Because I’m anal.  I know, I know,  books for kids don’t have to be perfect – but they should make some kind of vague effort, right?  Especially one from such an illustrious (…or not) franchise as this one.

So, I’m presenting here the entire text of the book (hopefully not breaking any laws since I’m not providing the pictures, and since this is uh… artistic something or other), along with my editing suggestions and general commentary.

You may or may not find this amusing, but let it stand as a warning:

Read a book 10 or 15 times out loud in the store before you buy it.
Or else.
-God

Also, this is just a first pass done in anger by a guy with no editorial training.  I’m sure if they spent some actual money on this, the result would be more kid friendly and less damaging to adults.

Line breaks are for page breaks.
My correction suggestions are in bold, my random notes are in red italics.
Your imagination will have to provide the visuals of me digging my eyes out.

———————————————————————————————-

This is George.
He was a good little monkey and always very curious.
Today George and his friend the man with the yellow hat joined Mrs. Gray and her class on their field trip to the fire station.
Everything’s good so far – monkey goes on field trip with class, got it.  Fire station – lots of things to learn there, sounds good!  Although, “good little monkey” and “curious” do seem like an odd juxtaposition…

The fire chief was waiting for them right next to a big red fire truck.  “Welcome!” he said, and he led everyone upstairs to begin the tour.
Whu wha?  He didn’t even bother to explain what a fire truck is, or what it does?  K!

There was a kitchen with a big table, and there were snacks for everyone.  The fire chief told them all about being a firefighter.  George tried hard to pay attention, but there were so many things for a little monkey to explore.  Like that shiny silver gold pole in the corner…
Where did that pole go?  George was curious.
The pole is BLATANTLY GOLD, not silver. Yes, it is stripper pole colored.
Why put ellipsis there?  USUALLY the book puts them at the end of a page, and it sort of makes sense in that you ask it and the child thinks about it while you turn the page.  In this case, it’s right in the middle of the page.
Oh, and note that it doesn’t say jack shit about what a fireman actually does.  As far as the kids listening know, they feed you apples and lead you from one room until the next.  Sure, you find out more later, but if the dude is supposedly talking about it – he might as well talk about it.  Also, we’re never told or shown that George eats an apple, but later we’re assumed to know this.

Why, it went back downstairs!  There was the great big fire truck.  There was  also a map of the city. Aand there was a whole wall full of coats and hats and big black boots!
What am I?  A stereotypical 80 year old granny?  Hell, I don’t even think grannies talk like this anymore.  Let’s not teach our kids idiotic and nonfunctional, dated grammar k?
You didn’t mention that the fire truck was “great big” before, just “big”, so it doesn’t really fly with the definite article here.
Let’s try to avoid starting sentences with “and” too ok?  I know, I know, “real” writers can do it in “real” book – but neither of those cases apply here.

George had an idea.  First, he stepped into a pair of boots.
Next, he picked out a helmet.
And, finally, George put on a jacket.
He was a firefighter!
Suddenly … BRRRIINNGG!
Really?  Ellipsis after “suddenly” ??? No.  They are doing conflicting things here, mmk?

The firefighters all rushed in.
“This is not my helmet!” said one.
“My boots are too big!” said another.
“Hurry!  Hurry!” called yelled the fire chief.  A bright red light on the map of the city told him just where the fire was.  There was no time to waste!
He’s like 5 feet away from them, “calling” makes no sense.  And WTF is up with “just where the fire was” – again with the granny text!  The book is copyright 2004 and only on the 3rd printing – so, MODERNIZE BITCHES!
Also, note that they tell us that “all” of the firefighters are present.  I think this is pretty important…considering they leave a teacher and a man who wears yellow latex and has a pet monkey in a fire station with a bunch of kids and no supervision!

One by one, the firefighters jumped into the fire truck.
And so did George jumped in after them!
Yeah, that construction is just awkward after a “one by one” anyway, not to mention the whole starting a sentence with “and” again…  You like how I followed their style of sticking an exclamation point at the end of non-dialogue?  Description can yell too!!

The fire truck with all the firefighters sped out of the firehouse.
And so did George hung on tight!
The siren screamed and the lights flashed.
What. The.  Deuce.  George sped out of the firehouse?  Under his own power?  Uh-uh, George did jack shit as far as speeding goes, that little bitch rode the fire truck like everyone else.  Also, note that they pointed out that all the firefighters are in the truck again – even though a car full of firefighters is clearly visible following them.  Artists and writers – you know it’s ok to talk to each other right? *FACEPALM*

The truck turned right.  Then it turned left.
“WHOO WHOO WHOO” went the whistle, and George held on tight.
Wow, exciting stuff there, turning right and left.  *yawn*  Z does like the whistle sound though.  Probably just because I’m an awesome whoo whoo-er.  They really could have just put in a few more lines of truck noises, or maybe oh, I don’t know, mentioned that the truck was driving to the fire?

Soon the fire truck and all the firefighters pulled up to a pizza parlor on Main Street.  Smoke was coming out of a window in the back, and a crowd was gathering in the street.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” cried said the cook.
Again with telling us that the children are relatively unsupervised in a fire station full of powerful hoses, axes, rubber clothing and two potentially questionable adults.

The firefighters rushed off the truck and started unwinding their hoses.  They knew just what to do.  And George was ready to help. George climbed the hose reel, pausing briefly defecate on the side of the truck.
He climbed up the hose reel …
“They knew just what to do?”  WHICH WAS WHAT?  If you’re not going to show me (which they don’t – whatever the fire men do is off scene) then PLEASE, PLEASE tell me!
Also note that the firemen (and women!) are running out the door with the wrong gear on, or no gear at all – I’m guessing that would get them fired and/or seriously injured.  K!

One of the firefighters saw George trying to help getting in the way, and so he took George by the arm and led him out of the way away from the truck.
“A fire is no place for a monkey!” he said to George.   “You stay here where it’s safe.”
George felt terrible.
Why did George feel terrible?  What is a child supposed to take from this?

George sat on the bench and looked around.  Next to him on the ground was a bucket full of balls.  George reached in and took one out.  It fit in his hand just right, like the apple he’d had for a snack.
Um.  You probably shouldn’t reach into strange buckets of balls.  Especially ones left alone next to a park bench.  Note the reference to the apple snack we didn’t realize George had – and the extreme oddness of saying how well it fit his hand.

A little girl was watching George.  He tried to give her the ball, but she was too frightened.
George took another ball. And, then another.
“Look,” a boy said. , “T that monkey is juggling!”
Just bad formatting and awkward sentences.

The boy took a ball from the cage and tossed it to George, but it went too high.
George climbed scrambled up onto the fire truck to get it.
Ok, this one always blows my mind – because I’m simple like that.  THERE IS NO CAGE!  It’s totally like the Matrix and shit.  Also, “George climbed” has no kind of sense of speed, you couldn’t just amble your way up a truck and still manage to catch a flying ball!

