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Post by The Captain on May 7, 2022 18:49:12 GMT -5
The last time I saw George Perez in person was at a Pittsburgh Comicon a number of years ago. It was Sunday afternoon, about an hour before closing, and he finished signing for a guy, then stood up on his table and just started handing out free pre-signed merch to the people standing in his line who could answer trivia questions about books he’d worked on. He was laughing and joking with everyone, clearly having as much fun as everyone else was.
It sucks that as we get older, the artists we loved growing up, who were already older than us, are starting to pass one by one. Perez was a true giant in the industry and will be missed by many, his legacy secured by the amazing art he created over his career.
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Post by The Captain on May 6, 2022 21:24:44 GMT -5
Saw this today with my wife and both daughters, along with one of my younger daughter's friends. So much better than the first Dr. Strange film, which was the same old formulaic MCU origin story we saw with the other heroes introduced. This movie delved into what came before to great success, touching on the first one to Endgame to Wandavision to No Way Home, aided by a really good script and the direction of Sam Raimi, who probably pushed Disney/Marvel to the very edge of their comfort level. This is definitely the darkest the MCU has gone to date, but it made sense for this film and the story they were telling, and much like The Eternals, it's an MCU movie that for the most part doesn't look or feel anything like a MCU movie. As Dizzy D mentions, this is not for the typical MCU audience, especially elementary school-age children; there were three of them in front of us in the theater with their parents, and I could tell about half-way through that the parents were definitely questioning their decision. Definitely going to see it again, possibly on Sunday, just so I can put some more attention onto the details.
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Post by The Captain on May 4, 2022 6:16:53 GMT -5
@mrp, I have absolutely been following the Pens this year. Hockey is my favorite sport among the “Big Four” here in North America (while English football is probably my favorite overall).
This is probably the last ride for the Pens’ core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. They’re all at least 34 years old, and both Malkin and Letang are unrestricted free agents after this season. While the sentimental argument is to keep them together as long as possible, it probably isn’t feasible with the salary cap restraints. Crosby isn’t going anywhere (I will almost guarantee he never wears another teams’ sweater), but I can definitely see Malkin jumping somewhere else to spend a few seasons out of Crosby’s shadow. Letang should be brought back, but he might want to cash in on a final big money contract.
As for the game last night, it should be noted that they had to bring in their THIRD-STRING goalie to finish the game. Tristan Jarry, their starter all season, was injured in mid-April, so Casey DeSmith ascended and NHL journeyman Louie Domingue took the back-up role. Just a gutty performance to stay in the game while Rangers’ goalie, and likely Vezina Award winner, was just freaking incredible, making 79 saves on 83 shots against.
On a related topic, one of my favorite hockey/college memories involved the Pens and Flyers playing a five-OT epic back in 2000. It was a night during finals, and I listened to almost the entire game on the radio while writing a paper on the Battle of Quebec for my US Military History class. The only part of the game I missed was when I went to the nearby Catholic church for their “midnight pancake recharge”, which they did for the students during finals for those of us who found ourselves up extra late. I left around 11:45, got back to my dorm around 12:30, and still had 2 hours of hockey to listen to while I finished my paper.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 30, 2022 6:17:37 GMT -5
Apropos of nothing, I've always wanted to visit Biloxi. It would be one of the stops on my gulf coast road trip one of these days. Starting in New Orleans, then heading east through Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile and finally winding my way to Tallahassee, Florida. When my parents got married in Memphis, TN, my father was still finishing his degree at the University of Tennessee. They didn’t have time to take an actual honeymoon, so they spent an extended weekend in Biloxi to start their married life together.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 28, 2022 9:33:44 GMT -5
They managed to turn the comic with the name of my favorite character on it (Iron Man) a book with an ensemble cast with Tony Stark showing up for no more than a page or two. Cantwell can't be done with the book soon enough! Yeah, the current IM book was atrocious. I think I made it to issue #7 or 8 before giving up on it. One of the rare books over my collecting career that I quit mid-storyline, but it was just so painful to try to slog through, and at $4 a pop, it wasn’t anywhere near worth the money.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 24, 2022 16:24:04 GMT -5
