Page 13

Just when I thought there was nothing left to write about…Boom–COVID

Less than two months left on this blog experiment, so really, the timing of testing positive for COVID makes for an interesting left turn in the narrative. No idea who I got it from. There are at least a dozen suspects who may have been asymptomatic for two weeks and had no clue they were passing it along. The insidious nature of the bug almost makes it impossible to get ahead of. Meanwhile, my cancer history — the gift that keeps on giving– put me in a more vulnerable position regarding being susceptible.

How it all laid out (so far). First five days, I just felt “off”. Like maybe I was on the verge of getting a cold. Usually, when this happens, I get a good night sleep and the next day, I either have the cold or I’m right as rain. But no, even though I slept fine– I’ve been sleeping great the whole time–, I still just felt off. A bit fatigued, just dragging.

Day five, what few symptoms there were, a bit of congestion in my head, occasional sniffles, seemed to possibly indicate *maybe* sinus infection. I’ve had numerous sinus infections over the years, so this was a possibility. I went to the Doctor, and the redness in my ears, throat and nose seemed to back up my diagnosis, so Doctor gave me a Z-pack and sent me on my way. Four days later, no change, which was telling because after a few days with the Z-pack, there’s usually massive improvement– if it’s a sinus infection.

I let my Doctor know and she sent me to get tested. Went to Lisle DuPage Medical Group and their testing facility was down and there were a line of cars waiting for testing. We got diverted to another site for car side testing. They stick a swab up your nostrils.

Lot of people getting tested.

Currently, I’m just trying to breathe through my nose, because I’ve got an annoying cough that triggers when I take in too much air through my mouth or I say more than a few words. But aside from that, things aren’t too bad. I’m supposed to take it easy and push fluids. Will do.

Isolate for two weeks, then… I don’t know what. Get tested again? So little is known about this. If you get it, and recover, you’re not immune to getting it again. You might be immune for two months and then you’re back on the front lines. No guarantee it’ll be the same level of symptoms either. Could be better or worse.

Insidious.

I usually don’t leave the house anyway but now I feel like I’m in triple lockdown–as is the family.

The DC Multiverse is coming….somewhere….

The powers that be at ATT/Warner have seemingly begun to once again commit to the DC Cinematic Universe, with Wonder Woman 1984 just waiting to land *somewhere*, working on another Aquaman and prepping for Black Adam.

But maybe the most intriguing offering is the upcoming Flash movie starring Ezra Miller, “Flashpoint”.

It’s an adaptation of a comic event that led into “The New 52”, a very regrettable era in DC comics history stretching from roughly 2011 thru 2016 or so. It’s largely acknowledged now as a huge mistake and they’ve kinda disregarded the whole mess.

Now that’s not to say the Flashpoint comic was bad, nor does that mean the movie will be bad.

The basic thrust of the story is that the Flash races back through time to save his mother from being killed when he was a child. This of course screws up the timeline and the you’ve got multiple realities mashing about as Flash tries to fix things. Such a movie could soar or crash very easily, so fingers crossed that they’ve got a good script in place.

Evidently Ben Affleck likes the script because he signed up to appear once again as Bruce Wayne, but I’m not sure if he’ll be Batman. Alternate realities, yo!

And again, let’s hope that ol’ Ben actually sticks with his decision this time. He’s been flipping and flopping on returning to the role more than a captured marlin on uppers.

And there’s a rumor that Jeffrey Dean Morgan may reprise the role of Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father. In Batman V Superman, Morgan plays Bruce’s father, who, along with his mother, who shall remain nameless, gets killed, leading to young Bruce taking the oath and changing his life for good. In the Flashpoint comic, the alternate reality that the Flash ends up in, it’s young Bruce that gets killed in the alley that night and Thomas, who takes the oath. so we’ll see if this actually happens in the film. It’s possible this was part of the plan all along, otherwise, why have Morgan only do a two minute cameo flashback in BVS?

But what’s even more exciting to me is the fact that Michael Keaton is *also* going to be appearing AS BATMAN. He’s IN.

I think the circumstances and reasons are possibly thus:

Number one, both Affleck and Keaton were interested in returning to the roles back when the CW tv shows did their Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. But the CW absolutely could not afford them, sadly.

Number Two, Keaton ROCKED a costume again when he starred in Birdman, which was a kind of sideways look at Keaton’s past as Batman, very cleverly done. Amazing film. During which, when they were building the Birdman costume, they used the old molds from the ’89 Batman costume. And it still fit. That has to pump you up a bit. He was excited and rightfully so.

