Throwing the shutters wide

Finishing up the George Perez (anybody know how to make the accent mark over the first e there in Perez?) run of Wonder Woman was Destiny Calling, the fourth volume of the trades. This is one that absolutely has to be read in order since so much of the volume continues storylines that were introduced in the first three volumes. As I've read through the run, I've become less and less enamored with Perez's storyline. He's willing to take risks in the traditional panel-panel-panel style of storytelling, particularly in the first issue here, letting a detective (in very dated, comedic clothing) tell the story through his type-written case report, but I find that the experiments are often more of a distraction than a revalation. The continuing capricious attitude of the Greek Gods - in spite of which, Diana continues to be faithful to them - also becomes more and more of a distraction rather than a boon to the series. All in all, this isn't a great finish to Perez's run, and it makes me more and more impressed with Greg Rukka's run on the series, also available in collections.

Okay, so I'm thinking we need a mini series to sell. Let's take a couple of popular anti-heroes, throw them together for a totally random reason, and let them kill a bunch of people. The fanboys'll love Wolverine/Punisher, right?

I dunno, but I didn't.

The plot's thin at best - but I tend to find most of the Punisher plots pretty thin (um, revenge on the whole world of bad guys, blah) - and the artwork's not nearly revelatory enough to carry things. And it all ends up being based on the most cliched of comic book bad guys behind the bad guy plot - Nazis.

And then there's Promethea Book Two from Alan Moore. I'll let a quote from Sequart.com stand for the opening:

Promethea's the kind of book that, every time you think you should drop it, that you can live without it, that it's so abstract that you'd be better off waiting for the next trade, you get to an undeniably brilliant, medium-bending passage in the issue at hand and realize that you'd be a fool not to read a 24-page continuing panel that loops back over itself, or see Hermes stare at the reader, recognizing that he's in a comic book, as soon as you f$@&ing could.

The second volume of Promethea continues the first's storyline of the former incarnations educating the current incarnation in the ways of magic and dreams as they connect to the "real world", and in typical comics fashion, the current incarnation steps up and shows a few hints that she just might be the greatest incarnation yet.

It's more of the same (which is pretty high level, experimental stuff that works) from Alan Moore until the final issue in this trade. And then it becomes revelatory.

Amazing...

Phenomenal...

Promethea consults the two snakes of her caduceus, each of whom tell her a slightly different but - of course - entertwining story about the origin of the universe. The slips back and forth between the two stories, all the time illustrated by anagrams of the title of the series makes a truly ground-breaking experience for a comic book reader.

This issue alone justifies the existence of the series, and I can only just barely wait to read the third volume.

Chew on This popped up on the "new at the library" emails that I get each week from PLCH and sounded interesting, so I gave it a go. Halfway through the very quick read, I commented to Karlen that I thought the book was written for kids because the sentence construction seemed a little on the simple side of things. Turns out I was right.

Eric Schlosser, the author of bestseller Fast Food Nation, has just released a version of the book that is aimed at sixth to eighth graders and co-written with Charles Wilson, a writer for numerous publications including The New York Times. Chew on This is a 258-page book that is subtitled "everything you don't want to know about fast food." Schlosser and Wilson explain, "The only real difference between [Chew on This and Fast Food Nation] is emphasis. For this book, we focused on how the industry affects the lives of young people ... Just about every teen in America has some connection to fast food, for better or worse."

So I was reading Fast Food Nation for kids. Simple enough.

The book is an excellent read, one I'd recommend even for adults who have some curiosity about the subject of how fast food has changed our culture over the past half dozen decades. Schlosser looks at how the job market for teens, the farming industry, city planning, school nutrition, and food ingredients have all changed because of the fast food industry. He makes very simple arguments and backs them all up with meticulously end-noted facts. The last part was one of the most impressive parts of the book to me, the end notes. Probably the last fifty pages of the book consists of a chapter by chapter, fact by fact citation of where Schlosser researched each of the facts in the book. He points out the sources that he used to get holistic pictures for each chapter as well as those that are quoted in the text. This allows readers who have a curiosity to learn more (or who might be assigned a paper to write) to find the full details easily, but it also doesn't clutter the prose with endless citations and footnotes on each page. For a book aimed at the teen market, this is a genius choice.

