In blackest night…

Kilowog and Hal Jordan — Green Lantern: the Animated Series

On Thursday, 10 November 2011, Janice and I had dinner at the Acropolis restaurant in Needham, Massachusetts. The next evening, we settled in for the usual night of animation and genre television. We enjoyed Cartoon Network’s premiere of Green Lantern: the Animated Series, which combines Bruce Timm’s streamlined style from his superb 1990s shows with computer animation similar to that in Star Wars: Clone Wars.

I thought that it was smart of GL:tAS‘s producers to focus on Hal Jordan’s missions against the murderous Red Lanterns in deep space rather than on his origin story, which was recently covered in the live-action movie and First Flight DVD. The previews of Cartoon Network’s DC Nation were also fun, with a Wallace & Gromit-like short and another of the chibi Teen Titans. The level of violence in GL:tAS was greater than in some superhero shows, but as with Clone Wars, it’s necessary for the military space opera.

Speaking of Clone Wars, I think the darkening tone befits a war that began with idealism and ended with critically weakened democracies, much like World War I. On a related note, famed comic book creator Frank Miller lobbed a rhetorical grenade into debate around the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. I don’t deny that there have been difficulties with latter’s focus and safety, but I also believe that questioning economic fairness is no less patriotic than fighting terrorism. Science fiction author David Brin posted a strong retort, and I wish that both liberals and conservatives alike would strive harder to stay civil.

On a lighter note, I’m still impressed with the gradual world building in ThunderCats and belated insights into the superheroes in Young Justice. Chuck and Fringe have been experimenting with some role swaps this season, and Grimm reminds me not just of the fantasy Fables or Once Upon a Time, but also the late Pushing Daisies.

After raking leaves on Saturday, we ate at the Texas Road House, whose Dallas filet steak I enjoyed. I also liked Masterpiece: Contemporary’s Page Eight, an all-star musing on British national security and bureaucracy (not unlike Homeland). On Sunday, Janice and I attended a performance of works by Bach, Respighi, Haydn, and Brahms by the Rivers Symphony Orchestra at Christ Church in Needham.

Fall getaway to Providence

Bed and breakfast in Providence — The Old Court

After raking leaves for the first time this season on Friday, 21 October 2011, Janice and I went to the Midtown Smokehouse & Grill, a new restaurant in Needham, Massachusetts. The boneless Buffalo chicken had an Asian sweetness, the pulled pork and marinated turkey tips were lean but still juicy, and the pecan pie was a nice finish. The service was prompt and friendly.

Janice and I were glad to find Southern-style cuisine closer to home. Blue Ribbon Barbeque in Newton, Mass., doesn’t really have eat-in space, and while we like the buffet at Firefly’s in Framingham, Mass., it’s a bit far. Another good barbecue joint is Bison County on Waltham’s Moody Street. We still miss the Black-Eyed Pea back in Falls Church, Virginia.

On Saturday, we drove to Providence, Rhode Island, which we’ve passed through a few times but never really explored before. Janice had won a night’s stay at the Old Court through a WGBH (PBS) auction. The bed and breakfast was in a quiet neighborhood between downtown Providence and College Hill.

We enjoyed exploring the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). For a small institution, it has a wide collection of art, from Mesopotamia and classical Greece and Rome to medieval and Renaissance Europe, a bit of Asia and Africa, colonial and Victorian America, and some modern art. I’d compare RISD favorably with the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum rather than to bigger museums such as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Janice and I had a late lunch at the Brickway on Wickenden, which had fun décor and an extensive breakfast-style menu. We found College Hill, with its bohemian student population and shops, hilly terrain, and laid-back atmosphere, to be closer to places we’ve visited in Vermont or San Francisco than typical New England reserve. We also admired the historic architecture.

We swung through Brown University‘s pleasant campus, which reminded Janice of her grad school alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It was apparently parents’ weekend, since we saw relatively few students. At this point, we can pass for parents rather than coeds! From there, we walked downtown (unfortunately, we missed Water Fire by a few weeks).

We saw the Occupy Wall Street offshoot at Providence City Hall and the Rhode Island State House. I’m sympathetic to the movement, which is trying to become as focused as the anti-tax Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, but the tent city of underemployed college students, aging hippies, and homeless people wasn’t too impressive.

In marked contrast, we found Providence Place full of people. Like the erstwhile Natick Collection, the upscale boutiques and packs of roving teenagers held little appeal for us, especially with Borders Books & Music gone. We did like much of the art and furnishings at a craft show at the convention center next door, however.

After stopping by our B&B, Janice and I headed back to College Hill, where we visited Brown’s book store and the independent Symposium Books. We checked out a few eateries on Thayer Street before deciding on Shanghai, a good, if noisy, Chinese restaurant.

We got a nondairy dessert (for my lactose intolerance) from “Like No Udder,” a food truck representative of a recent trend in urban dining. The chocolate soft serve with peanut-butter sauce was smooth and excellent. After walking back to the Old Court, our dogs were barking, and we decided to pass on a Jack-o-lantern event at the Roger Williams Park Zoo.

