PeterDavid.net

Anyone buying "Lost Girls"?

I'm just kind of curious. Rich Johnston (who has graduated from simply running assorted rumor...I'm sorry, rumour...bits strung together to actual whole investigative columns about things that matter) has done a very interesting commentary and overview of the upcoming sure-to-be-controversial "Lost Girls" which apparently the author, Alan Moore, himself describes as pornographic. It's high-priced, but hey, it's Moore. So I was curious as to whether anyone here was planning to order it.

PAD

Memorial Day weekend 2006

I have to say, coming back from the NSF has given me new appreciation for the military. So as we spend this quiet Memorial Day weekend (disinclined to brave the typical traffic), I keep thinking about all the officers I met and spent time with, and what will happen to them and what sort of challenges they'll be facing. Until now, I'd only met Veterans whose war fighting days were past them. But now I think of the hazardous and uncertain future my new friends and acquaintances will be facing, and I will be keeping my fingers crossed for them in their upcoming duties and responsibilities.

PAD

Out this week: X-Factor #7, Spike vs. Dracula #3

Siryn finally deals (or doesn't) with the death of her father (which I found out about the same time as you guys did, so it took five months for us to be able to get to it) and Spike & Drac form an uneasy alliance for the first time in their association. Whad'ja think?

PAD

The Comedy Stylings of John Byrne

So over on the Byrne board there's a lengthy thread about the Hulk which consists, for the most part, of bashing my work on the title because, well, it's the Byrne board, so it's SOP. But what really fractured me was the following comment from John:

"Once upon a time, when a writer wanted to "do something different" s/he left the character/title being worked on, handing it over to someone who wanted to continue with the established motifs. Some time around 25 years ago this started to change. Writers like Claremont and David, as well as others, began changing the books/characters to suit their interests of the moment....It's the same old song -- the characters being made to serve the needs of the talent, instead of the talent serving the needs of the characters."

You just have to love that from the guy who, before my run on the title, was handed a character who was unmarried and transformed into a monster when he got angry, and over the course of the run he split the character in two, separating them into two individual beings, thus eliminating a dynamic that had been in place for a quarter of a century, married off the hero, and basically wrote a series of stories that were indistinguishable from "Godzilla"--dedicated scientist and his group of equally dedicated followers pursues a furious green monster he's accidentally unleashed upon the world. Stories that, in short, had nothing to do with the Hulk.

And that's not even counting what the master of lip service to authorial intent did to the Vision, turning him white and unemotional when the original Vision was neither.

That John Byrne. What a crack up.

PAD

Five years ago today

Kathleen and I got married. Many long-time friends were there, the bride was lovely (Kath has a photo up on her website), the weather was perfect, and Harlan Ellison's best-man speech was...memorable. The following morning the whole family was awake by 4:30 AM and a few hours later we were all on the Disney Cruise for a Brady Bunch-esque Let's-bring-the-kids honeymoon.

Thanks for being insane enough to marry me, love.

PAD

X-Men: Last Stand (NO SPOILERS)

Kath and I saw it last night at an advance Marvel screening.

Guys, honest injun--I thought it kicked ass.

I'm discussing it below, and others are free to join in once you've seen it, but I'd like to keep this one as spoiler-free as possible, mainly because of the caliber of certain jaw-dropping moments.

Weaknesses first--The first two films were primarily character-driven stories. This time out, it's largely plot driven, or even device driven, the device being that a "cure" for being a mutant has been derived from Leech (cast with eerie accuracy; the kid's eyes are perfect.) This leaves open the opportunity for discussion of matters of free will, of government abuse, but the script is such that you don't get the feeling of real people interacting so much as characters pontificating.

New characters are mostly either given short shrift (Angel, Madrox) or not developed quite as well as, say, Nightcrawler was in X2 (Beast comes to mind.) The script desperately needed another dialogue pass--Joss Whedon to punch it up, perhaps--to bring characterization more clearly into focus, and to eliminate some stilted and cliche-ridden dialogue.

But to me, the weaknesses were far outweighed by the plusses.