Thanks for the tips on these books! I have some money left on an Amazon GC and that second one about the Seals looks fascinating. It’s interesting how disparate the teams that came along in the first expansion were in terms of results. The Blues and Flyers were well-run organizations from the get-go and had success both early on and continuing for years. Los Angeles and Minnesota were middling at best and have remained much the same for their entire existences save for a few seasons. My Penguins were pretty much a trainwreck for their first 20 or so years until finally getting it together in the late 80s, while the Seals were a complete and utter dumpster fire from Day One.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 23, 2022 6:26:20 GMT -5
Thanks Roquefort Raider. Lafleur's dominance in the NHL was a little before my time (I went to my first Penguins game in January 1981), but as I learned more about the game, he obviously stood out as one of the best of all-time. I was listening to our local sports-talk radio guys yesterday afternoon. He knows more about hockey (and pro wrestling, but that is another story for another time) than probably all of the other radio talkers in Pittsburgh put together, and he brought up the piece I put above about the trade of the first-round pick. According to him, the league had nothing to do with it, but that it was actually part of Montreal's strategy in the early expansion era, where they traded players for whom they had no use for the new teams' draft picks in the hopes that they could get lucky if those teams had bad seasons. I checked NHL Trade Tracker, and there is credence to this. In the years after the expansion was announced, they grabbed the following: Minnesota's 1st-rounders in 1970, 1971, and 1972. California's 1st-rounders in 1968, 1970, 1971 (the Lafleur pick), 1972, and 1973, plus their 2nd-rounder in 1973. Los Angeles' 1st-rounders in 1969 and 1972 (turned out to be Steve Shutt), plus their 2nd-rounders in 1970, 1971 (turned out to be Larry Robinson) and 1973. They continued this practice throughout the 1970s as new teams entered the league. I found them making similar deals with Atlanta, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, New York Islanders, and St. Louis. While it wasn't illegal, the NHL should have stepped in and stopped the practice, as the new teams were taking either prospects the Canadiens had zero use for (which should have been a red flag), over-the-hill players, or swapping picks (which would never be at the top of the draft list because of Montreal's success).
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Post by The Captain on Apr 22, 2022 19:30:42 GMT -5
Yes, some posts were deleted as a number of them had been reported by various sources to the Mod Squad and it was felt better to rip up the entire conversation by the root rather than leave any remnants that might sprout further conflict.
There are CCF community rules that need to be adhered to and standards that need to be enforced.
If there are any questions, comments, or concerns about this decision, please feel free to PM any member of the Mod Squad. Do not post them here.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 22, 2022 10:43:59 GMT -5
Hockey legend Guy Lafleur passed away at the age of 70. No cause of death has been given yet.
Lafleur starred for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s and early 80s before retiring in November 1984 at the age of 33. He shocked the hockey world by returning to the NHL in 1988, not with the Canadiens but with a fellow Original 6 team in the New York Rangers. Even more scandalous was when he went to Montreal’s hated rival, the Quebec Nordiques, for his final two seasons before retiring for good following the 1990-1991 season at the age of 39.
He was part of 5 Stanley Cup winners in Montreal, was the first NHL player to score 50 goals in 6 consecutive seasons, and finished his career with 560 goals and 793 assists (regular season), which is still good for 29th on the all-time list (only three active players are within 250 points of him, and none are likely to catch him based on their ages and current production trend).
It is always interesting to consider how NHL history would have been different if the California Golden Seals hadn’t traded the first overall pick in the 1971 draft to Montreal for what amounted to virtually nothing (Ernie Hicke, who put up 70 total points in two seasons with the Golden Seals, and the 10th overall pick in the 1970 draft, a kid named Chris Oddleifson, who was traded to Boston before ever playing a game for California and had a solid yet unspectacular career mostly with Vancouver). Rumors have swirled for years that the NHL pressured California to make the trade with Montreal so that Lafleur, the expected next big French-Canadian star, would stay in Canada and play for the Canadiens rather than go to a struggling expansion franchise in America and on the West Coast. This is highly unlikely to be the case, as the pick that netted Montreal Lafleur was in the following year’s draft and the league would have had no way of knowing that California would finish last, so it makes for a good conspiracy but is almost certainly nothing more than that.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 21, 2022 16:43:06 GMT -5
Today marks the end of an era for our family, as our 16-year old Honda CR-V failed its inspection on multiple items and will be far too expensive to repair to any semblance of quality.
This was the first car my wife and I bought as a married couple, each of us bringing in our own vehicles at the outset. We got this one to replace my wife’s Daewoo (the WORST car I’ve ever seen) because it was too hard to get our daughter’s car seat in and out of the back since it was only a two-door. This car has been with us just six months less than her, and it is the one she has been learning to drive with.