Now George had four balls to juggle.  He threw the balls higher and higher.  He juggled with his hands.  He juggled with his feet.  He could do all kinds of tricks!
It seems for something like “all kinds of tricks”, one would need to do more than two variations on a single trick.

The boy threw another ball to George.  George threw a ball back to the boy.  The little girl reached down and picked up a ball, too.  Soon all the children were throwing and catching, back and forth.
Annoying, but better than most of the other pages.

The fire chief came to tell everyone that the fire was out.  Just then, the little girl laughed and said, “Look, Mommy–a fire monkey!”
Something weird about the story is the mysterious pair of mother and daughter on the park bench.  Instead of oh, I don’t know – taking her daughter somewhere else!  The mother casually sits on the bench and lets her daughter watch a fire.  Now, true this is probably exactly what would happen in real life – but you want to at least try to teach kids the smart thing right?

“Hey!” called the fire chief.  “What are you doing up there?”
“What a wonderful idea,” the little girl’s mother said to the fire chief. , “B bringing this brave little monkey to help children when they’re frightened.”
“Oh,” the fire chief said.  “Well, er, thank you.”
I guess I’ll let “called” fly here, since he’s more than 5 feet from the monkey. The writers (evidently it took two – one must be the illustrator, I hope.  Then again, maybe it’s all random cut and paste, that would make sense too) really need to work on their dialogue formatting.

Before long the fire truck was back at the After putting out the fire, george and the firemen climbed back onto the truck and rode back to the firehouse., where When they arrived, a familiar voice called, “George!”  It was the man with the yellow hat.
“This little monkey had quite an adventure,” said one of the firefighters.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Mrs. Gray.
“Before long”!?  Again with the bizarrogrannyworld terms.  Also, when you use “before long” it needs some kind of a preexisting condition that would uh, I dunno, imply that something was happening to predicate the situation that occurs afterwards.  I’m not going to try and come up with a sentence though, because just thinking about using it gives me the Alzheimers.
Also, they passed up a great chance to use a semicolon!  For shame.

“Yes, it was just a small fire,” said the fire chief.  “And George was a big help.”
Now the field trip was coming to an end.
But there was one more treat in store…
Now it was time to go, so Mrs. Gray started rounding up the children.  Just as she wrestled the last axe away from a bleeding child  the fire chief stopped her – he had one more treat!
Really?  Just a small fire?  Then why did you take the entire fucking fire crew?  Is that SOP?  Maybe it is… probably not when a bunch of school children are running around in your firehouse though. Those last two sentences are just so awkward. Mine aren’t much better, but at least they look like I finished high school.

All t The children got to take a ride around the neighborhood on the shiny red fire truck, and they all got their very own fire helmet.  Even George!  And it was just the right size for a brave little monkey.
Yeah, I could have done more here, but can’t bear to look at the words anymore.

Related posts:

1. demons and the “R” rating
2. Random Update

His latest, although evidently it was written a while ago, or something.  He also released early drafts of it on the web for free.  I probably should have checked them out, to see more about how his process went but I hate reading books on computer.

So. Yeah this was good, it took me a while to get into it – 15 chapters or so, so that makes it probably his “least” good book, but it was still quite enjoyable.  The whole magic system came off kind of goofy to me BUT with the caveat that if he has a good explanation for it in a later book I may change my mind.  Only having certain phrases invoke the magic just seems silly.  I suspect that’s not the case, and it’s just that certain things are simpler than others, but we’ll see.  The whole color thing is rather strange too, but I suppose there is energy of some sort stored in colors sooo…ok, sure.

My only real complaint is that we didn’t get enough info about the magic system.

The story itself was entertaining though – a really rather classic multiple bait-and-switch setup – probably the most “normal” of his 5 books so far.  I think it was the shortest too.  Still, none of these things are real negatives – I recommend it for any high fantasy fan.

3.85 STARS out of 5

Elantris
also by: Brandon Sanderson

Wow, what a debut.  I’m not even going to bother shooting this high.  Definitely stronger than Warbreaker (I know, I read the new one before the old one but they are only microscopically related, so it doesn’t matter, nyah!).

There were very few parts I skimmed – just some annoying banter about food.  People talking about food…yeah that’s pretty much something I’m not going to waste more than half a second on.

The rest of the novel (you know, the other 99.9%) was excellent, especially for a debut.  He created a fascinating world – almost as interesting as the Mistborne world, and more so than the Warbreaker one (so far) – and populated it with some good characters.  That being said, the story was definitely not as unpredictable as his other books.  Even though I said Warbreaker followed more of a formula, that formula included lots of twists and turns – this one had very few.  The ones it did have were great though.

I wish he’d explained a little more thoroughly what they had to do to fix the magic, but I’m sure it’s out there on an internet discussion board somewhere, waiting for me.

Highly recommended for fantasy lovers.

4.1 STARS out of 5

Having finished all his (published) books, I’m definitely seeing a reoccurring theme of religion: examining it, its strength and roles in society, and its relationship with various forms of resurrection.

Related posts:

1. book reviews: Blue Adept & Juxtaposition
2. book review: Master of the Five Magics

Iron Fist 27: Yes, Danny Rand/Iron Fist will also be a father soon, following in his perennial buddy, Luke Cage/Power Man’s footsteps.  Also of note, and implied by my goofy title, is that the mother of said child (and soon to be wife of Danny) is Misty Knight.  Now.  This is comics.  So her or the baby could go kaput or turn into an alien at any time, for no good reason BUT, luckily no one else seems to care about writing Misty at the moment – so I think they are safe!

Also, this was the final issue of Immortal Fist.  Such a shame, it’s been a great series so far and deserved more than it got (much like Captain Britain & MI13).

X-Factor 45: Answers a question asked by only the most diligent fanfolk (ok, that’s still a lot): were Rictor and Shatterstar together?  Beyond that, the ongoing arcs continue in interesting ways, and things start to come together.

Astonishing X-Men 30:  Something happened here. Forge “died” I think, in a really strange and silly ending that I don’t think anyone saw coming to a story that started looking like something out of 90s Claremont’s and wound up 90s Ennis.  Not bad, but not particularly good, and I think Ellis can do better.

Apparently the entire point of Avengers-Invanders was to resurrect Toro, who no one cares about.  Or the original Human Torch, one of them.  DUMB.  Leading into the new Human Torch mini coming out later this year I’m sure.  The ending was rather horrid – but how else are you going to end a story where the bad guy is omnipotent?

Whatever the current Messiah Mini Event is finally ended a recent issue of X-Force or Cable.  It was actually decent, except that in the end it didn’t mean anything.  Except that Dom killed Kiden in the future.  That’s basically it.  Fun.  Curious to see how X-F will pick up the pieces of Boom-Boom now though.  Shame, she was wonderful with the right writers.  Go NEXTWAVE!

A bunch of Dark Reign minis came out.  They’re all pretty stupid.  The Lethal Legion thing may stir up some interest with the Wonder Man in jail angle though… that last panel was a little creepy.

