These thick ass legs are good for something
It’s been said that fear of failure is a force that puts the brakes on me. In fact, it’s been said by my friend D–, who also serves as my chief fitness advisor. It’s good to have friends. They are encouraging. D– told me that I should try to work in one or two interval workouts per week. He said that research is showing they are really good for athletic development.
Al Gore was right
Last night I watched An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie. I’d been telling people that I didn’t need to watch it. After all, I was already on his side, wasn’t I? I remember the day that Bill Clinton announced that Al Gore would be his running mate. It really freaked me out, because I didn’t think much of Clinton (what was I, like 15?), but I really dug Al Gore.
Common sense
Most truths and most wisdom is counter-intuitive. Most people disagree with me on this, but the older I get the more I find common sense to be wrong and decisions that appear illogical superficially tend to be right. How about that?
Keith Giffen must be an interesting guy
If I get riddled with Alzheimer’s in my late age, I’m willing to bet that I will go to my grave knowing what it means when someone says, “BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!” when I say “That’s why you pay me the big bucks, sir” it’s an homage to L-Ron and I will forever think of Keith Giffen as the guy who thought up the Justice League Antarctica annual that ended with a group of reformed supervillains run off the continent by mutant penguins.
Writing comics is hard but it's interesting to look in your brain this way
So I’ve had this idea for a Silver Surfer / Mad Thinker story for years now. I first had the vestiges of the idea in 2002. Then I’ve also had this idea for a character with a strange power of perception that I don’t think we’ve really seen in comics before. Anyway, I’ve been kicking both of these ideas around so long that they’ve survived the test of an idea I should work with.
Why I may never forgive Captain America
Captain America has abandoned us all. Maybe I shouldn’t take comic book characters so seriously, but this past year Marvel Comics brought me back into the funny books in a big way with the most ambitious crossover event I’ve ever seen, Civil War. There’s a lot that I could complain about over the course of Civil War (the attention to continuity between books that dealt with the same events, the job of making tie-in books actually matter to the fundamental plot, all the anti-climactical red herrings [see Wolverine/Damage Control story arc]), but even if other crossovers have been better executed (see Inferno), this is the most ambitious subject matter I’ve ever seen Marvel or D.
Governor Rendell on morality
In the Governor’s recent budget address he refers to the three-quarters of a million people in the state without insurance as a “moral stain.” Good for him. It’s nice to see a smart, wonky Governor show at least some willingness to talk about morality. It seems like our side seems to feel that morality talk doesn’t win fights or that it somehow debases you to talk about right and wrong (rather than our preferred facts and figures).
Does He Have Politics
As I get deeper and deeper into the world of secretly progressive political operatives here in Pennsylvania, I am starting to get a better understanding of the codes. You know what I mean - the codes we use to talk about each other and to talk about the other folks the people we know meet. If you’re sitting around having beers with a few other campaign types and you mention some other person in the struggle (or peripherally in the struggle) that you like - for whatever reason - there is a question you often get asked.
Larry King, Don't be a jerk to Tyra Banks
AN OPEN LETTER TO LARRY KING: Tonight at the gym I caught a moment of the interview in which Larry King gave Tyra Banks the chance to strike back at the people who’d been calling her fat. I didn’t know anyone said she was fat. Is she? I could care less. All I caught was Larry asking Tyra why she ever wanted to be a model, because posing for pictures all day sounds “booooring” to him.
Sen. Jim Webb fires away
After George Bush’s 45 minute speech last night where it sounded like he was just rattling off some bullet points (was there ever any kind of segue between topics?), Sen. Jim Webb’s speech really knocked me out. I should disclose here that I was more attentive than usual to the speech because a friend of mine just started working for him. That said, I think I would have noticed anyway. The man looked furious.