Number three, Keaton has also been very much on a new high in his career with the aforementioned Birdman, Spotlight, as well as his take on the Vulture in the Spider-man franchise. I think he’s having fun.

Now sure, you’re thinking that hey, didn’t they eliminate all the other earths in the Multiverse back during the tv Crisis series? Well, no, as even at the end, to accommodate Stargirl and the Titans and Doom Patrol shows, they said other earths had begun to appear again, so yeah, Multiverse. It really is DC’s stock and trade.

A shame Marvel might just do it better with next year’s “Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness”.

But you never know.

DC has the built in excuse to do whatever films they feel like with the same characters appearing in different films at the same time. It hasn’t really hit in full force yet but it’s coming.

By the time Flashpoint comes out, the first of a new Batman trilogy will have premiered with Robert Pattinson in the lead role, as a kind of year two Batman, early in the game, and although you could easily say it takes place in the early 2,000’s, and thus a younger version of the Affleck Batman, right now they’re just saying it’s a separate reality. (A lot of directors really don’t like to share)

It’s kind of like the Joker. You had the wonderful Jack Nicholson in ’89, possibly the definitive version by Heath Ledger in Dark Knight, the rather unimpressive gang banger in the even less impressive Suicide squad, and of course the rehash version that kinda rips off King of Comedy and Taxi driver. The people who really liked the Phoenix Joker film tend to be the people who hadn’t seen the movies it regurgitates rather shamefully.

But all of them are just more never ending extra alternate realities etc.

Whatever.

I’d just like them to be good.

Fingers crossed.

Cringe inducing television…

Admittedly, I may have higher standards than most when it comes to tv programs. I can get *very* particular. But tv has always had dumbed down stuff. When the folks were up, we watched The Masked Singer.

THE MASKED SINGER: Host Nick Cannon and Night Angel in the all-new “The Mother Of All Final Face Offs, Part 1” episode of THE MASKED SINGER airing Wednesday, April 8 (8:00-9:01 PM ET/PT) on FOX. CR: Michael Becker / FOX. © 2020 FOX Media LLC.

Seriously, how does Ken Jeong get work? I…. I just don’t get it. He’s like the Ryan Seacrest of comedy. Grandmothers must love him.

But most people set a low bar and have a high tolerance for mindless pablum. Just snap on the Love Boat and veg out. I envy them. They can watch virtually anything and the dreck that is reality tv gives them thousands of hours of content.

Meanwhile, my pickiness regarding tv shows results in me usually not having anything I want to watch.

Sometimes, digging through the annals of tv history, I do find some gems. Even though the history of tv is littered with 85% of it *always* being garbage, that 15% of quality stuff is there if you can find it. Good, solid, smartly written, wonderfully performed television. It’s like panning for gold. Yes, quite often, you’ll get loads of Diff’rent Strokes, Saved by the bell, and other detritus, but once in a while, you find a Yancy Derringer or a Maverick.

But then, there are the game shows from the ’70’s. And the ’80’s. Mother of god. I’m not sure who was the more insufferable, condescending prick, Alec Trebek on “Concentration” or Alan Ludden on “Password Plus”.

Seriously, if you are someone who is easily offended by how women are treated by men *today*, do NOT go back and tune in to Buzzer, the game show channel. Just don’t.

Betty White was married to Alan Ludden for years. Poor Betty.

And on Concentration….no, you know, Ludden was worse. I’ve watched a few episodes of Concentration and while Trebek has been and will always be a smug know-it-all, I can at least enjoy the puzzle. Ludden just has so many condescending jabs at women, I couldn’t make it all the way through one episode. Moving on…

Watching Concentration, the big prize was a new car from a range of like 12 different models all on stage in the background. Very elaborate and probably all very exciting back then.

But it was a collection of new cars in 1989. I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of compact, squat, wedged shaped, shitty looking cars in my life. Congrats!

Alec Trebek always gives the impression– no matter the show– that he would naturally know all the answers of every puzzle and question even if he *didn’t* have all the answers in his hands. Has anyone ever had HIM play Concentration? Or Jeopardy? ESPECIALLY Jeopardy? That would be enlightening. It could be hosted by Wink Martindale, or grab some other condescending guy from the era who could embarrass Alec the first time he makes a mistake.

As for Allen Ludden, he’s long since dead. How did Betty White put up with that jerk?

They say you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. I have no problem doing that if I thought the person in question was a jerk. If you really dislike someone when they’re alive, then you start praising said person unconditionally once they’re dead, that seems a bit disingenuous….

Who knows, maybe Ludden was a great guy in person, and just came across as a glad-handing creep on screen, where he condescended to women.