Daken has taken over Wolverine’s title, which is good because there was too damn much of one Wolverine – thankfully now we have 3 separate Wolverine’s to spread around.  !?

Now Wolverine’s “main” book is the Weapon X one – doing stuff that would have been in the normal Wolverine book so uh, whatever.  !?

Guardians of the Galaxy 15 was good and ended pretty much the only way it could (on the War of Kings angle), although still somewhat surprisingly.  And I hear the “old” Guardians are returning… that actually makes me very vary.  I think I’ll drop the book if it becomes about them.  Their time is over.  Vance I can take, but the others… meh, they work in the future, not in the past.  For me anyway.

I skimmed through Transformers: All Hail Megatron – it seems pretty decently written, if you’ve got a Transformers itch that the movie just didn’t scratch (which is understandable, as it was mostly trying to scratch your scrotum).

Related posts:

1. random thoughts on recent books
2. 07/25/08 – a whole month of comics

If I have any avid blog readers, they may have noticed me removing all direct traces of the infamous “d*nkey p*rn” phrase from my blog.  It was funny for a while, but now I’m trying to clean up my hits and see what people are actually finding me for, as well as umm… ward off the wierd ass fucks who came here actually looking for the aforementioned crap.

The original post and follow up still exist, for purposes of historical amusement, just with the text changed a little bit, hopefully that will help.

No related posts.

[This an update of something I posted to my website a few years back]

Starflyer is one of the few bands whose albums actually have character to me.   There are very few bands I have this connection with, probably because one of the prerequisites is that you have to be in on the ground floor without preconceptions and really experience each album – getting them far enough apart that they have make a distinct mark on that portion of your musical life.   Many bands that I dearly love I come into late -Rancid grabbed me on their 3rd, the Clash were long gone when I caught that late train, I was 10 years distanced from early Springsteen,  and modern awesome bands like the Mendoza line I just came in a little late wound up absorbing 2-4 albums at once, probably in the wrong order.  What other band(s) to have a connection like this to?   Counting Crows is somewhat similar in that I came to the first album without much media influence, and stuck with it, really devouring and enjoying each album on its own.  Tiger Army is another band I was in on the bottom floor with, same with Death on Wednesday, but now they are long gone. *sigh* Anyway…onward!

What do I mean by “connection”?  Well each disc sort of speaks to me in a different and specific way, and carries with it a bundle of possibly unrelated memories, like nerve endings that got all tangled up and now just misfire together.  I think of the later albums usually as combinations and permutations on the old.  That’s probably the “wrong” way to look at it, but since when have I really cared?

Where to begin – well the answer to that is easier than usual I guess: the beginning.  I can’t recall the exact moment when I encountered SF, but I know it has something to do with Andy & Peter – one of them found Silver and played it for me, or told me about it.  I know this because Andy reminds me every so often.  Without that I would probably forget…

In 1993 I was a young snot just coming into some actual music taste and trying to find things that I really liked, as opposed to just listening to the junk on the radio, or regurgitating whatever was cool with the other kids.   I was saddled with the difficult position of being a young reborn Christian  and going through various “should I or shouldn’t I listen to secular music?” phases (I got rid of all my cds on at least TWO separate occasions…only to buy them all back a year or so later) AND trying to find something I could really grok to at the same time.  Luckily, there was a baby alt-christian scene and there were a few good bands (like 5) and 1 or 2 who happened to be both brilliant AND Christian, the rest was pretty meh.    The best music of the time was definitely on Tooth and Nail – almost all their early discs were worth listening to, anything before that was probably painful.  Sorry old school alt-christies, I’ve heard most (if not all) of that music and it really did suck.

Christian music in general resides up there on the highest level of soulless horseshite with the likes of Pop-country & adult contemporary (the two genres it tried so often to emulate, coincidentally), with the VAST, VAST majority of artists at the time resorting to just ripping off mainstream, and or just producing filth with no redeeming qualities at all (other than the fact that they love Jesus so golly it must be good!).   Anyway, back on topic – Starflyer was one of those few bands who was actually doing something NEW and GOOD and on a Christian music label.  They were (and still are) the band I go to when people comment about “good Christian music” being an oxymoron.  Jason never let himself be tied down (so far?) or locked into the whole “this is what Christian music should sound like” thing.  He is an artist who happens to be Christian – and it informs his writing but it does not straddle it like a 7ft Cro-Magnon rapist on a crippled cow driving its point home over and over again like you have to do when you talk to inbreds.   And that artistic integrity and spirit of raw creativity is the reason why Starflyer is still my favorite band, even though I’ve long since abandoned the world of Christianity and religion in general.

For the break down let’s take this disc by disc.

Silver, 1993.

See, my memory jumble here brings up 7th and 8th grade, images of the Flamson Middle School lunch yard and 2 story main building, of this silly picture of me and Andy,  sitting at a cement table drinking Dr. Pepper that someone took and threw out of the yearbook, and thus gave the original to us.   But, of course that’s not quite right because in 1993 I was a freshman/sophomore in high school.  Which matches the memories I have of Peter hauling our whole squad around in their old brown Dodge Ram that we used to joke had survived Desert Storm (I suspect it’s still out there somewhere, hauling troops from one hot zone to another) listening to Silver, She is the Queen, and Gold.  That opening blast to Blue Collar Love still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, and evokes memories of my bedroom at my Dad’s old Templeton house.    The album as a whole makes me think of long drives to the beach in the aforementioned Dodge Tank, with Peter still not able to drive and fuck with the cassette player at the same time, and often getting us killed numerous times as a result.   And us yelling at him for it.  “Dungeon” holds a special place in my heart as one of the few SF songs I ever learned to play any part of – Peter figured it out and one of our bands used to play it. I forget which band incarnation…the one with Jeremy Johnson & Eric Swagger I *think*.  But I’m often wrong.  Which reminds me of how the wiring in Eric’s basement was fried, and we’d always get shocked from the floor or whatever when we practiced down there…

But what does it sound like man!?  It’s a very liquid album.  The guitar on the various songs reminds me of waves of different size and strength.  I know it sounds cheezy, but sometimes I can really feel “lost” in the “sea” of sound that is Silver.  In a good way.  In retrospect it reminds me a little of Hum, who I didn’t discover peripherally until 2 years later with You’d Prefer an Astronaut (which I didn’t track down in a store until YEARS later).  To be fair, their second disc, Elektra 2000 also came out in 1993, but that has a different kind of intensity and wholly different vibe than Silver, to me.  I’ve heard lots of comparisons of this album to My Bloody Valentine, but I must not have the right MBV albums, because the “glaring” similarities that I’ve heard mentioned don’t jump out to me.  True, MBV is an obvious influence (and I’m pretty sure Jason has said this in interviews as well), but I don’t think SF is derivative in any way – what he took from MBV I think he definitely brought forward.

