Random Update from Six Years Back

Abseiling is a thing! It's when you descend vertically, usually down a rockface, from a double rope suspended directly above. Instead of a mountain, think of a scene from Mission: Impossible.

That's what we we're talking about. Criminals abseiled a warehouse containing treasure: they absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of historically important books. I wrote about back in February of 2017, as I was excited people were stealing books in spectacular fashion.

Anyway, they found the books! The investigation eventually lead to an underground paddock in Romania, of all places.

The books were returned to the owners. They were not hacked apart and sold piecemeal. There could be a rad action movie here somewhere...maybe even an investigatory procedural. Reality can match action movies well enough.

Rare View

We drove to Phoenix this past weekend, there on Saturday and back on Sunday. All the rain we've gotten recently made the normally lunar-surface looking hills on the drive up 91 to 60 and into Riverside all beautiful and green:

Taking pictures from the speeding car can be tacky, but it was bizarre to see the hills look like this.

The days are few when this happens, and especially when we make the drive.

But since my mother's moving next week, we're way less likely to make this particular drive again anytime soon. The drives to the Farm take another route, and my mom's new location will be about as far from the Farm as she was from us in LA. Maybe a little closer, even, and we won't have to drive through LA in either direction.

Although a 5.5 hour drive after the 18 to Clarendon, TX, means that those trips will also be rare...like us seeing the desert in flashy bloom.

14 Hours Through the DC Universe

Last night Corrie and I finished the last of HBO's Harley Quinn adult animated show. I found it hard to express how much I enjoyed this show. It's crass, violent, hilarious, bright and colorful, and sprints through so much of the DC comic universe it makes a knowledgeable fan's head spin.

Where else can we see Commissioner Gordon being such a drunk that he can't recognize his own daughter as Batgirl, and then after the reveal, she sadly laughs, "Yeah, I even slipped and called you dad a few times..." 

How about a world where Joker:

1. Starts off the antagonist you'd expect in a Harley Quinn show;
2. Gets turned up to 11 as he destroys the Legion of Doom and essentially turns Gotham into a no-longer-part-of-America wasteland;
3. Ends up a normie, a regular-looking dude bartender and stepdad with no memories of being Joker;
4. Then returns to being a supervillian, only to remain the stepdad to his 'kids';
5. Becomes so irate his kids don't get into the dual immersion program that he runs for mayor;
6. WINS MAYORAL CAMPAIGN on a ticket of Free Healthcare and Free University, and by now you're really rooting for him;
7. As mayor, the Joker: 1) helps Harley and Ivy's relationship, because, of course; and 2) ARRESTS BRUCE WAYNE for tax evasion and/or creative tax loophole use. Bruce agrees to go to prison!

That's a taste of the craziness. I had things I wanted to say about this show, but it never felt right. I wanted to grab screenshots of various cameos by other characters, like the randos from around the DC universe, but that would take too long. I decided to just list out the various characters below. Remember, this show, so far, is comprised of 36 episodes that are 22 minutes each and 1-45 minute Valentine's Day special just released this year. That's a total that's a few minutes short of 14 hours. ALL OF THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERS are featured in 14 hours of rip-roaring cartoon program, and all of them were featured at some point previously in the comics:

• Harley Quinn (duh)
• Poison Ivy
• Clayface
• King Shark
• Doctor Psycho
• Batman
• Batgirl
• James Gordon
• Two-Face
• Joker
• Bane
• Riddler
• Mr. Freeze
• Mrs. Freeze (Nora Fries)
• Penguin
• Nightwing
• Robin (Damian Wayne)
• Alfred Pennyworth/the Macaroni
• Catwoman
• Sy Borgman
• Man-Bat (hilariously as a lawyer)
• Ratcatcher
• Dr. Trap
• Firefly
• Maxi-Zeus
• Kite Man
• Golden Glider
• Lex Luthor
• Superman
• Lois Lane
• Wonder Woman
• Zatanna
• Flash
• Amanda Waller
• Plastique
• King Clock
• Aquaman
• Mera
• Ocean Master
• Queen of Fables
• John Constantine
• Scarecrow
• Darkseid
• Condiment King
• Mad Hatter
• Music Meister
• Etrigan (the Demon)
• Hawkman
• Hawkwoman
• the Court of Owls (as an (orgy) organization)
• Killer Croc
• Enchantress
• JB Smoove as the sentient plant Frank (not sure he's in the comics, he's just cool as shit)
• freaking Swamp Thing

