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Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001

Archive for the 'A Fanboy's Notes' Category

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Rand-om Fandom

Via friend and gaming buddy Nick, I discover a 2007 BBC special by Jonathan Ross, “In Search of Steve Ditko” on YouTube, in seven parts. It’s damned good.

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Every Tab Must Go

In which a blogger clears his browser tabs:
* Via Kung Fu Monkey, web series The Sanctum. It’s superheroes (and villains) in an addiction support group. And yes, there is a plot, that develops pretty trickily over the half-dozen episodes so far. New episodes seem to come out every month or two. They are reaching the [...]

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

It Touched, It Struck, It Clattered And Went Out

In comments downblog, Tom Scudder reminds us of Jenna Katarin Moran’s “DST Nocturne.”

Each year they made Daylight Savings Time longer, until one day it lasted the whole year round. Then it was spring forward, always spring forward, and never fall back, until noon was where midnight used to be and midnight lost in noon.
In the [...]

Monday, March 8th, 2010

The Answer Is BRAZIL

Radley Balko has a poll on “the best Liberty-themed movie.” A perfectly nice movie, Serenity, is unjustly beating out Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece so far. He would get points just for the bit where the government boasts of its fiscal responsibility in charging execution victims for the bullet, but what makes the movie brilliant is the [...]

Monday, March 1st, 2010

We’re Number 30!

So say the Economist and Larison. I actually make us as 32, using an unweighted sum of the Freedom House table in question. That’s close, though.
Sorry about the not blogging. I was
* performing Saturday night, like I said I would; if any of you came, you did not introduce yourselves afterward. Consider your guilt assumed [...]

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Secret Identity

Couple of recent Batman critiques that mix the commonplace with the misconceived. Allen Varney’s article isn’t all wrong, and in fact the more I pick at it the less I find that’s irrefutably silly. Except for . . .

This genius psychologist and criminologist, who has repeatedly out-thought every other superhero in the DC Universe, still [...]

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Pulp Nonfiction

Hugo Chavez talks a big game, but persists in half measures. The promising headline, Venezuela launches Zeppelin to tackle rampant crime!, turns out to be about mere surveillance craft. As someone on the Fate RPG mailing list wrote,
Now they need to arm them, hang biplanes from them or pack them full of monkeys. [...]

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Afterlife of a Fanboy’s Essay

Glenn Haumann has a short essay on Comixmix considering Marvel’s recent “Civil War” crossover series in light of my old “Gaudy Night” essay. Let me say briefly that “Civil War” is the kind of “literature of ethics” that should work when done well. (If you’re a non-comics reader who wants to follow along, here’s the [...]

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Heroesblogging

Hm. This episode . . . a Hero dies!
Which we knew from the previews. And sure enough, that’s Peter Petrelli playing Rocky Balboa’s son in the new movie they keep showing commercials for.
Plot talk would be spoilery, and G-Farb is probably planning to watch the show in 2009 or something, so I don’t want to [...]

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

A Fanboy’s Placeholder

Bookmarking the rules for A Tale Unwinding here lets me close another browser tab!
UPDATE: Sad. Link is dead now. It looked so healthy even yesterday.