In retrospect this is such a great album, it stands out totally burned into my memory as different than everything else, and as much a bridge into a new musical world (which I have since followed into bands like My Bloody Valentine that pre-date SF, contemporaries like Joe Christmas that were outlasted, and all kinds of other shoegazy bands that have come and gone in the interim) as Madness, Rancid & Springsteen were to me to the worlds of ska, punk & rock & roll and their million bastard children.  These were the bands of my musical awakenings, remaining on my list of favorite music through the years and leading me to their roots and offspring.  Bands like these have laid out the boundaries for the soundtracks of my lives, and will always be with me in one form or another.

She is the Queen EP, 1994.

This was possibly my introduction to Joy  Electric, by way of Ronnie Martin remixing  Blue Collar Love.   It also abounds with imagery of that bedroom at my dad’s Templeton house…which is weird , as I’m pretty sure we lived in the apartment in Paso by then.  This was another good one for driving, and also probably the most romantic I can recall Jason Martin ever writing.  With two (count them: She’s the Queen, She was my Sweetheart) songs seeming to directly relate to young/retro love (more noticeably so than the songs like Housewife Love Song on Gold), this is the album that conjures up images of the girls I had crushes on in High School.  Never mind that She’s the Queen may have been written about his mother…or maybe it was her picture on the album, I do forget.  And with more songs specifically about California (Monterey, Salinas, Canary Row) it has that nice Highway 101 feel to it.

The sound is, for the most part, a focus on the mellower elements of Silver, with even more mellowness and atmospheric withdrawal thrown in.  You get the sense that songs like Salinas could easily have fit on Silver, but to me there is a sense of distinctness.  Maybe just created by the temporal distance between the two, but it’s still there, and concrete, for me.

Gold,  1995.

A wonderful album, with possibly one of the best two line songs ever (Duel Overhead Cam), which also happened to contain one of the most intense moments of feedback I had ever processed in my young life – that spot in the song surely pissed off a number of travelers in what was passing for my transportation those days.  Ahh, my period red 78 Pinto wagon.  That’s mostly what this album reminds me of.  Cruising around in my own vehicle – now it was my turn to almost kill people!  I think at this point was maybe the first time I got to see them live…here my memory totally fails me and I should ask Andy or Peter.  I think we drove up to Concord to see them…or maybe they went without me.  Either way, I did see them at one point.  This was a great album for night driving out to the beach.

Gold takes the sound of Silver, and both harshens it and softens it at the same time – tracks like the aforementioned Duel Overhead Cam and the opener A Housewife Love Song take the wall (or wave!) of distortion sound to the next level, while tracks like You’re Mean are even softer “mellow” songs.  Other tracks, like Indiana, do both.  Even though it does pack some serious distortion, the vibe from the songs in general are very mellow.   True, Silver is a “mellow” album in general, as is gold…but they are mellow in different ways man! If Silver is the oceanic album, Gold is like the aged driftwood and glass album, I suppose.  :)

Le Vainqueur EP, 1995.

Surprisingly I have a few really solid images locked in my brain and tied to this tiny 4 song (2 of them versions of the same track) disc.  The images are of listening to the ep, possibly for the first time, in the bedroom Andy & Peter shared in their house by the high school.  The same house we used to have the male bonding nights at – playing black out hide and seek to deafening music, and at least once we had an awesome shirts vs. skins pillow fight war that spilled out into the street.  Or something, it does get fuzzy – sort of like the music.

The sound follows in the same vein as gold: 2 (3 if you count 2 versions of the same song) mix the heavy distortion wall of sound with much “thinner” breaks in between, while The Starflyer 2000 Reprise (which is actually a redo of a Starflyer song called “Leigh and Me” done originally with a female vocalist for the Artcore I compilation, now done with Jason’s voice) follows the path of the paper thin for the entire track.

Plugged EP, 1996.

This one unfortunately was the one of their early discs I never managed to track down until much later.  Since it was pretty much a concert only sell, and the internet was young then I didn’t have much chance to get it.  I think at one point Jamie finally got a copy of it from somewhere and I was able to hear it from him.  I seem to recall the fact that you could actually hear the guy (not Jason) saying the French stuff from Le Vainqueuer quite loudly.

Americana, 1997.

This was the album where the sound began to change, noticeably to me at least. I mean, really it didn’t so much, the heavy guitars and trademark buzz type solo lines are still there.  But the pace had been picked up, as it were.  There was the tiniest bit more of rock influence, and you could feel it in the way the music moved.  I think it was the first album that had the lyrics in the jacket, if I recall correctly, and it was the first time we got to confirm that yes, the lyrics were as minimalist as we thought.  This was the album of transition for me…the album that marked my last year in High School and what should have been my first year in college.  That I chickened out and went to Cuesta junior college for a year and a half is probably why that year was such a blur.  Somewhere around here or maybe 1996 we (Andy, Peter, I and many others) saw them play in a little church in Atascadero with Fine China and a few other bands, maybe one of our friend’s bands, I forget.  But I think this was the first time I said something to Jason…I don’t remember what it was, probably just that I loved the band and had been following since Silver.  You know, the usual junk you say to someone whose work you respect incredibly but with whom you have no idea what to talk about and don’t want to be too annoying.

For this album, Jason took the fuzz back a few notches – oh it’s still there and impossible to miss, but it doesn’t feature as centrally in the songs themselves as it did before.  Where before the distortion was actually an instrument of sorts, now it is often (but not always!) occupying the more standard role of additional flesh for the guitar.  There are even some almost audibly so straight up rock sounding riffs in here!

The Fashion Focus, 1998.

My favorite SF album.  The first SF album I really got into in my post-christian life too.  The album that proved to me that I could still deeply enjoy and respect work put out by someone involved in what I considered to be a waste of a lifetime (religion).  It probably helped me to maintain a respect for those who choose to follow the various religions – it is everyone’s individual right as a human to do so, and of course that is going to inform their music.  But as long as they’re not trying to proselytize me, it’s all good.   Strangely, the memories this album conjures are of  1999-2000 when I lived in the house on Pasado in Isla Vista.  Of the despondently beautiful “I Drive A Lot”, still my favorite Starflyer song.  The strongest emotional connection I ever formed with a Starflyer song was the bond I have with that song.  I can’t really describe why I bonded with that song like I did, but it connected me on multiple levels, the musical level being somehow separate than the lyrical and mood-bearing levels.  It sounds funky I know.  It echoes in my head as I think of the 2 hour drive from Santa Barbara to Paso to visit friends and family (not that long of a drive I know!  But it always felt so long and lonely at that point in my life), or of the long walks I’d take (alone or with friends) in the late night post party streets of IV, pondering the meaning of life and the hangover.  I think I actually must have tuned out of Christian music at this point, as I might have been a year or two late in picking up this album…that would jive with the memories I have left.  This is probably the album I got Jen into Starflyer with…and now she’s also in loooooove with them. :)

Looking back on the album now, I can hear more clearly that this was “a” next step past Americana.  At the time it really just sounded out of the blue to me.  Not that it was radically different, but the whole feeling of “change” with the album just came across so strongly to me.  This is probably one of the few cases where the cover of a cd so strongly affected my perceptions.  It seems strange I know, but for a band that had for 5 years used solid colors for album covers (except the 2nd EP I know!), having an album cover that looked like an actual sort of modernist album cover really threw me, and affected my perception of the songs as well.  TFF continues on the path of “cleaning up” much of the Starflyer sound, removing even more of the distortion, in both the not-so-mellow and mellow tracks.  Many of the tracks have a sort of Gold-style to them, except for there are fewer distortion interludes – there are definitely still distortion tracks though: The Birthrite, Shut Your Mouth & Too Much Fun (clocking in at 7:42!).  It’s almost like the first half of the album is the “progressive” part, and then the last half is there to remind us who we are dealing with.  I mean, not entirely, not really at all, but superficially sort of.  If that makes any sense.  Not that it has to.