Schlosser's book should be on the shelves of every middle and high school health classroom and library.

If it's a Wilco project, I'll give it a try, particularly if it's got a cool video like this one. Born Again in the USA is the second album from Loose Fur, a side project of Jeff Tweedy (who really has become Wilco as the only permenent member, it seems). I gave their first a listen in the store a while back and wasn't impressed, but I caught a couple of these tunes on the radio and enjoyed them, so...

There are all sorts of pompous reviews of the album, but I'm gonna just throw out that some of it was fun. It seems more thrown off and light-hearted than a lot of the Wilco tunes of the last couple albums (which I love, but which seemed occasionally to have been labored over). The album is a little disjointed as it bounces back and forth between Tweedy and O'Rourke's songs, but it's a fun listen.

It's my second check out of Private Investigations a combined greatest hits from Dire Straits and their leader, Mark Knopfler. In many cases - Tom Petty comes to mind - it's tough to distinguish a band leader's solo and group efforts. In Knopfler's case, however, the work of the man is a fair bit different from that of the group, and this double disc does a nice job of blending the two similar but distinct threads.

The second disc lags a bit when things turn to Knopfler's movie music, works that subvert his musical stylings in favor of being music that actually fits the movie - a radical concept for many modern artists. The two instrumentals break the flow of the rest of the double disc, but the rest of the music is outstanding enough that the whole is an excellent summation of Dire Straits' years and Mark Knopfler's still-ongoing solo career.

Because I'm mental and forgot to bring any reading material to the time in Great Seal, I ended up picking up Julie & Julia when I got up way earlier than the girl. By the time she rolled out of the tent, I was like seventy pages in and hooked.

Crap.

It's the story of a neurotic, New York, crappy cooking woman who chooses to make her life better by making every recipe in Julia Childs's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I know, it makes ever so much sense. It's a stupid premise for a book, and it's the sort of thing that is probably better suited for a blog, the sort of inanity with a theme that is going to hook people in to reead a few paragraphs every day or two, the sort of thing that could get ya hooked and sucked in to check in every couple of days.

And if the titular Julie wasn't an entertaining writer, it'd be a waste of a book. As it is, she is thoroughly entertaining, and I'm totally sucked in. I'm about halway through now (it's a quick read), and I'll probably finish it up. D*#n that chick lit.

Courtney Cox was just about the only recognizable actor in November, but that didn't stop things from becoming incomprehensible very, very quickly.

By the end of the movie, I had some clue as to what had happened, but it took a whole, whole lot of confusion to get there. I don't know that it was worth the confusion to get to the clarity, but it certainly...well...there wasn't a whole lot fo certaintly in the flick.

The set up is a pretty simple one: Courtney Cox's character isn't sleeping and has headaches because her boyfriend has been shot in a Quicky-Mart when Cox sent him in to get "something chocolatey."

Or maybe he didn't die. Maybe she did. Or maybe he's not dead.

Things start to fall apart when one of Cox's photography students is showing her slides in class and the last slide shows the Quicky Mart at the moment of the shooting, Cox sitting in her car outside. Clearly - well, not so clearly, as I've mentioned - something sinister is afoot. Other things start to slip as well, and then the movie starts over.

Things slip again, and the movie begins again.

And then it ends.

Luckily, I took a return through Zoolander. If ever there's a more mindless reaction to a confused flick like November, then Zoolander is it. It's not a great film, but it's entertaining, and it successfully washed away all the blah.

Currently checked out, Superman: Red Sun, Daredevil: Decalogue, The Magnificant Seven, and some other movie that I can't think of at the moment.

I'll spare you the two graphic novels since they're reviewed somewhere over in ye olde media blog, but you'll get to hear my thoughts on the movies at some future point.

Lucky bastages...