The actors were uniformly well-cast, even those given tragically minimal screen time. I'd been concerned that I wasn't going to be able to see the Beast as anything other than Kelsey Grammer in blue makeup and fur (he's simply not an actor who disappears into his characters like, say, Alan Cumming), but I needn't have worried. He's fully believable as Hank McCoy, and you have to love the Shakespearean gravitas he applies to his reading of the Beast's trademark "Oh my stars and garters."

Storm had enough screen time to still the complaints of Halle "I don't have enough to do!" Berry, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is as compellingly watchable as ever, and Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart shine as Magneto and Xavier. It's no coincidence that the best scenes are when these two brilliant British thespians are playing off one another. And Famke Janssen FINALLY has some major meat to chew as Phoenix, although there was one sequence where the passionate Jean wraps her legs around Wolverine and I just kept flashing back to her trying to crush the life out of Pierce Brosnan in a Bond movie.

And, oh my lord, enough major action sequences and set pieces to satisfy the most rabid of comic fans. Whereas director Brett Ratner may lack the touch for deep character and cerebral moments that come so easily to Singer, no one can deny his handling of action sequences.

The film has a sense of epic sweep, a go-for-broke attitude that really makes you feel as if the first two films were building toward all this. Not everybody makes it through in one piece, and there's more of a sense that absolutely anything can happen and nobody is safe. Which makes for a feeling of a freight train of a film, as if you're not watching it so much as hanging on for dear life as it continues to build up steam.

Hightlights include the long-awaited Iceman versus Pyro smackdown, and Kitty Pryde versus...Juggernaut?!?!

And you must, MUST remain in the theater until the credits are over. There's a tag that MUST be seen.

PAD

Oh, NOW they protest

Over at the movie theater in Manhattan at 42nd and 8th, I was fascinated to see pickets with people marching around, protesting "The DaVinci Code," declaring it to be an insult to the Catholic church.

I wonder what would have happened if I'd walked up to them and asked them if they were out protesting with great ire over the way that Jews were portrayed in "Passion of the Christ." After all, people who demand sensitivity to their religion would certainly want to be supportive of others who feel their religion is being ill used in cinema, right? So were they marching to protest what many felt to be a profound anti-Semitic message in "Passion?" Or were they too busy filling theaters with their church groups?

I wonder if such an observation from myself would have resulted in my being with Christian charity?

PAD

Back from the NSF

I'm back from the NSF, the National Security Forum. For the last 53 years, the airforce has been having a get together for about a hundred or so civilians from various walks of life who get together with the graduating class of the Air War College (these are generally career officers, Lt. Col's or better, who spend a year in what is essentially an advance studies college), become part of a seminar class in which we interact with the officers and get to know the humans behind the military, and hear various lectures from professors, scholars, and such administration advisors as the Air Force chief of staff and the Secretary of the air force.

I can't go into detail about the specifics of what was said, although I will tell you that during one Q&A, I stood up and asked the Secretary of the Air force if the President ever sends him flowers on Secretaries Day. But here's the amazing thing: I was reading through the bios of all the attendees when I first arrived, and it was filled with people who had Masters Degrees, Doctorates, and listed hobbies such as creating orthopedic limbs. I have a Bachelors degree and my hobby is bowling, so I couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing there. So I attend the get acquainted dinner, and I'm sitting there with three Lt. Cols, a full bird Colonel, the president of a moving and packing company and the mayor of Wichita Falls, TX, and what did we all wind up discussing?

The Hulk.

I couldn't believe it.

PAD

Fallen Angel Out this Week

Comments are working again sooooo......What did ya think?

This is the issue that they posted part of on Newsarama that caused all kinds of discussion because of the Angel's view on G-d

We know and we are frustrated too

Glenn is working on the problem and with any luck we will have it solved soon.

Update 2 bloody 47 AM, 5/22: We may or may not have them working again, I honestly can't tell because my cache isn't refreshing here. I think I've got it, though. --GH

Where's Peter?

I am surprised that no one has asked were he was in the previous thread. I applauded and appreciate your discretion.