Fell in Love at 22 EP, 1999.

I might have got this at the same time as  the Fashion Focus, this is one of the discs I don’t have much of any memory bundles to go with, it just kind of slips by.  It is a great, solid ep though.  It was a good time period for an ep as well, as the sound was in the process of changing in leaps and bounds.   Well, what looked like leaps and bounds to a hardcore fan anyway, I’m sure many casual listeners think it all sounds the same.   The first three albums felt like a more gradual process to me, stepping it up a few notches between Americana & The Fashion Focus, and between The Fashion Focus & Everybody Makes Mistakes.

The mellow nature of this disc was more of a smoke break (not that I endorse smoking!  It’s a metaphor people!!) between the two albums than a bridge though.  The songs feel like extras from the Fashion Focus sessions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they were.  In fact – Fell in Love at 22 is obviously on both discs, but the riffs of E.P. nights hearken all the way back to Gold & Americana as well as forecasting the sound of the distortion used on Everybody Makes Mistakes.

Everybody Makes Mistakes, 1999.

To me, an ironically titled album, as it was my least favorite (now tied for second least favorite).  It’s hard to put a finger on why this album never stuck with me, as it has some really great songs.  Andy said at one point it was because “A Dethroned King” was so overtly Christian it convicted me, or annoyed me, one of those, which I disagree.  It is hard to say why I find that song so annoying (it being the worst song Jason Martin has written), but I found it bad enough to sour the rest of the album.  It wasn’t the obvious religious nature of it, in fact I don’t think it’s really that obviously religion in nature at all – only someone in the know would pick up on it.  It’s not the repetitive nature of it – hell, almost every song on the first 3 SF albums was more repetitive than this one.  It’s not the main riff, which does strongly annoy me – well, maybe I don’t like the riff?  Anyway, I can’t put my finger on it, but I just don’t like the song.  And, me having such high expectations of Mr. Martin, and this song being the first let down, ever – those two things together probably couple to make this album a sour spot in my Starflyer mental scrapbook.  But still – there are some excellent songs, in fact, the majority of the songs are very strong individual songs, many of them stronger than individual songs on The Fashion Focus.   They were definitely more poppy and hooky though – except for The Party, My Name, & Just Try – the remaining songs were rather upbeat and poppy (well, poppy for Starflyer).  Maybe that was another part of what threw me?  Retrospectively I think I might have subconsciously noticed him steering towards pop hooks and been horrified.  The Fashion Focus showed him being more affected by the Indie rock of the time – obvious in the song structure and especially in the album cover & packaging.  So maybe I was afraid of my precious Starflyer selling out and going to shit?  Luckily that didn’t happen.

Easy Come, Easy Go, 2000.

The “Greatest Hits” compilation.  Yes, I bought this too – it has lots of extras (a whole disc worth of alternate takes, a cover, and some live tracks), as well as being a great intro to Starflyer for newbs.  And one thing I do still evangelize occasionally is Starflyer…

Leave Here a Stranger, 2001.

If I recall, this is Andy W’s least favorite SF album, although I can’t remember his exact words so I won’t misquote him.  This has the sound of the “album about being a band” that many bands tend to do at one point , with the first 3 song titles being direct music references: All My Friends Who Play Guitar, Can You Play Drums & When I Learn to Sing.  The later songs also seemed to deal with the concept of getting old and making music, and in that sense the album had more unity as a whole than most of the previous ones.  I think it’s their best “background” album, as the songs here run together more than any of the other albums, and they also maintain a regular sort of vibe (in the sense that they flow together easily and don’t have a lot of tempo/volume differences between them) that hadn’t been heard since the first three albums.

The sound of this album is a little out of place in context with the rest of the albums to date, which seem to me chart a course of gradual acclimation to indie pop-rock sensibilities and more standardized song shape.   I’m not saying there is anything “standard” about Starflyer – they/he are still very good at what they do.  This album is perhaps, a little step backwards (in the progression sense, not at all in a negative way) from Everybody Makes Mistakes, towards a sound and vibe something in between the “new” style songs of The Fashion Focus (I Drive A Lot, Sundown, etc.) and Americana.  That being said, you can still here pieces some newer stuff from Everybody Makes mistakes too.

All in all, I definitely like this album, but it does fall near the bottom of the ranking pile, simply because if there is to be a ranking, something must trickle to the bottom.  While this album is great, and would be a killer album for any other band, it is not one of Starflyer’s best.  It reminds me of life in LA (even though I didn’t move there until 2002 or 2003), probably because of the drives we would take in the desert, and the album cover which happens to be – a desert shot.  My brain works predictably like that.

Can’t Stop Eating EP, 2002.

A great EP, but it doesn’t punctuate any specific points in memory.  It has the distinction of having the first “cover” on an actual Starflyer disc (there was one on the Greatest Hits disc) – West Coast Friendship was originally done by Bon Voyage.  Buutttttt Bon Voyage happens to be Jason’s band with his wife, so he probably wrote the song anyway and it isn’t specifically a cover.  But technically it still is, as it turned up on the Bon Voyage album first.   To me it has the sensesound of Leave Here a Stranger + Americana.  Since I said Leave Here a Stranger was a bit like Americana as well…this is a small step further in that direction,  into a more noticeably “starflyer-y” Starflyer.

Live at the Paradox EP, 2002.

Stands out in memory because we (Jen & I) picked it up at the first Starflyer show I’d made it to in a long time – at the Peter (on Henry, I forget) Fonda theatre in LA.

Old, 2003.

I picked this up at the same show – which happened to be the Old “release party”.  It was an awesome show, they played with Pedro the Lion and some cheesy band I’ve long since forgotten.  Old was the first “great” album (IMHO), since Fashion Focus  (and hopefully not the last, my jury is still out on the greatness of Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice).  This is the album Jen and I blasted while cruising the dead empty streets of Phoenix, AZ on a warm summer night.  We drove for an hour or two up and down the long stretches of suburban desert sprawl – it was incredibly mellowing and we still look back on those memories happily.  The sound is somewhat predictable, just in the sense that it is another step in the progression I’ve been mentioning – mixing the best parts of the past and improving on others.  It’s noticeably like Everybody Makes Mistakes, but you can also hear pieces of the new sounds brought in (and then left dormant for 2 albums) with The Fashion Focus.

