comics

All the President’s Days

It snowed sometime overnight, which I have to say, I find wholly unacceptable, having only just become accustomed to having things like grass and roads and such back. But there wasn’t too much, and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it. Our dog certainly seemed to love it.

In other news, I spent the day reading again, interspersed with a little television here and there. Since Friday, I’ve read about seven different graphic novels, of varying quality and subject matter, culminating today with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis 2 and Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds. I think the former was a lot better, and having read it means I can now safely watch the movie version of Persepolis without threat of spoiler.

Last night, I watched The Town, the Ben Affleck-directed (and starring) crime thriller. It was very good. Stars Affleck and Jeremy Renner turn in good performances; Jon Hamm is really quite good; and Blake Lively, though she’s not in the film a whole lot, steals the show whenever she is. (I’m never seen an episode of Gossip Girl, so I wasn’t familiar with her before this.) It’s not a great movie, though it occasionally reaches towards greatness, and it’s quite an entertaining picture. And, if nothing else, it’s a better showcase for the late Pete Postlethwaite than the dreck that was Clash of the Titans.

Today was a holiday, but it’s back to work with me tomorrow.

Such a Saturday as this

Not a particularly exciting day. First thing, I drove my father over to our local mechanic to get his car inspected. And then I spent the day doing not much else. I watched last night’s episode of Fringe. I thought it was really good, a step back up from the past two maybe less than terrific weeks. And I read a little. Mostly, I just finished the first volume of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. And this evening, almost at random, I watched Crimes and Misdemeanors. It’s an interesting Woody Allen film, more like two films that brush up against each other in the end. I don’t know that it was brilliant, but it was thoughtful, sometimes funny, well acted, and I liked it.

And that’s really it for my Saturday.

Busy(ish) Monday

Today, I:

  • went to the doctor;
  • called a local glass place about replacing my suddenly cracked windshield and set up an appointment for Friday;
  • grabbed a quick breakfast;
  • thoroughly failed to get a haircut;
  • went to the library, returning some books and picking up some more;
  • went to the post office, picking up some books I’d purchased from Nightshade Books, during their recent half-price sale;
  • watched a couple of episodes of Red Dwarf. I had completely forgotten that Kryten, in his first appearance, was played by a different actor;
  • read Shaun Tan’s beautiful graphic novel The Arrival. It still counts as reading if there are no words, right? and;
  • donated blood at a drive at my old elementary school.

This last wasn’t so weird — I’ve donated blood lots of times before, and been back to the school on occasion — but it seemed like it was being run largely by students of the school, plus one somewhat exasperated woman who kept telling reminding them of what they had to do. Like instruct people where they were supposed to go, or sit. Thankfully the kids were just walkers and administrative helpers, not actually the ones sticking needles in anyone’s arms. It was just a little comical watching them try to figure out what they were supposed to be doing. Asking fourth and fifth graders to remember multiple instructions, much less explain them to anyone else, may be asking too much. They seemed inordinately pleased when they discovered a task — like handing out donation stickers — that offered no ambiguity.

So that, basically, was my day. It’s back to work with me tomorrow.

Taking off on Wednesday is just weird.

I woke up at six this morning, only to learn that, yes indeed, we’d had a freezing rain overnight, and it had played havoc with the morning commute. The Long Island Railroad was running weekend hours all morning — albeit at the regular, weekday morning peak fares — and at my station, weekend hours means no more than one train every hour. They were also predicting ten to fifteen-minute delays, which itself usually means twenty to thirty-minute delays. So, after much deliberating, I decided to send an e-mail around to my group at work and take a vacation day.

After that, the day was actually fine, especially after I discovered that Groundhog Day was available for streaming over Netflix. It just seemed like the right choice for today. I spent the rest of the day mostly reading, finishing a couple of graphic novels (The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel, and A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld, both quite good). I also watched last week’s episode of Community, which I hadn’t seen yet, and the first episode of Quantum Leap, which I haven’t seen in years. It was really just a random, lay-about-the-house kind of day.

That said, I’m really kind of sick of snow at this point, particularly snow that ruins my morning commute. (Enough snow to close my office and keep me home without taking vacation? Well, we can talk.) I’m actually kind of looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Taking off on Wednesday is just weird.

“Very well, I’ll pause for thirty seconds while you cook up your alibis.”

I had a pretty nice day. I spent a good deal of it reading, finishing both Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers and David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, a couple of recent graphic novels I picked up at the local library this morning. I enjoyed them both, although I think I’m perhaps a little glad that Spiegelman’s (nevertheless wonderfully drawn) book about fall of the Twin Towers feels just slightly dated. And I did some writing — or maybe I should more accurately call it transcribing, piecing together a story I found in an old notebook, which I’d given up, at least temporarily, for lost. I’m not sure exactly why it stalled out on me the first time — my natural proclivity to let stories stall out on me, perhaps — but I like it, and I think I’d like to see where it’s headed.

After dinner this evening, I watched Green for Danger, a delightful British murder mystery from 1946 set in a World War II hospital. Honestly, how can you not like a movie with exchanges like this?

Barnes: I gave nitrous oxide at first, to get him under.

Cockrill: Oh yes, stuff the dentist gives you, hmmm — commonly known as “laughing gas.”

Barnes: Used to be — actually the impurities cause the laughs.

Cockrill: Oh, just the same as in our music halls.