot in my next visit. There is so much more in the Italian Market. It should also be called the Latin Market as there are many eateries of Latin American descent.

My recent visits have not even involved going to the real tourist places in the city like Independence Hall and the US Mint but I went to those places when I was a kid. The Bourse is an interesting mall in that Independence district, I believe one of the earliest malls in the country. It's certainly a city well worth checking out.

Jonah Hex

A few weeks ago I went to the comic book convention at the Pennsylvania Hotel and came across a trade paperback collecting early issues of DC's 70s Jonah Hex comic, many from DC's western anthology title Weird Western Tales and a couple from the 1977-1985 Jonah Hex comic. I have a bunch of issues of Jonah Hex and Weird Western Tales sitting in a box and reading the trade paperback made me pull out my collection. Those hold up very well.

A good Western comic, Jonah Hex tells the story of a Confederate soldier who is hideously scarred (the answer to how he became scarred is in issues 7 and 8 of the Jonah hex comic and I don't have those issues) and becomes a gunfighter in the old west with a plethora of recurring characters including the father of his late Civil War friend, who believes Jonah was a traitor to the Confederacy and led to the death of son and will stop at nothing to exact vengeance on Jonah Hex. This isn't a super hero comic. Those out there who might think that super hero comics are beneath them but like a good story could do a lot worse than to try the Jonah Hex comic.

There was a movie released last year that was supposed to be a big summer film but flopped, based on and titled Jonah Hex. i didn't see that movie yet but will soon. Anyway that trade paperback featuring those early issues was one of the best $8 I've spent in a long time. I only hope DC puts out more volumes like that one collecting more of those issues as they have actually gotten quite expensive. I might shell out some money soon for certain key issues like 45, where Jonah gets married and issue 92, which is the last issue from 1985.

Interestingly enough DC cancelled Jonah Hex and replaced it with a series called HEX where he is taken by some dimensional vortex to a Mad Max-type setting in the future. I collected all 18 issues of that series back in the late '80s and I plan to dig them out of my parents' basement when I go back to Connecticut in a few weeks and reread them. I am aware that there is a more recent Jonah Hex comic that I believe is currently running but I haven't read those issues yet.

Lulu.com

I have been researching possibilities for becoming a published author (samples of my work are posted in earlier blogs). There is the normal and probably most common method of publishing by finding a good agent. Then there is another possibility, that of self-publishing. Those of you out there who are writers would do well to check out lulu.com. When I have some expenses taken care of that I need to get taken care of, I will likely shell out some cash and have some copies of my books published. I have a book by someone else that was published by lulu and the quality of the printing job is very good.

Teena Marie

This is a little late as she died two months ago but I wanted to say a little something on the very talented R&B singer Teena Marie. Now anybody growing up in 1984 was familiar with her monster hit, "Lovergirl" as that song was inescapable. For many years, though, she slipped under my radar. I was aware that she had critically acclaimed albums but I just didn't get around to checking her out. Then when I got an XM Radio one of my most frequently played stations was XM 64 The Groove I heard her song, "Square Biz", which is one of the catchiest songs I have heard, with an amazing groove. Unfortunately, though, it took her death and the comments I read in the retrospectives on her career for me to finally check her albums out. The shame is that most of her albums are out of print and her catalog was allowed to disappear. On Amazon.com many of her albums are very expensive, partly from being out of print and partly due to interest in her on account of her death.

I was able to pick up two of her early '80s albums on Motown, Irons In The Fire and It Must Be Magic, both of which are really good, especially It Must Be Magic. That album is one of the catchiest albums I have heard. "Square Biz". the title track, "Revolution" and "365" are all songs that stay in the head once you've heard them. Now I have to get her Columbia albums, which are out of print. Emerald City sounds particularly interesting as it adds more of a hard rock sound to her music. I was able to pick up two compilation albums of her Columbia years, Funk Biz and Love Songs. Both are full of really good songs that slipped through the cracks. She had an amazing voice and I wish I could have gotten heard some of those songs earlier. "Love Me Down Easy" in particular is a great song that I've been listening to over and over again.

Lawmakers' Occasional Stupidity

This news article that I read in the morning paper got me really angry:

"Carl Kruger thinks too many pedestrians are being injured because they aren't paying attention while crossing the street. As a New York state senator from Queens, every year since 2007 he has proposed a law making the use of an electronic device while crossing the street a crime. Cross the street in a major city in New York while using your cell phone or listening to your iPod and he wants to fine you $100.
"Tuning in and tuning out can be a fatal combination on the streets of New York," Sen. Kruger said.
Kruger's bill is S1945-2011. It is one of over 4,000 bills that have been submitted in the State Assembly and State Senate so far in 2011. Only about 9 percent of submitted bills passed both houses in 2009-2010, and the governor signed about 82 percent of them into law. This bill may not have much of a chance of passing but it has a chance."