We could have gone to the Italian restaurants on Federal Hill for dinner, but that would have required taking a bus or driving my beat-up Honda Civic on winding streets through unfamiliar neighborhoods (Janice baked lasagna last night, anyway). The next morning, we ate breakfast in the B&B’s common room before heading back to Massachusetts for grocery shopping, housecleaning, and putting up Halloween decorations. Even a short weekend away was a nice respite, if not quite as grand as last year’s vacation in England.

Coming soon: Game scheduling struggles, midseason genre TV, DC’s comics and videos, and reader requests!

Holiday update 2007

: Holiday 2007

As I prepare to move my blog from MySpace and Yahoo, here’ s a look back at one of my first posts (note that some of the links may be broken):

Friends, I hope that your holidays have been happy thus far. Instead of sending out the usual annual update letter, I hope that people are reading this blog.

The week before Christmas was busy, even though Janice and I had finished most of our gift shopping. Working on two issues simultaneously to get most of this week off kept CW‘s copy desk humming. On Saturday, 22 December 2007, we went to the local dump and post office, and I got my car inspected (which went more quickly and was cheaper than the previous week’s repairs).

We also had a Chinese-American buffet lunch at the Hunan New Taste, stopped by the Walpole Mall and the Big Y supermarket, and picked up my subscription at the New England Comics in Norwood, Massachusetts.

On Sunday, we stayed in because of the latest snowfall and caught up on television. What are your favorite holiday specials? Mine include classics such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and various versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Janice’s include A Garfield Christmas, Bill ‘n’ Opus: A Wish for Wings That Work, and Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas.

Of course, numerous Rankin-Bass cartoons and stop-motion specials have marked the holiday for generations, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and The Year Without a Santa Claus. More recently, we have A Muppet Family Christmas and Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Robbie the Reindeer, and Shrek the Halls.

I also had a quip-filled City of Heroes (CoH) virtual session with David I.S. and company, and Janice baked in preparation for seeing her folks. We plan to have a relatively quiet New Year’s Eve, since we’ll both be working that day.

We drove to Upstate New York on Monday, Dec. 24, first to Janice’s parents’ home. Like my parents, Marvin and Linda M. live atop a hill on five acres in the country. Unlike my family, they have numerous pets and a steep, icy driveway. Janice’s middle sister Shelly was already there with her husband Melvin W. and children Rebecca, Laura, and David.

I checked out photographs of friends on teenager Becky’s Clie handheld device, played chess with tween Laura, and played pool with 9-year-old David and his father. Shelly told us about her missionary work in inner-city Utica, and after a tasty lasagne dinner, we drove down to Janice’s youngest sister’s home, where we were staying.

We joined Melinda and Gary L. and their children Amanda and Joshua for Christmas Eve. I helped keep the kids occupied while the other adults finished wrapping a pile of presents. Amanda demonstrated her recent violin lessons, and I talked with 6-year-old Josh about various superheroes. Their cat Chocolate kept us company as we slept.

On Christmas morning, unwrapping continued, as the Manwillers and Wrights reconvened at the Lewis home, which has the most open space. Among other things, we got DVDs and an electric snow shovel. We had a ham luncheon, followed by Laura and 8-year-old Amanda playing with animal toys and David and Joshua playing with action figures and videogames. Becky is old enough to participate in most adult conversations.

Thanks to Gary’s PlayStation 2 and Xbox, I played an off-road racing videogame with Melvin, as well as Justice League Heroes with Josh. Although I don’t have the money or time to add console systems to my crowded tabletop (pen-and-paper, dice-and-pizza) role-playing, teleconferencing, and CoH PC gaming schedule, it was nice to try them out once in a while. Josh also demonstrated Spider-Man and Star Wars Lego II for us. (Lego Batman and Indiana Jones games are coming!)

I telephoned my family in Virginia, but I still missed being with my parents, brother Peter, sister-in-law Kelly, and nieces Ava and Lili. I hope to see them sometime in spring of 2008. But first, we’ll be at Dexter V.H.’s latest wedding in New York City in just over a week!

We returned to the Boston area on Wednesday afternoon after taking out the Lewises and Janice’s mother to lunch at Applebee’s. On Thursday, I caught up on e-mail and prepared for various games, including last night’s D&D3.5 “Vanished Lands: Holy Steel” teleconferencing team and tomorrow’s D&D3.5 “Vanished Lands: the Broken Chains” holiday makeup fantasy session. I’ve got to work today.

Of course, no year’s end blog post would be complete without a set of “best of” lists. IGN.com has a pretty good rundown of movies, genre television, and comics, but here’s my abbreviated version for 2007:

–Favorite movies: Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Ratatouille

–Favorite SFTV shows: Avatar: the Last Airbender, Doctor Who, and Pushing Daisies (Fellow blogger Ken G. has also noted the untimely demise of the underrated time-travel drama Journeyman, but at least Pushing Daisies and Reaper got picked up.)