It’s great, solid album that manages quite well to merge Jason’s shoegazer sensibilities of the past with his burgeoning  pop influences.  It also directly (in the sense that the lyrics were easily audible) addressed many factors of getting old: marriage, age, lack of acknowledgement of his 10 years of musical accomplishments.

I am the Portuguese Blues, 2004.

This is an odd goose.  I didn’t like it at all (well, at all for Starflyer, which means I still thought it was brilliant, just not up to par) when I first heard it, but it has grown on me.  I think I heard a rumor somewhere about the songs being left over from the Gold sessions…and it a sense some of them sound like Gold on crack, or perhaps Gold + Old.  Ahh, ok I googled it, it was supposed to be released btw. Americana & The Fashion Focus.  That makes more sense.  It shares a similar sound to Americana & Gold, but the songs in general are played at a much faster pace than previous SF work.  There are more sort of “blah” songs here without something to make them really special and a step above the standard that I sort of mentally zone out on – in that sense it is like Leave Here a Stranger.   I haven’t even listened to it enough to have the songs on this album memorized!  It just never stuck with me, I go back and listen to it every so often to try and figure out why I didn’t/don’t like it, and it just never sticks.

Of particular note is the return to form of a solid color for the album cover.  Considering the dating of the material, it makes sense, but I’m very surprised he chose a color so similar to Silver’s.  They look the same to me, although I guess maybe this one is bluer?  I would have thought a slightly more periwinkly blue would have been good.  (Yes, I know what color periwinkle is!).

Never Play Covers, 2004.

A recording of a live show that I picked up in 2005 at a show on the Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice tour.  Primarily songs from Portuguese Blues (and they do sound good live), with splashes from Old, Fashion, & Mistakes.

Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice, 2005.

Andy happened to have an advance copy of this he gave to me, because I’m probably the biggest  SF fan he knows…that or just because he thinks I’m cool (shhhh don’t tell him!).  I did indeed buy a second copy though as soon as it came out so I could have all the decorations and such J.  A nice solid album that doesn’t stray too far from the Old formula of mixing the past and present, but the guitars seem to take more from the simplicity and cleanness of Stranger than the fuzz of Old.  We (Jen & I) saw them on the tour for this album at a tiny coffee house run by some church in Vancouver, WA.  I think there are some pictures  & show commentary in an old blog entry.  A great show and a great album – the audience was small enough that we got to say a few words to Jason again after the show (the LA show was too big for this I think).  Music critics like to be stupid (and jealous that they can’t make music themselves) and say things like “follows same formula as previous album” is a bad thing.  Well, if the previous album was fucking brilliant, and this one is too – how is that a bad thing.  Silly critics, thoughts are for thinkers!  I don’t think it’s quite as strong as Old, but it’s a good one.  This is the “Portland Starflyer album” to me – the first album to come out since our move here AND we saw them on that tour, so this album is about Portland, and growing up and getting along, to me.

And with that we’ve come full circle (13 years) to the current album:

My Island, 2006.

I’ve only listened to it once, so no solid opinions yet.  So far I’m feeling energy & guitar chops from Portuguese blunted (in a good way!) by the pop from Talking Voice.  I’m thinking it will be about on par with Talking Voice, I’m not getting the same kind of warm fuzzy I got from Old & Fashion Focus, etc.  The song Pearl of Great Price may have fallen into the trap of trying to wrap a song around an awkward phrase…  The video for I Win is um…kinda meh.  The kid playing the singer needs lots of lip syncing practice if he’s ever going to make it in a Milli Vanilli World.

[UPDATE:

It never grew on me, nor did the follow-up album "Dial M" (or something like that) - sadly I think that I or SF59 have outgrown the other.   Dial M will be my last "buy on sight" SF album *sniffle*.  I think the sound has gotten a bit too "light" for me, among other things.  I miss the fuzz and the mess of the early discs, and the lazy driving comfort of the middle discs.  The more recent ones seem to have a bit too much... syrup or honey or something for me.  It's hard for me to put my finger on it, but something is definitely not meeting my standards.

I'm frustrated by the growing apart thing, but hey - he put out two handfuls of albums that I really enjoy to this day, so... there is that.  Maybe someday our paths will cross again.

/UPDATE]

Favorite to least favorite albums:

1. Fashion Focus
2. Old
3. Gold
4. Silver
5. Americana
6. 3 way tie: Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice vs. Leave Here a Stranger vs. Everybody Makes Mistakes
7. My Island
8. Portuguese Blues
9. stuff after “My Island”

Related posts:

1. things I’ve listened to lately
2. Album Review: Gaslight Anthem – The ‘59 Sound

1. I Can’t Be With You - Cranberries – This one should be in the last list, as it reminds me of my whole Cuesta period, what I can remember of it anyway.   I was still struggling, trying to stick with the religion thing, I was depressed because I had put off “real” college to stay back with my friends (stupidly), then many of them left, or changed, or whatever.  Another in the long line of idiotic decisions I’ve made regarding my education for completely the wrong reasons…  I had several opportunities to make new friends, and I pursued a few of them, but not enough.  I also passed up some good chances to reconnect with old friends too.  I spent most of this time being dumb.
2. Sidekick – Rancid – This one reminds me of living out on …shit, whatever street I lived on with Kailen, Devo & the rest.  Tim & I used to play together, and I *think* this was one of the songs we jammed on.  Plus, it says “Tim” in the lyrics, so it always reminds me of him.
3. Heartspark Dollarsign – Everclear -Ahh, Everclear.  Man do you suck ass now.  But back in the day they put out two solid rock albums.  And this little gem was on one of them.  This, I think, was one of the first songs Jen & I bonded on.  If we ever had “a song”, this would probably be it.  Some of the reasons should be obvious.   O.O
4. I Drive a lot – Starflyer 59 – The listlessness of post-college graduation, trying (and failing) to find a job in Santa Barbara.  This came out a few years before this period, but this is where the memory deposits me when this song kicks in.
5. Anodyne – Uncle Tupelo -This one reminds me of working at Borders in Santa Barbara. I met some good people there, two of which I’m still in contact with from time to time.  Thanks to one of them (Wayne), I found out about all kinds of new music.  I’m not sure if Uncle Tupelo came out of that, or just from me finally backtracking from Wilco, but I know I bought the CD there with my employee discount :).
6. Baby, I Know what you’re thinking – The Mendoza Line – Another song Jen & I bonded on together.  No idea where we heard this – I think it was ..shit I really have no idea.  But we heard it, then tracked down the band, and consumed.  It reminds me of our first place in LA – pretty sure we were in the living room when we heard it.  So – the radio maybe?  NPR?
7. Underneath - Starflyer 59 – Driving on the empty streets of Phoenix on a warm night.  Jen and I drove out there from LA once…and at night we just drove forever, probably in circles, on these wide open empty streets.  They were laid out in such a nice grid it was nigh impossible to get lost.  The air was wonderful.
8. Staring at the Sun – TV on the Radio – Our second place in LA, the one in Hollywoodish.  I think I heard about them on NPR or something, then a Rolling Stone comment reminded me, so I walked up to Amoeba and picked up the album.  Hearing it reminds me of listening to the album in that tiny little place, and of some of the better times we had in LA in general.
9. Mission Viejo – The Crush – In trying to find something that has hit me since Portland…this is what I get, and I’m not even sure why.  It just reminds me of life here.  I heard this, a cover of a Lifter Puller song that I still don’t think I’ve found the original version of, while trying to hear Lifter Puller after discovering The Hold Steady.  I thought this cover was sick, and indeed it is, and grabbed the entire album, which is also awesome.