Poor Betty.

There was a point hidden somewhere in all this……

Notice how I threw Wink Martindale in there? That was a real dude. Game show host. I should imdb him….

“Wink”, lol.

The results of the imdb search might even be a blog if it’s interesting enough….

What my mom doesn’t say…part two

A few months ago, I did a blog entry involving the many things my mom never told me. Hidden gems that she’d parse out over the decades, peppering almost any salad-like event with bacon bits full of intrigue

A couple years ago on holiday, she dropped the bombshell that back in the ’60’s in Florida, her cousin Marylou, a singer, who was one night accompanied on piano by none other than Richard Milhouse Nixon. This was at some club where Marylou worked.

I think I was in my 20’s when she mentioned in passing that my father once punched a cop, etc., that type of thing.

The folks were up recently and while gathering (outside) with family, she filled in the rest of her work history from ’53 to ’62.

Now, I knew she was a nurse’s aide, which was in the mid ’50’s, but what I did NOT know was that she also worked for Ford, in the jet engine section as a secretary. She mentioned how spiffy the foreign guys looked in the division. We thought at first it was the German scientists being relocated after WWII, but no, those were rockets, not jets and these were Brits, not Germans.

Understandable mistake though, considering my mom was considered quite the hot platinum blonde back in the day, so one might naturally conclude there might be an aryan youth scenario emerging, with foreigners showing up, but no.

Nor did I know she was a hostess at a restaurant or two going into the ’60’s. She started working at McKesson drugs as a secretary in ’62, probably right after I was born. She of course would do that until ’77, until she became a pharmaceutical rep.

Of course whenever talking about the old days, there come reminders.

Mom has little patience for … anything with today’s social mores and is quick to remind me that she smoked the whole time she was pregnant with me.

I responded that yeah, I know, things were different back then, they didn’t know better.

She’s then quick to inform me that they did know better and the doctor even told her to quit smoking. And god bless her, she cut down a bit. Turns out, my father was never a smoker, but that was probably because he was busy being a big drinker. Everyone needs a hobby.

Expanding on 1962’s infant accessories, there were no such things as car seats back then either.

So presumably, infants were either just held comfortably by mom in the passenger seat, or tied to the roof, where wind friction would shear off any residual mucous from the birthing experience.

You could just lay the infant in the back seat but they’d just bounce around (this was also before seat belts were either used, or encouraged or invented). I can’t remember exactly. Probably because I was all mucousy and tied to the roof.

But of course, this was a different time. Everything was *just* starting to become color after all those millennia of black and white.

THE PAST!

At least we know who and what we are now

Although today’s the election, we really have no idea when the final, official results are going to be in. We have no idea how many votes will be suppressed by those with certain agendas. A few states won’t be allowing late ballots or even counting ballots past a certain point.

Our president has a reputation for saying the whole thing is rigged, even after he wins, so you can imagine tantrum he’ll have when he loses the popular vote (again). We have no idea if the Electoral College, that useless, archaic piece of detritus, will bite us in the backside once again and render the popular vote meaningless.

We have a fairly decent notion that even if it’s a landslide against him, Trump won’t go out willingly, pleasantly, or with any dignity what so ever. He’ll fight tooth and nail, try and pull every delaying tactic in the book, and generally continue to make life miserable for everyone, even his staunch supporters. But his staunchest supporters, especially the hate groups, they admire Trump’s perceived toughness, even though their perceptions are obviously dubious at best.

We don’t really know how ugly it will get either way, since Nazis can be vindictive. White supremacists, white power groups, whatever, let’s call a Nazi a Nazi.

So, like I say, we don’t know a whole lot, but if the last four years have taught us anything, it’s shown us just how infested our house is.

During the eight years under Obama, we deluded ourselves into thinking we’d grown a bit, become a bit more enlightened. Many had, but others were sequestered in their hidey-holes, just waiting for their moment in the sun, when one old, orange con man would say anything they want to hear, and do absolutely anything to make them happy. Der Donald.

After the Electoral College gifted the win to Trump in 2016, some of the dumbest of the white supremacy groups (and that’s saying something) went joyriding and terrorizing. They were emboldened by the victory, and of course that’s horrible, they’re horrible, the whole situation is horrible.

Their version of “making America great” is an amazing, bizarro-universe, deluded cluster-f***. Common sense flew out the window years ago at Mach 2.

I could go on and on but I’ll just say this — sure, things are in really bad shape, embarrassingly so.

Far worse than we could have thought. On every level.

We know this. And we know it’s not just Trump, it’s who put him there.