That said, Shame on State Senator Carl Kruger. He should be thrown out of Albany for wasting the taxpayers' money! This proposed law actually made me very angry.

I live in NYC and when the weather is nice I enjoy taking walks all around the city and I listen to my Sony Walkman or my XM Radio and I also pay attention to my surroundings, including looking both ways when I cross an intersection. Listening on my headphones is an activity that I enjoy very much. It would be ridiculous for me to have to stop at every intersection, take my headphones off to cross just to avoid problems with the legal system just because out of the million or two million or even more people who walk with headphones there are some idiots who don't pay attention and a few people pay for their stupidity with their lives. People should be looking both ways before heading across an intersection (I even look both ways crossing a one way street just in case there is some fool backing up without looking in a car), they can still not look even if they are not wearing headphones. That doesn't mean I should have to suffer for it. I've lived in urban areas where I am a pedestrian for almost twenty years and I've regularly used portable devices that whole time and haven't been hit by a car yet and hope not to be in the future! That's maybe hundreds of thousands or millions of intersections that I've crossed.

The Top 10 Albums of 2010 (As I see Them)

1. Jeff Beck-Emotion & Commotion
2. Robert Plant-Band Of Joy
3. Sade-Soldier Of Love
4. John Mellencamp-No Better Than This
5. Iron Maiden-The Final Frontier
6. Neil Young-Le Noise
7. Bruce Springsteen-The Promise
8. Phil Collins-Going Back
9. Taylor Swift-Speak Now
10. Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers-Mojo

I counted The Promise since, though recorded thirty-plus years ago, the material was entirely or almost entirely unreleased. The Jeff Beck is the new album that I played the most this year, and while he always has some good stuff mixed with filler, this time out he made an even more consistent album. Robert Plant and John Mellencamp have both been very impressive of late with their career turns toward tackling Americana. Mellencamp’s career has always been strongly informed with old style Americana music but lately his albums have no trace of modernity and could have been recorded in the fifties or sixties. Iron Maiden always impresses me with their consistency. They are one metal band that continues to be at or almost at the same level they were at their peak. I liked their last album, A Matter of Life And Death more than The Final Frontier but the new album is still very good and has some excellent tracks that make fine additions to the Iron Maiden catalog.

Current pop music is no where near as interesting to me as pop from, oh say the ‘80s. Too much relying on Autotune, too many songs that try to be catchy and simply end up annoying, listening to a Top 40 stations these days requires a bottle of aspirin nearby. That said, I have been very impressed with Taylor Swift. Although there are some modern production touches on her album, the songs could have come from a good country/pop singer in the late ‘70s and “Mine” is one of the rare recent pop hits that I can’t get out of my head and don’t mind that fact. Phil Collins makes the cut with a respectable album of Motown cover tunes and this album is certainly better than his Testify album from 2002. He brought out some of the Motown players like bob Babbitt for authenticity and the whole thing works as well as covers albums go.

This is the first year in a few years where I was able to come up with a Top 10 new release list with a full ten releases. The last few years I struggled to come up with even seven or eight choices. I’ve bought a lot of music but it’s always stuff from prior years. In fact, I left one purchase off, the Michael Jackson outtakes album, that I guess counts as being number 11. It has a few decent songs but too many appearances from lame performers like Akon and too much Autotune gave the album a less than stellar impression.

Also, there are some albums that would most likely make the list but I never got around to picking them up like the new Joe Satriani and Steve Lukather had a solo album that I wouldn’t mind checking out but didn’t get in 2010. I am sure the Satriani would have made the list.

The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas

Another year has come and gone and it always seems that my goal with a new year is to increase my knowledge significantly. Well, that again is the goal this year but this time part of my plan is to refine things that I've already learned by rereading some of the better books in my collection. One subject I am currently going back to is the Spanish Civil War and the most fascinating book on that subject is The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas, a very large, very detailed and very thorough volume that I've read a couple of times before, although not for a number of years. I am rereading it again and, while a very complicated book, it will make one masterful on the subject.

The Civil War of Spain lasted from 1936-1939 and involved the Nationalists, led by a cabal of military officers and eventually primarily by Generalissimo Francisco Franco and the Republicans, who were made up of Communists and Anarchists and many other coalitions who were never totally unified. The complexities of the war consist of the fact that there were so many sides involved, each with their own agendas and ideologies. Also, the war became a practice ground of sorts for the looming Second World War. Hitler and Mussolini provided aid to the Nationalists and the Soviets and many other nations provided aid to the Republicans. Eventually after much bloodshed, the Franco forces came out victorious leading to a dictatorship that controlled the nation for the next four decades. The book is a very intense read but I would highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in those times.