Edit, forgot to link to the first part.  HERE.

Related posts:

1. songs that “mean something” to me
2. Two Songs for the Day

So there was the fiasco with Red Hulk (let’s call him “BullshitHulk” for short) doing some sort of idiotic shit with gravity in order to “hold” Thor’s hammer.  That was dumb.

Then evil murdering Magneto in Ultimate land can somehow just stroll around holding it?

OK, maybe his hammer is just a toy/false hammer/something over there in Ultimate land… but it’s still annoying.

Resurrecting Steve Rogers/Captain America really annoys me.

Marvel stuck its balls out there with killing him – and at least did it better than DC did with Superman or Batman, but now it looks like they are undoing everything like a bunch of pansies.  The leaste they could have done was use the Truth version “original cap” instead of Steve. Sigh.  Whatever.

The Batman death was horribly executed.

Seriously.  How unclear was that?  A “fake” death in the main series that led to a death in the crossover series that happened in the wrong sequence?  Or some junk?  I don’t remember really.  Revealing ALREADY that Bruce is still alive is really dumb.  I mean, we know DC has even less balls than Marvel when it comes to these things, and Bruce WILL be back – but don’t show us that already!

Cosmic comics in the big two are having a mini-golden age

Marvel AND DC are both putting out some killer “cosmic” books these days.  The whole Annihilation cycle at Marvel was awesome, almost every issue buy-worthy (I waited for the trades), and DC didn’t isn’t doing too shabby lately either with the current Green Lantern & Corps & Co. incarnations – The Sinestro War was excellent, as was almost everything between then and now leading up to Blackest Night.

Sure, I think Hal Jordan is tired and played out as a character, should have stayed dead, and John & Kyle should still be the main GL, but that’s probably just because I’m a later generation of GL reader.  “Legacies” were the one thing I really valued in DC over Marvel, then they went and shat on both their functional legacies (GL & Flash, both resurrected) while Marvel showed some big balls in creating a legacy character out of Captain America (and potentially Black Panther, but I don’t think that will last).  So yeah, ignoring that I don’t like Hal Jordan as a character, Geoff Johns & co are turnning in stellar (no pun intended) work over there – if I had cash flowing like water I’d actually buy this stuff – and I did buy the Sinestro War finale…probably the only DC book I’ve bought in ages.  Some people are turned off by the whole “Rainbow Corps” thing, but I love it – it’s “wide-screen space opera” at it’s best.

Back over on the Marvel front the new Guardians of the Galaxy book is awesome  – it’s only had 1 slow issue out of 12 so far, and the new Nova book is very good as well.  Not to mention War of Kings – THAT SHIT is looking awesome so far.  The Darkhawk branch seems a little weak thus far, but I suspect that’s because it’s from a different writer.

One thing both cosmic universes have in common is that they’ve both got a heavy guiding hand in the way of being driven by one creative team – Geoff Johns @ DC & Abnett & Lanning for Marvel.  The internal consistency and continuity generated by having a whole line orchestrated by a single point of contact is really beautiful in the way that just sharing an editor isn’t.

I just re-read the entire Grant Morrison X-Men run this weekend.

And it still stands up quite well.  In hindsight, the only thing that bugs me about it was the poor characterization of Magneto.  It’s not entirely his fault though, as he was just following up on a few years of shitty mcshitty Magneto writing.  Honestly, I think Mags shined best under Claremont – he was a real character that you could empathize with and still think was wrong.  I’m not sure if I’ve seen a post-Claremont Magneto story that I actually liked.  Some, like the Joseph clone thing, were *decent* but not good/excellent.  Morrison’s writing was topnotch, and I can buy him being Xorn in disguise – sure sure, except the issue from Xorn’s perspective where he’s hanging out with the Chinese dude – that issue makes me think he just pulled the Magneto thing out of his ass near the end.

One thing he definitely did right was Emma & Emma/Scott.  Which brings me to my final point.

I’m afraid all this Dark X-Men/Osborn bullshit is going make Emma obnoxious and useless and uninteresting again.

Just a hunch, we’ll see.  I like her and Scott together, breaking them up and injecting all this unecessary drama annoys me.

Related posts:

1. random thoughts on recent books
2. Ultimatum 3

Wait, I should take that back, Tara and Lafayette are actually not inbred morons.  For the most part.  The do do some pretty stupid shit though.

First off – what the hell is the deal with vampire blood/V not having a consistent effect?

• Sookie drinks it from the vein and it magically heals her
• Jason has a vial of it (much less than Sookie) then has to get his dick drained.  Quite the opposite of healing.
• People have small tabs of it, and get awesome happy trippy highs.  Nevermind that Sookie MUST have ingested oh at least 100 drops when that vampire died in her face (and in the book, this was evidently a plot point) and nothing happened to her. How  convenient.

I guess the easy answer is that it’s different when its “straight from the vein” of a vamp, that’s why it healed Sookie.

No, wait, Jason and dead crazy bitch had some basically straight from the vein of poor Newsradio dude.  Who totally did not deserve that bullshit.

Alright then.  Still waiting on that one.

So back to the characters:

Jason: Duh. Everything he does is stupid.  For those of you who have known people this stupid – are any of them still alive? Sure fine, he’s the stupid character – but it’s passed the boundaries of suspension of disbelief.

Sookie: She somehow assumes that vampires are just like people, and operate under the same morals, because why?  She’s the postergirl for every petulant dumb girl you’ve ever met.  Standard soap opera fare: she drives her vamp boyfriend away, then accepts him again when he risks his life for her TALKING OVER HIM as he tries to tell her either a) that he just killed some innocent person to rejuvenate himself or b) that he had to kill/turn/make that stupid biblepire bitch.  You never know which with the show’s writers because they go out of their way to make phrases ambiguous and string the reader along.  She gets mad at people for really stupid shit too – Sam did tell her she could read his mind – so technically he wasn’t hiding the shapeshifting thing.