But, regardless the outcome of the election, at least the blinders are off, we know where we stand, and we have a better idea what we’re dealing with.

I think that’s at least better than flying blind, assuming we’re doing wonderfully.

VROOM! VROOM! It’s TURBO-TEEN!

In the mid 1980’s shortly after the last dinosaur died, there was a tv show called Knightrider. It was about a guy (David Hasselhoff) who has a talking car (KITT, voiced by Marc Daniels) and it was pretty popular. So of course the cartoon world had to get in on the act and make a horrible cartoon to cash in on it.

TURBO-TEEN!

Some 16 year old twerp is driving his Camaro/Trans am cartoon hybrid on a stormy night around a really unsafe cliff turn with no guard-railings when lightning strikes a tree!

The tree manages to fall in front of the car perfectly blocking the unsafe road!

The kid can’t do anything but veer right off the mile high cliff to certain death!

But he manages to fall/fly/drive through a wooden door to a high security secret lab!

Then he slides/floats RIGHT into the path of some molecular plot device ray!

There’s also a scientist there!

The kid’s molecules bonded with his car, so now he can turn INTO his car! Zowie!

TURBO-TEEN!!!!!

I don’t know or care who produced it!

I don’t know or care who did the voice work!

TURBO-TEEN!!!!!!!!!!

It only lasted 13 episodes!

Probably only one before people started throwing garbage at the screen!

There was a shaggy dog!

TURBO-TEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The car was red and turbo-charged!

I had to draw the stupid thing during Inktober!

TURBO-TEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn’t be bothered to watch more than the opening!

Maybe it was great!

I seriously doubt it!

TURBO-TEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thus Endeth Inktober

That was interesting.

When I started, I went to great lengths to set things up just so, so I bought a bendy phone holder that could clamp onto my drawing board and hold my iPhone for recording the drawings.

This way, I could show a realtime video of the process of each drawing, complete with commentary. Also, thanks to the iPadPro, I could also share the time lapse of each drawing each day on the blog.

Depending on the day, I usually had something interesting to say–usually.

Then, I’d load the video up into my YouTube channel, and I’d load up the time lapse as well, so people could check out both versions.

By day nine, it became very apparent that no one was interested in the long videos with my commentary. Not that they were even that long– I think the longest one was maybe 18 minutes tops. The shortest was maybe seven minutes.

But why watch the process over an excruciating 15 minutes when you can watch a quick minute or less of a time lapse?

Point taken, so by day 10, I stopped the videos and just did the time lapse. That was actually easier for me anyway.

It also proves that I’m not the guy to do presentations or draw in front of people in this set up, teach an online class or do commentary, I don’t think. Drawing yes. Talking while drawing? Not so much.

The next bit was probably the prompts. You had the regular Inktober prompts and then the specialized Jack Kirby themed Jacktober prompts featuring his creations and co-creations.

I thought this was great because I figured that if I didn’t like the prompt from one list, I could slide over to the other one. Oooof.

What I didn’t count on was the Scioli guy, who put together the Kirby list, front-loaded the vast majority of Jack’s good characters at the start, leaving us a whole load of 7th rate characters scattered on the back half, with only a very few highlights. If this guy wrote an “informative” book about Kirby, I hope it’s better formulated than the Jacktober list.

Between some of the “eh” prompts on the regular list and some of the Jack prompts, there were some low rent days. “Coral” might have been rockbottom. Or Turboteen. Or Mr. T.

Finally, there was the time factor. I never know how busy I’m likely to get on any given day, week or month, work-wise, so I figured it would be smart to work a little ahead, so if something came up, I could stay on schedule putting up the appropriate drawing for the appropriate day. So, I got a couple days ahead. The first two weeks turned out to be very quiet even with my folks here for the second week. So I got farther and farther ahead. Definitely wasn’t rushing.

Yeah, so I was done with all 31 days by October 15th. Hell, I’m writing this whole recap of the month on the 18th!

Now some might say, “oh, you broke the rules!” Yes, well most people do in one way or another with this exercise. I know people who get busy and just skip days, or if they don’t like the prompt, they do something else.

The whole point is to draw and learn. I usually end up drawing all the time anyway. It’s what I do.

But as far as *presenting* 31 drawings in 31 days based on available prompts, now I’ve been there, done that, and I need never do it again. It was an interesting exercise.

Maybe next year, I do the NaNoWriMo or the 24 hour comic book challenge.

Or not.

I won’t have to strictly maintain this blog every single day next year. That was the big impetus for me doing Inktober this year anyway.

So, we’ll see.

“Turboteen”. Guh.