She’s sad about it, as she and her friends were excited to have the car for their adventures, but she knows we can’t justify fixing something that is on the verge of falling apart at any moment. However, she is excited that she will be getting something newer and maybe a little “cuter”, and I’m happy because she’ll be in something safer that just happens to get better gas mileage.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 21, 2022 13:10:27 GMT -5
CAPTAIN AMERICA #0. Written by Tochi Onyebuchi; Collin Kelly; Jackson Lanzing. Art by Mattia De Iulis. This One Shot is the prelude to the two Capt America series starting next month. One starring Steve and the other starring Sam. It was written by the writers doing both series. Arnim Zola launches an attack on New York City and Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers team up to stop him. Sam is back in his Capt America uniform complete with a new shield. Steve is back in his classic uniform with a few updated features (like new gloves) and his classic shield. This issue felt like an Annual. It told a complete story while setting up the two new series: Symbol of Truth for Sam & Sentinel of Liberty for Steve (plus it looks like Bucky will play a role in Steve's series). The last 4 pages showed those two series. I also liked how it showed the respect the two heroes had for each other and how they worked well together. Well Done. I might have to check this out, sounds good. I just read this during a break at work. Agree with the “annual” feel, not that’s it’s a bad thing. It does what it needs to do to bring these two characters back together, show their bond, and get folks excited for the new ongoings. Plus, the artwork is GORGEOUS, which more than makes up for any shortcomings in the story.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 21, 2022 8:18:21 GMT -5
My family uses Netflix a lot. My girls watch (and rewatch) Stranger Things, Avatar, Legend of Korra, and a bunch of other shows, I’ve started watching Supernatural with them (from the beginning, even though I own the first 14 seasons on DVD), and we all watch The Great British Baking Show (because it’s awesome).
Minor price bumps now and then won’t force me from the platform, but I really don’t care about their original content. I enjoyed the first couple of seasons of Sabrina, but the third was pretty dire and I never bothered with the fourth. Moving the Marvel shows to Disney+ means I don’t need Netflix to access that corner of the MCU any longer.
I can’t see myself keeping Netflix after my girls go to college. Just not enough that I want on it, much like Hulu, which I only keep because it’s part of my Disney+ bundle, which I only have so I get access to ESPN+. There is little to nothing on Hulu that I have any interest in.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 16, 2022 5:33:19 GMT -5
You can never go wrong with Jonah Hex. I didn’t know anything about Jonah Hex until about four years ago, other than there was a poorly-received movie. I picked up the first Showcase Presents collection from Half-Price Books, then got the second one from eBay, and I really liked what I was reading (it also didn’t hurt that the pencils looked spectacular with the black-and-white treatment). I started picking up random issues here and there from $1 bins, then around the beginning of 2021, I realized I had almost 3/4 of the series, paying no more than a dollar for any issue. Since then, I’ve had to pay a little more, never anything exorbitant, for some of the remaining books, although the one book I mentioned above is #92, the final issue, and the shop is asking $8 for it, which will be far more than I’ve paid for any of them previously.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 15, 2022 17:08:10 GMT -5
Spring has officially sprung in Western PA. It was 80 degrees yesterday, and today was around 60 with bright sunshine. As a result, I got the grass cut today after letting it dry out from the rain earlier in the week, and my wife got the table and chairs for our deck washed and I carried them up (our deck in on the second floor in the back) and got them set up.
Tomorrow, I’ll head out and get a propane tank refill so I can start grilling dinners for us, and if the forecast holds, I may even get to take my bike down to the local trail on Monday (I have today and Monday off for the Easter holiday) for the first ride of the season.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 15, 2022 16:19:43 GMT -5
Much like @mrp, mine has changed over the years.
In middle school, it was Def Leppard. Out of all of the “hair metal” bands, they always seemed to be a cut above bands like Poison or Motley Crue musically. I saw them in concert once, in 1987, which also happened to be the last concert that my father ever reviewed as the popular music critic for Pittsburgh’s largest newspaper.
In high school, I fell in love with bands like They Might Be Giants and The Dead Milkmen. Saw the former in concert twice, the latter once, but I also came to appreciate bands like INXS (once in concert) during this time.
College years and thereafter brought new sounds like Faith No More (saw them once live) and Nine Inch Nails (the champ for me, three times live, in 1994, 1996 with David Bowie, and 2001). I also dated a girl who turned me onto bands like Oingo Boingo, The Cure, The Smiths (never seen any of these live) and Echo and the Bunnymen (have seen them once, just a few years ago).
In the 2000s until now, I’m much less focused on a specific genre or band and more interested in just plain good music. My Spotify playlists have everything from The Beatles to Kacey Musgraves to The Rolling Stones to Spoon to The Who to Bruce Springsteen to Prince to AC/DC to Toxic Airborne Event to Emmylou Harris to U2 to other artists too numerous to be able to mention all of them, including ALL of the bands I mentioned above (there’s still something about “Hysteria” by Def Leppard that gets me every time I hear it).
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