I had to wait to get permission to post this photograph of Peter and General T. Michael Moseley at the National Security Conference in Alabama which is held yearly on the Maxwell Air-force Base. General Moseley is Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Peter is there for the conference this year which has been held for over 50 years to allow civilians and the military to discuss matters of national security.

Peter is AFTKB for a week

He is off at a conference for the week

But I know he does really want to know what you thought of Illyria one-shot.
One of my ideas made it in there and I am quite proud of it.

Also I will be taking questions for the Wife in this entry. Please no "unladen swallow" or "theory of evolution of a sock puppet" questions.

(UPDATE: I have answered some of the questions in the comment section)

COWBOY PETE'S SPICEY WEST WINGS

The last five weeks of "The West Wing" have played like the world's longest back door pilot. Kind of like the last weeks of "The Practice" that were basically a back door pilot for "Boston Legal," as one show wound down but another was being set up. Sadly, the new series that was being promoted was dead before it got a chance, and that's a damned shame.

I wanted to see Santos' first one hundred days. I wanted to see Donna and Josh's new relationship develop. To track Will's run for Congress, and Alan Alda's adventures as chief of state. Okay, okay, granted, I thought they'd make him vice-president, which would have been even better. But I guess they felt that it was just too unbelievable...as if CJ transitioning from press secretary to chief of staff didn't already push credibility to the breaking point and beyond.

Thank God they didn't blow away Santos during the inauguration. That was my biggest fear: That the guys who blew up Donna and sent a meteor heading toward Earth would go for some big shock, ER moment. Fortunately they had the good taste not to do that, instead focusing on the wonder of our government in which there's an orderly transition of power from one administration to the next. Granted, there was no tension over Toby's pardon since we SAW him a year and a half later at the Bartlett library opening (which, curiously, they never showed the follow-up to). I still think it wasn't originally intended that Toby was the leak, just as I think it was originally intended that the big White House wedding was going to be Zoey and Charlie, not Ellie and Some Guy We Never Heard Of. But I guess we'll never know...unless I ever meet John Wells, at which point I assure you I'm going to ask.

And as I watched the closing minutes, I kept saying, "Say, "What's next?"" Sure enough, the last spoken words of the new West Wing president in the last episode were the same as the last spoken words of the previous West Wing president in the pilot episode. "What's next?" The names may change, but the problems and challenges continue.

If the first rule of show biz is "Always leave them wanting more," then West Wing succeeded beyond all imagining.

PAD

And We're Back?

Glenn has solved the problem and we are back for comment.

Corrected because nobody could follow my subject/verb agreement which was Glenn (singular) as apposed to we (plural and inaccurate since all I did was point out to Glenn that the comments weren't working)

Superspam returns

Ah yes, you can tell that the comments are functioning again by the return of spam messages all over the place. Grumble...

It's not You. It's Me.

It's nothing you are doing wrong: We know the posting function has gone bye-bye. We're working on it.
And by we of course we mean Glenn.

(Of course you do. I've been bashing on it in every spare moment I have, as of right now it appears to be a problem with our ISP's security system. We're on it. --GH, 5/13/06, 1:15 A fricking M)

OUT THIS WEEK: ANGEL focusing on ILLYRIA

A one-shot focusing on everyone's favorite goddess inside a woman. Whad'ja think?

PAD

Finally! Ariel and her Big Honking Bowling Trophy

Back from the Nebulas

I decided to head out to the Nebulas to see Harlan get the Grandmaster award. I'll be writing about it in detail in "But I Digress," but suffice to say that it was great to see him, Susan, and all the Usual Suspects who tend to materialize whenever Harlan makes his presence known at a convention. The get together was smoothly run, so props to chairman Lee Whiteside for keeping it all together.

I'm truly pleased that SFWA decided to accord Harlan the honor in spite of past differences they've had with Harlan, and equally pleased that Harlan accepted it despite those same differences.

And the capper to my trip out there: A mere block and a half away from the hotel was the Women's Beach Volleyball tour. So I spent the afternoon in the bleachers watching Olymic Gold Medalists Misty May and Kerri Walsh gracefully pound the crap out of their opponents while sporting handkerchief-sized bathing suits. God, I love this country.