–Favorite comic books: Captain America, Detective Comics, and The Spirit

–Favorite musical singles (and videos): “Gone Gone Gone” (Robert Plant and Alison Kraus), “Rehab” (Amy Winehouse), “Umbrella” (Rihanna)

–Favorite RPG releases: D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed.: Ultimate Power, A Practical Guide to Monsters (Dungeons & Dragons 3.5/4e), D20 Star Wars: Saga Edition

What were your faves? I look forward to blogging about such entertainment and more in the coming year, and may it bring good health and prosperity for all!

8 March 2010: Art and food

Friends, I hope that you had a good weekend. Janice and I enjoyed the early spring warm spell by taking the commuter rail into Boston on Saturday, 6 March 2010. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts, specifically for the exhibits on the tomb of the Djehutynakhts, a prominent ancient Egyptian family, and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris.

That evening, I joined Thomas K.Y. and some of his friends for some anime and dinner at Khushboo Indian Restaurant. The food was good, but service was slow. Speaking of cuisine, on Sunday, Janice and I attended a cooking class/demonstration at Chiara Bistro in Dedham/Westwood, Massachusetts. The menu, which included leek and “sunchoke” soup, Coq au Vin, crème caramel, and coconut macaroons, was expertly prepared and introduced by Chef Steve LaCount, also the proprietor.

Janice and I had a humbler but still good early dinner at Wild Willy’s Burgers back in Needham. I missed most of the latest Academy Awards, but since I hadn’t seen many of the films nominated for Oscars, I would have been watching more for the celebrities than
their works.

Between a slightly longer commute to my employer’s modern new offices in Newton, some late-night karaoke from our next-door neighbors, and the Pathfinder: “Holy Steel” teleconferencing team and other role-playing games (I may be running the D20 “Gaslight Grimoire” steampunk/fantasy for the face-to-face group soon), I’ve fallen behind again in sleep, reading, and writing, but I’ll try to post more later this week.

18 November 2009: Convention and concert report

I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged much in the past week or so — I’ve been busy with the usual round of work (for which I went to a trade show), gaming, genre TV, and seasonal events. I’ve also raked numerous bags of autumn leaves. On Saturday, 7 November 2009, Janice and I went into Boston for the Christmas Craft Festival at the World Trade Center. We didn’t buy lots of arts and crafts, just foodstuffs.

We got turned around a few times while trying to get to the Compleat Strategist, but we managed to eventually visit that game store and Pandemonium Books and Games in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We enjoyed a late lunch at Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, one of the best places for hamburgers in the area, and walked around the book shops of Harvard Square, which we try to get to quarterly.

On Saturday, Nov. 14, we returned downtown for the New England Fan Experience (NEFX) and Star Wars in Concert. Janice and I stayed overnight at the Courtyard by Marriott Tremont, which hosted the genre entertainment convention. The ballrooms at that venue were adequate in size, but the hallways and elevators were a bit crowded.

We caught the tail end of the session featuring Corin Nemec, star of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Stargate SG1, as well as the career retrospective of character James Hong, who has worked in movies for more than 50 years! Hong was funny, doing impressions and mentioning his numerous roles in films such as Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China, Mulan, and Kung Fu Panda.

Janice and I had lunch at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery before taking the
train to meet former co-worker Ken G. and his girlfriend Kahmmie at the Boston
Garden. Star Wars in Concert was excellent, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a large screen showing clips from all six movies, and even lasers and pyrotechnics.

We had difficulty choosing whether to focus on the talented and precise musicians
or on the well-organized vignettes introduced by C3P0 himself, Anthony Daniels.
On the way into the arena, we gazed at some props and costumes from the two
trilogies, as well as people in costume. I was pleased to see many children (some waving toy lightsabers) in the audience and to see that George Lucas’ space opera lives on.

We then returned to the hotel, grabbing dinner at the International Burger Bar before attending more convention sessions. Unfortunately, because of the concert’s timing, we missed the guest of honor, Star Trek and Mission Impossible‘s Leonard Nimoy. Still, we did get to see Gareth David-Lloyd from Torchwood because his room was on our floor! In addition to the usual aging male fans of comic books and old television shows, there were younger, often female anime and horror enthusiasts, multiple generations of Star Trek fans, and people in outlandish costumes.

I was impressed by the number and variety of panels at the NEFX. That evening, Janice and I sat in on sessions about technology (and “technobabble“) in Star Trek, steampunk media (about which I hope to blog more soon), and archaeology in science fiction. The steampunk sessions were led by comic book author Everett Soares and the fun troupe “the Penny Dreadfuls.”

On Sunday, Nov. 15, we went to the knowledgeable Paul Gavins’ panel on “suitmation” vs. computer-generated imagery in kaiju (giant monster) movies. We also picked up a few elements of steampunk garb at the dealers’ room. I’m looking forward to visiting the Super MegaFest and the “Harry Potter” exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science in the coming weeks!