Walking on the Moon

It’s kind of a shame that glamguns.com is a parody (shhh, don’t tell BoingBoing), but their storefront is still worth a look.

Brenda and I were suffering through a dedication radio show at a restaurant last night.  You know the kind – some earnest young disk jockey listens to someone pour out their heart and end up dedicating some sappy song to the person who dumped them, or has taken them back or whatever.  Roughly 70% of all these dedications are for “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb.  I think I can fix the genre, though.

My idea is to leave the sappy stories and the dedication goal in place, but let the DJ pick the song.  So some blinded-by-love fool who thinks he’s telling a “Reunited” story can get the “Norwegian Wood” (or, for you Pat McCurdy fans, “Imagine A Picture”) that he really needs.  And the joy of sending out a “Jail Bait” or “House Rent Blues” to someone who needs to hear them but didn’t know it would delight me.

I think it would be much more effective than Dr. Phil and more entertaining than Casey Kasem.  But I’m a “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” kind of guy.

Yes, I think this is funny. I thought this was, too, but the Lincoln thing just kills me.

Vatsim is one of the coolest things about flight simulators.  Let Chris De Young explain it to you on a guest post at Penny Arcade.

Lookie.

When dropped CFI extraordinaire Andy Hoover off at El Monte (EMT) last week, I noticed a restaurant open on the field.  I love an excuse to fly anywhere, so I filed El Monte away.

Now, it’s not far to EMT, so I set out to do some stalls and steep turns before heading into El Monte for lunch.  This had mixed results.  There were Santa Ana conditions today, so it was clear and gorgeous (EMT was reporting 50 miles of visibility), but there was enough turbulence that maneuvering at low power settings was laborious.  I was hoping to do a series of stall recoveries tp work on some finer points.  Conditions were variable enough that such fine-tuning was difficult.  I did do a few stalls and some slow flight to get the feel of doing them in the turbulence and mountain waves, but didn’t get to my tinkering.

Then, off to EMT.  It was bumpy, but fortunately there weren’t a lot of folks out because of it, which was nice.  I flew a wide pattern into EMT, and actually made a nice enough landing.

Annia’s Kitchen is the restaurant on the field, and I was impressed by the  service and the food, even though I don’t think I ordered the best thing on the menu.  I had a chicken sandwich with a chile on it – the Santa Fe melt – and it was really quite good.  Offering either fires or onion rings with the sandwich is a good call.  (The onion rings were crisp and not over-breaded, just right). But from the size and looks of the various breakfast dishes that went by, that was the way to go.  The ham slices on the ham and eggs were enormous and the pancakes thick and tasty looking.  Next time I go I’ll aim for one of those; a ham and pancakes dish would be optimal.

The staff was very pleasant and attentive.  The restaurant has a large patio – a veranda almost – overlooking the runway, and a half-hour watching airplanes while munching onion rings without my iced tea running dry would be worth it even if they didn’t serve any food.  There’s nothing too fancy here, but excellent quality for an airport diner.

Thus fortified, I headed over to Brackett Field to put in a few landings, and then back to SMO.

I have my Spirit number 9 now.  It’s a really impressive piece of storytelling.  Where #10 is a procedural with over-the-top satire, #9 is a tightly written continuity development that’s really scary.  El Morte is one of Cooke/Bone/Stewart’s new villains for their Spirit incarnation, and in this issue he really comes into his won as a villain worthy of Denny’s attention.  Cooke does a great job of telling El Morte’s origin here in a moody way while giving the rest of his cast a chance to shine.  Bone and Stewart’s clean lines sometimes give the book a cartoony look, but they execute this more serious story with clarity and aplomb.

Great issue.

Many comic readers have an unfortunate soft spot for the amazingly bad Super-Hero Hostess Fruit Pie Ads that ran in 70’s and 80’s super hero books.  Wacky trickster Mike Sterling has led me to an enormous collection of them.  Life is good.

This will be a couple weeks’ worth. I’ve been busy…

• Jungle Girl #1 – OK, I’m only human. It was a Frank Cho cover and it promised jungle girls and dinosaurs. And it more or less delivered: it’s full of half-dressed women, dinosaurs, and a land that time forgot. But I’ve seen a lot of lands that time forgot, and this one didn’t grab me as something new. And Frank Cho’s only doing the covers. And I have a full run of his Shanna the She-Devil. I’ll pass on the rest of this. (If you haven’t seen a land that time forgot, you might want to have a look and tell me what you think.)
• Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1 – Again, I have an uncontrollable weakness for the Freedom Fighters. One of the first Justice League issues I read was the Earth-X crossover that restored them to DC continuity, and I’ve always thought they were interesting for fanboy reasons. I picked up an issue or two of the recent mini-series and kind of shrugged it off. I just can’t leave it alone, though. This has the look of an interesting long underwear story and I’ll probably hang on to see how it goes.
• The Flash #232 – Two issues in and this still hasn’t caught fire for me. The art is gorgeous, but static, which clashes with the speed that’s essential to the title. Worse, the plot’s dragging; these aliens seem like the kind of low-power menace that Wally should be able to polish off in an issue, we’re headed for issue three, and these vaguely tasteless critters are still on the scene. C’mon Mark, find the gas.
• Will Eisner’s The Spirit #10 – I seem to have missed 9. Grrr. This is a pretty reasonable heav-handed satire (in the Spirit tradition of heavy handed satire). The story is a little cramped, in that the various suspects and victims all ran together a bit for me, but even glossing over the plot details, I enjoyed the story. Another enjoyable Spirit romp. Where’s my number 9?
• Captain America #30 – Brubaker’s tense narrative is reaching a climax – Bucky in the hands of the Skull (and he kicks around Sin and Crossbones like the second stringers they are)! SHIELD finally catching up with the Skull’s machinations! Drama centered on Cap’s legacy (in more ways than one)! It’s tough to wait the month between issues. This is a great character-based action series.

It doesn’t sound like much of a contest: bird vs 737.  Have a look at some bird strike pictures.