PAD

OUT THIS WEEK: FNSM #8, MARVEL ROMANCE REDUX

FNSM, you probably knew about. But I also wrote the lead story in Marvel Romance Redux, the loopy new series in which current writers reballoon old romance tales. It features an actual 18 page Patsy and Hedy story, that was transformed into "Patsy Loves Satan." Whad'ja think?

PAD

COWBOY PETE'S HOLY GOD, I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING "LOST" COMMENTS

In "The Onion's" trade paperback collection that essentially operated as if the gag newspaper had been around for over a century, one of the most memorable articles was about the moon landing. The headline was something along the lines of "HOLY SHIT, WE LAND ON FUCKING MOON!" and the entire article was written with that same sense of over-the-top incredulity. They literally can't believe it.

In the spirit of that article...

Holy fucking shit, Michael fucking shot Ana Lucia and Libby, son of a bitch, he capped them both, and then gave himself a self-inflicted wound to cover his ass! Either he's flipped over to the Others, or he's doing whatever he can to drive his own people into war with the Others, but I'm thinking the former is the more likely. Jesus! My fucking jaw is on the fucking ground! I mean, I should have realized it since Michelle Rodriguez is doing jail time while they're filming the season ender and the producers expressed no concern over it. Now we know why: Michael FUCKING SHOT Ana-Lucia and Libby! SON OF A BITCH! SON OF A...HOLY SHIT, I did NOT see that coming.

SHIT!!!

PAD

The Washington Press Corp are schmucks

I'm sorry. They are.

From the guy who hired Stephen Colbert to talk at the Washington Press Corp dinner without, apparently, having actually seen much of "The Colbert Report," to the 2000-plus reporters who sat there stone faced while Colbert did KILLER material, they're all idiots.

It's not that Colbert wasn't funny. He was. He made exactly ONE joke that wasn't politically related: Mentioning that Jesse Jackson speaks with the speed of a glacier, and then added, "Enjoy that metaphor while you can. Your grandchildren won't know what a glacier is." They ROARED at that. The material was funny. Colbert's delivery was impeccable. And if they'd been watching in the security of their homes, they'd have been laughing their asses off.

But because Colbert had the balls to do his routine while Bush was sitting right there, they sat there and didn't laugh--not because Colbert wasn't funny, because he was--but because they didn't want Bush to see them laughing.

The degree of nerve that Colbert displayed was inversely proportional to the guts displayed by the Washington Press Corp. They saw Bush wasn't laughing, so they didn't laugh. The Washington Press showed a little bit of nerve in the past months, their courage buoyed by Bush's dropping approval ratings. But when push came to shove, they retreated to being gutless wonders.

Jon Stewart--admittedly not unbiased--described Colbert's performance as "Balls-alicious." I agree.

PAD

Flip over the egg timer, kids

The jury quite correctly spared Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty--denying him the martyrdom he sought--and instead sentenced him to life in prison.

Please, please, PLEASE put him in with the general population. Whoever makes these kinds of decisions, please, do it. Put him in with the rest of the criminals. I'm sure the punishments they'd come up with for him would be far less merciful than the death penalty would have been.

PAD

Stuff on the net

I thought the following was pretty funny, and figured I would share it.

http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2004/04/first-annual-myspace-stupid-haircut.html

Also, the new trailer for "Superman Returns" is out on various places around the net (I figure you guys are clever enough to find it.) The basic visuals look like fun, and Kevin Spacey is clearly having way too good a time, channeling his inner Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. What sold it for me, however, was the last ten seconds, the specifics of which I won't give away. All I'll say is that long-time fans appreciated the first film's little nods to previous Superman tropes, such as the quick glance at the phone booth or Superman sincerely telling Lois he's here to fight for truth, justice and the American way. But this bit at the end of the trailer tops those.

PAD

Here's something I don't get about the boycott today

People who are against illegal immigrants just wish they would go away.

So today...they went away.

Ariel was impressed by how much less crowded her school bus was, how it was easier to get around in the hallways, and how there weren't kids hanging out on the front lawn of the school smoking, fighting or getting into trouble.

So this proved...what, exactly?

PAD