Tangent: Her powers are an idiotic plot device – the only occur at random points in the story. When it’s useful for the writers to use I guess.  I have to wonder if this was done better in the book.  They go to all this trouble building up how hard it is for her to block out people’s thoughts and then, huh?  Needs to be used better.

Sam: He’s that lovable nice guy everyone has for a friend, except that he’s in love with your girlfriend and is cool hitting on the moment you have a fight.  In a word, he’s a douche.  Still, he seemed to be a somewhat honest douche (keeping magical natures a secret is ok, mostly) – until that last episode when they start framing it like he’s a thief.  HRUMM.  Oh, and he’s in life-long love with Sookie but in “really strong like” with Tara? DOUCHE.  And he doesn’t tell Tara whatever is going on. Dooo-shay.

Tara: Speaking of Tara.  She’s possibly the best of the bunch.  She only does one really stupid thing – she buys into the exorcism stuff (although honestly, in that world there’s no reason why an exorcism wouldn’t work – so even that it somewhat forgivable).  They play her as a smart, well-read girl, but then all of a sudden she’s too dumb to know how faith-healing works?  KAY.  Other than that, the rest I can forgive.  Her protectiveness/bitchiness makes sense, the drunken night makes sense – although tramping around in that dress…dunno bout that.  Oh wait, she doesn’t catch on to the “too good to be true” thing at the end, that’s kinda dumb too.  Especially when dude takes her phone/erases her messages – kay?

Lafayette: I really didn’t like the whole drug dealer aspect of his character (for some reason the prostitution and home-made porn were more tolerable – maybe because they don’t “hurt anyone”….?).  It probably would have been fine, except that he pushed what he knew was an addictive and dangerous drug onto a “friend” (?). He knew Jason was a fucking idiot – how could he not?  Yet he still gave him a huge dosage of something (how could he not know Jason would misuse it?) – not to mention that he suggested it to him in the first place.  That was his moment of huge stupidity – getting Jason involved.  He’s also played as a smart guy – then he WOULD KNOW that Jason would fuck everything up.

Vampire dude: I forgot his name.  The writers go out of their way to frame his “evilness” (killing and turning the girl – then making her so obnoxious that you want her dead again) as something so out of his control that he’s still a nice guy but still, he doesn’t have the balls to stand up to them.  Aren’t there other vampires who want to “mainstream”?  Some of them must be high up in the ranks – make some friends bitch.  Think ahead of the game.  Also, in the bar, he could have just thrown the guy away he didn’t have to stake him.  Seriously.  The way they shot it anyway. /shrug.  Oh, and he starts attacking Sam when Sookie is making out with him when she’s obviously cool with it… knowings she’s a petulant child, he really should have known better.  Other random point – he fed on the guy that molested her: wouldn’t that mean her molester is “in” him?  Ewwww.

There’s more but I’m tired and just wanted to get started before I forget entirely.

All the characters are “bigger than life” in the sense that they all dumber than the average high school graduate/college dropout.  That seems unlikely.  Or maybe not – hey southerners, are ya’ll that dumb??

Didn’t think so.

I was also annoyed that the “answers” to the murder just kind of fell at their feet – he finally got to Sookie on his list, and we, the audience, got to partake in some cheesy 80s slasher flic for a bit – except that the non-virgin got away.  Wee.   Sure, it makes sense, but something just felt off about it.

Related posts:

1. Heroes : Trust and Blood
2. random thoughts on recent books

Note that I’m not saying it’s anything other than voluminous crap – but one can hope.

Then I spent a week or so re-reading the whole thing, attempting to clean-up and re-unify the beginning, cutting out the prologue (because I wouldn’t want to send that as a “1st 5 pages” type thing…whatever it is you submit – I don’t think it’s gripping in any way, so I just cut it.  Maybe it would have some use as the inside-jacket thing on in a hardcover printing :) heh), trying to catch as many typos & grammar-ish things as I could.  I’ve got it 75% printed and ready for my dear 1st reader.  I cut it down to 99.4k – I really wanted it to be under 80k – funny huh?  No way I could cut that much.  Or is there… ?  Still, 100k is not that long anymore… maybe it’s just about right.

I’m not really sure what to do now.  Start writing something else I guess? I think I have an idea for another series, which I figure I should start before this sequel – because if I finish a sequel, then I’ve still only got 1 book to sell – can’t sell #2 without selling #1.  But I think I should keep in the habit.  It was pretty draining though, basically writing every free second I had.  Maybe I will take a break.  I suppose it’s like riding a bike.

It better be.

Related posts:

1. writing update – the end is in sight!
2. book review: Kundalini, and thoughts on writing

I actually wasn’t expecting that. It makes sense – no one really cares about her anymore I suppose.  But still. Well played.  Poor Gladiator.

What else?
Oh, Batman & Robin has lots of potential, in that wild Morrison & Quitely way.  I suspect it will be a great ride, and then collapse into itself when they move onto another project.  Just a guess really – who can carry on a post-Morrison run?  The choice always seems to be regression, retcon or ignorance.

I can’t stand Hal Jordan as a “character”, but dammit if Johns isn’t turning out the best books I’ve seen DC put out – Sinestro War was excellent, and the Blackest Night business COULD be decent.  Except they decided to make a fucking yearly event out of it SO I expect it to suck in that regard.

Captain Britain & MI13 was cancelled – shame if there ever was one.  More than any other book Marvel has cancelled in the last few years, this one has real quality, guts, etc.   There are better books running (X-Factor, the Abnett & Lanning stuff), but none that I can recall being cancelled.  And certaily drek of  lower quality still continuing.

I’m still tempted to pick up the New Mutants series, and the Claremont X-Men Forever potential fiasco but man, money you know.  Maybe if they’d cancel half the x-books I’d buy the rest.  Wolverine certainly has enough titles – Wolverine (Daken),  Origins, Weapon X, New Avengers, Dark Avegers (Daken), X-Force (& girl wolvy), Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, First Class, the new X-Men First Class series…um, did I forget any ongoings?  That’s not even counting all the idiotic guest appearances and limiteds.  Of those titles…I only buy 3 so yeah, even that is too much Wolverine sometimes.

Looks like they may be bringing Steve Rogers back already – boo hiss to that if it’s true.

Huge boo hiss to bringing the other Flash back.

Conner Kent was missed, but the manner in which he and Kid Flash “returned” was like  “WTF?  You couldn’t just have Superboy Punch that shit back?”

Let’s see… what else.

The Greg Land cover for the Cap/Mi13 annual is fuckhideous, as usual. It’s not really worth linking too, you’ve seen that face in every single book he’s ever worked on. I suspect that must be his masturbation muse, because it’s really entirely too much, even for a tracer.

Umm.

Stuff. Yeah, let’s call it there for now.

Related posts:

1. Wolverine: Manifest Destiny
2. Wolverine Origins 33 – Are they really going to “kill” Wolverine?