Quick Comic Book Review

I picked up the latest issue of The Ultimates yesterday, because it featured one of my all-time favorite super teams - The Defenders!

Mark Millar doesn't like super heroes, does he?

So why in the world does he write comic books?

From the "It's a small world" desk:

Darren Barefoot, a Vancouver resident who maintains one of my favorite blogs, wrote an article recently about my grandfather's firm. I don't know Mr. Barefoot and I didn't put him up to it. So this is one of those wierd convergence thingies.

House and Manchild

Last night's episode of House was pretty good. The acting, as always, was superb. The central conflict regarding House and his estranged ex dominated the show and I am ambivalent about its resolution. On the one hand, House's breach of professional ethics was a natural reaction to his own conflicted feelings about his ex and her husband, which is satisfying from a dramatic point of view. On the other hand, no real consequences flowed from his act. As I pointed out before, House must give the hospital counsel fits with his near-constant brushes with unethical behavior. He gets away with stuff because the show teaches us that the ends justify the means when the doctor right. The successful result of his actions in this episode does not deviate from this theme. Although I am always happy to see the hero win, I am sorry that the writers did not take the opportunity to exploit his ambivalence and create new conflict with it. A round or two with his state's Board of Medical Examiners would fill up several episodes next season quite nicely, as it intersects legal thrillers with medical thrillers (both are popular genres) and allows the writers and actors to take the show's theme into a diferent direction and see where it leads.

But all is not lost. We can look forward to seeing more of the ex when she becomes the hospital's general counsel next season. We may see more personal conflict as well as medical/legal conflict. I regret that this will likely take even more time from the other characters (especially the hospital administrator, who showed great potential as a source of more conflict but has been woefully underutilized this season).

As always, I refer you to Polite Dissent for a look at the medicine and science in this episode.

My wife and I also watched a few episodes of Manchild, a British comedy about four middle-aged men indulging in adolescent fantasies (or wishing they could so indulge) using the wealth and experience they have accumulated in 40+ years. On a superficial level, the show resembles a male version of Sex and the City because its cast of people of the same sex undertake sexual adventures with attractive people of the opposite sex and talk endlessly about them. Unlike Sex and the City, these guys are not rewarded for their behavior. Although each character is sympathetic in his own way, they are by-and-large delusional buffoons who are clueless about how ridiculous they look to other people and delusional about their own superiority. Don't get me wrong: the result is quite funny and sometimes thought-provoking. I don't feel that way about Sex and the City - perhaps it is a gender thing.

And the show features Anthony Stewert Head, who played Giles the librarian in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like Hugh Laurie in House, Mr. Head is playing against type and doing very well with it.

It Ain't Half Bad

I enjoyed the last Star Wars movie. The dialogue left a lot to be desired but I knew that going in. A lot of stuff happens in the film. In fact, I question the need for the first two films.

And after watching the scenes on the Wookie planet, I ask: Mr. Lucas, why did you go with the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? Wookies rock!

Dooku in Naboo, Part 2

Here is more food for thought (via Marginal Revolution). Those Jedi are facists!

Dooku Goes To Naboo To Pull The Ears Off A Gundar

On this, the official opening day of the last movie of the Star Wars series, I offer a link to my favorite review.

Enjoy!

Family Ties

My family is lousy with lawyers. They are everywhere, several generations of them spread out over two states. And the paterfamilias of this sprawling legal empire is my grandfather. He came from a dirt poor family in eastern Oklahoma and worked his ass off in order to get through college with an engineering degree and then to law school (marrying my grandmother along the way - a source of some great stories I will tell one day). It wasn't long after he left the Navy that he founded his law firm in 1957.

God help me, but some of my fondest childhood memories are of that firm. Both of my parents worked for my grandfather at one point or another in their legal careers and they worked long days and weekends. On occassion, my sister and I accompanied them to the office on the odd Saturday. And we ran the place, playing with grandpa's dictaphone, using the conference table as a fort, making funny faces on the copy machine. Best of all, the downtown branch of the public library was across the street. Many books lost their lives there in vain attempts to acculturize and educate me.

So it came as something of a surprise to me this weekend that I had never bothered to check out the firm's web presence. After a brief google, I came across the site. It is pretty snazzy. My grandfather is no longer an active partner in the firm but he is of counsel.

"Five hundred years from now, no one will know the difference." - Linus Van Pelt

Indeed

My cousin Dorothy once told me that she wanted the following quote on her tombstone: "She was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." It is a paraphrase of the first line in one of her favorite books: Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche. I think the quote is as good a summary of her life as any I've read. But she was always pretty sharp that way.


I want to say more about my cousin Dorothy. My last post was pretty short and maudlin. I must honest and tell you that I am not even sure Dorothy liked Robert Burns! She didn't go in for sentimental stuff very often. She preferred wit, action and mystery in her literature. But what are you gonna do? I was in no mood to be witty on Saturday.

I didn't really get to know my cousin until I was in my twenties. She had her corner of the family and I lived in mine and we rarely saw each other. I heard stories about her: the fact that she and my grandmother grew up together (lived right next door to each other) and were as different as night and day (which was which? - depends on who you asked). Dorothy was a bohemian and the first womanto be a reporter for a Tulsa newspaper. She met William Faulkner while working at the University of Virginia. She married an engineer and settled into married life. She had two children who are older than I am. That was about it: intriguing but distant.

She lived in Houston for quite a while and mom and I went to visit her one weekend. To my delight and surprise, she proved to be one of the coolest people I had ever met. Her tastes in art, music, books and movies were very similar to mine. She was prone to saying things like "..and that's why I was Communist in the fifties." She knew the proprietors of several excellent bookstores and knew Anne Perry and other authors on a first name basis. She didn't give a damn about what other people thought or did. She loved food. I made it a point to see her whenever I could get away for a few days. I always hated leaving. She encouraged my writing, and never failed to criticise as well as praise. She was awesome.

When she retired from her job at Houston's MD Anderson Medical Center, she moved to Wyoming. Her kids lived in Jackson Hole but, true to her nature, she decided to live in the corner diametrically opposite from Jackson Hole, not because she didn't love her kids - they are pretty cool too - but because she wanted to redefine herself in a new place among new faces. I admired her pluck but I was sad to see her go so far.

She thrived in Wyoming. She found the perfect place in Sheridan, where she became involved in their art/drama/literature scene. She made some interesting friends and settled into a little house with a screened in porch and creaky wooden floors. I paid a week-long visit during my last year in law school and grew to love the place too. I regret that I was unable to visit her more often.

As is often the case when someone close to you dies, I regret many things. I regret not getting to know her earlier. I regret not seeing her more often. I regret the fact that I was unable to publish a book before she died, for she would have loved to brag about that. I regret that my wife didn't get a chance to grow to love and admire her as much as I did.

But I will never regret the time I spent with her and I will always remember what she taught me. I hope someday that I will be half as cool as she was.