This list probably isn't exhaustive, but it's exhausting to type up and look at. Not to mention the show's desire to represent characters that are survivors of abusive relationships as well as queer characters.

This show is so funny it could take a few viewings to view all the (small) jokes, but even the big ones will deliver again and again. Like when there's a water crisis and only Riddler University (snort) has water and Gordon is secretly living with Barbara in her dorm and keeps leaving the shower to grab beers and fart all the while Harley and Ivy are interrogating Barbara---and she covers for them, pretending they're friends and doing some new yoga thing.

How about Bruce Wayne starting a zombie apocalypse while raising his dead parents from the grave? How about the episode "Batman Begins Forever," in which the show takes a serious turn as they enter Bruce Wayne's psyche and relive his parents murder over and over. This show offers so much!

One Day Apart 50 Years Ago

Two separate game changers, if such a thing is reasonable to believe exists, were released a day apart exactly 50 years ago this year. On February 28th, 1973, the following book was officially published:

Hailed by some as a masterpiece and scorned by others as unreadable nonsense, Gravity's Rainbow is a treatise on America's obsession with death as well as a mimic of the shotgun-to-the-senses that pop-culture bot oddly was and is. The timeline the story follows is nearly the end of the second world war through to the end, and naming the time period is easier than trying to explain the plot. 

Because...well, you be the judge: one of the main characters is an American serviceman named Tyrone Slothrop who, as an infant, was programmed Pavlov-style to get erections at the sound of explosions and now, as the war starts to turn in the Allies favor, seems to have mapped out where rockets will fall on London by the women he's been bedding, all the while he searches for a specific German rocket with the serial number 00000, which turns out to be equipped to take a sex-slave wearing a living plastic onesie...

And there's so much more...

And the next day, on March 1st, 1973, the following album was officially released:

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is one of those albums that everyone's heard songs from, and while it's not the first 'concept album', it is credited with being one of the severely important ones. It's my own memories that my dad didn't like the synthesizer work very much, which is why I didn't grow up with this album like I did with the Jimi Hendrix's and Led Zeppelin's of the world. But today, I certainly recognize the power and beauty of the work.

Sometimes the coincidences of historical touchstones emerging are, eh, powerful...?

Birthday Events

We had a birthday party on Corrie's birthday for her and Camille, who's birthday was the previous day. I got Corrie as a gift tickets for a show: it would be on April 1st, but it would be a date-night, since the kids wouldn't be there. It was "An Evening wth Bill Nye:"

As the days got closer, the event left my memory banks. On random March days I'd freak out and ask myself Wasn't there something I was supposed to do? The answer to that, it turned out, was to arrange a damn babysitter.

After securing the services of our friend Lauren, we set out to make it to the Carpenter Center on LBSU's campus. Sitting front and center, I snapped a few pictures, as they instructed the audience to stash the phones during the evening.

It was a science talk! Bill Nye sat across from the university's shark-lab boss, and the shark-guru had a paper printout of topics to cover, and I got the sense that they hadn't spoken before they emerged one-by-one to their chairs. 

We had a great time, and despite it being our date-night, kids were well-represented in the audience.

Recent Rainbows

Rainbows! For a place that barely gets weather, we've had some pretty cool rainbows showing up:

This second one is certainly more faint, but it's there:

I once wrote about rainbows while we lived in Brooklyn. (That post took me back, and the rainbow pictured is spectacular.)