What I'm Doing

Listening - Lorde



Lorde, born Ella Yellich O'Connor, is a 17 year old girl from New Zealand who is making waves in the pop music world. Although she has built a reputation pretty fast for making snide comments about Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus (but really, who could take those girls seriously anyway?), no one can deny she has a great voice and excellent writing skills. Her breakout hit Royals is one of my favorite songs at the moment. I tried listening to her other songs, and this one I've posted, Buzzcut Season, is really nice. This is the kind of song I can just play and chill out.

Reading - Captain America

Everyone knows or has a general idea of who Captain America is, and how he stands for truth, justice and the American way. But what happens if you take him out of his comfort zone and put him in a world he doesn't recognize? That's what writer Rick Remender does in this reboot of the Captain America comicbook.

For this story, Remender puts Cap in another dimension, courtesy of his arch nemesis Arnim Zola. Cap not only has to survive there with no means of getting back home, but also look after and raise a young boy he saved from Zola.

Remender has a reputation for putting his main characters in really dire situations, so this will be interesting, to say the least. I'm not excited however about John Romita's art, even though the guy's pretty well known as an artist (I'm just not a fan I guess), but I think this story arc will be worth reading, even though I'm only two issues in so far.

Watching - The Following

Retired FBI agent Ryan Hardy is called in to help recapture serial killer Joe Carroll, whom he had put behind bars nine years ago. Carroll was a university lecturer who is in love with death and considers Edgar Allan Poe his hero. Carroll had killed 14 women before Hardy finally caught him. But now that Carroll has escaped, Hardy and the feds have a new problem.

See, Carroll has built a cult during his incarceration. He has his own set of fans, made up of people from all walks of life, who are similarly fascinated by death and killing people. People who had visited him in prison. People who are willing to do his bidding when he says so. And because they're an assortment of people, they're tough to differentiate, and worse, some of them are skilled people who can infiltrate law enforcement, hack computers and are military trained too.

So now Hardy has his hands full trying to catch Carroll while saving as many victims as he can, but the bodies keep piling up, and it seems Carroll has a large number of people in place to help him stay one step ahead every time. To make things more complicated, Carroll's ex-wife Claire was romantically involved with Hardy, and she's desperate to get back her young son from Carroll, who had him kidnapped, thanks to the follower he had planted as the babysitter.

The show's first episode was excellent, as it threw many twists and turns, and by the end of it, I wanted to see where these guys could take it. However, as the show ran along, I noticed the main flaws of the series. Firstly, in their attempt to keep things unpredictable, they constantly reveal people who are not who they say they are initially. It happened so often that pretty much every other person that is introduced to the show is a cult follower, and it got more and more ridiculous as it went along. Secondly, the feds are more often than not, portrayed as incompetent, because they always let the bad guys slip away from them, or they're unable to sense that the person they're dealing with is a Carroll follower.

Apparently writer Kevin Williamson wrote Ryan Hardy based on Jack Bauer from 24, and I can certainly see the similarities between the two shows. Hardy is someone who takes a lot of emotional punishment for his failures, and is a broken man at the start of the show. At the very least, his character is well written as I keep rooting for him, wanting him to get some small victory in each episode.

Despite the flaws, I'm invested in this series, and I'm waiting to see the last three episodes this week just to see how it ends. A new season is on the horizon, so lets hope things pick up then.

Comics

Out of all the things I love in life, there are two that I've been a part of for more than a decade or two. Watching movies is one. Reading comicbooks is the other.

I got my first taste of comics when my nephew (who is oddly enough a year older than me) introduced me to the X-Men when I was in my early teens. He was into it because of the artwork by the great Jim Lee. But for me, I became a fan of comics from that point on, and it's been over twenty years since then.

Most folks who enjoy reading prefer books, like novels and the like. But for me, comics are far more fascinating. Unlike a novel, where the story usually ends on the last page, a comic keeps the story going to the next issue, and the next, and so forth until that story arc ends, then it makes a new one, which means a new situation to put its heroes in. And best of all, it has the art for the reader to admire.

Comics are at its level best when both the story and art are perfect and they compliment each other well. It's rare for that to happen at times, as one element may be much stronger than the other. Even so, the comic can still be enjoyable, as long as it has decent quality overall.

Over the years, I've read so many titles, from X-Men to The Avengers, from Iron Man to Spider-Man, from Superman to Batman, from Wolverine to Daredevil, from the Justice League to the Fantastic Four and the list goes on. Some stories stick with you, some just pass you by and forgotten. I must admit there have been more forgettable ones than memorable ones, but rarely has there been a time when I totally hated the stuff I was reading. More often than not, each title has a redeeming quality of sorts (except the one featuring Wolverine's son, which was a bore).

Some of my favourite stories are still somewhat fresh in my mind, like the story where Dr Doom almost beat the Fantastic Four because he used sorcery and not science to outwit Reed Richards, or the X-Men ceasing to exist after Professor Xavier's son went back in time and accidentally killing him, or Daredevil dealing with the revelation of his secret identity to the public, or Captain America assassinated, or the what if scenario where the villains won and only Wolverine is left alive. So many stories stand out over the years, a part of me wishes I had the time to read those stories again.

But now, I'm facing a problem. I've been taking in too many books as of late. Space has now become an issue, so I'm working on selling some comics that I can do without. I'm not overly concerned with how much I can get for them (theoretically comics appreciate in value over time), I just want to let them go to make way for new ones. And there are tons of new ones.

The other problem is the fact that comics are a dying business, in Malaysia anyway. While the US and other western countries thrive on the comic business, especially with so many superhero films coming out lately, comic book shops here have been struggling. We still have many readers, it's just that some of them have not been collecting their orders, it seems. I still wonder why that is. If this keeps up, people like me may have to read collected trade paperbacks (compilation of issues) to keep up. And as organised as that sounds, it's just not the same as holding one thin comic book in your hands, reading it, getting to the end and eagerly waiting to buy the next one when it comes out.

I don't know if I'll ever stop reading these things. Sometimes I feel a burden just having them around me in my room. But there's a part of me that still loves and craves for them. Maybe someday. But not yet.

Pet peeves

1. Smokers (especially those who smoke in the morning and in public toilets)
2. People who text while driving (yes, there are people who still do these moronic things)
3. People who turn on their cellphones in the cinema, be it for speaking, texting or playing games like Candy Crush
4. People who bring kids below 10 into public areas like cinemas or restaurants
5. People who constantly interrupt you when you're talking
6. People who have an urge to say EVERYTHING on their minds
7. People who yell at you for petty reasons
8. Stupid drivers on the road (like those who signal left or right but then decide not to turn)
9. People who think they know what you're going to say and try to preemptively move against that, but they're totally wrong
10. When my computer loads too slow
11. When my cable TV company screens the best movies in the wee hours of the morning
12. When my neighbours upstairs dump gallons of water off the balcony instead of down the drain (seriously, they are beyond retarded)
13. People who constantly post photos on Facebook, like every freaking day
14. People who won't pick up their phones when you call them, and they know it's important that they do
15. People who make plans that involve you without consulting you first
16. People who aren't punctual
17. Movie directors who make spoof films like Scary Movie, Date Movie, Vampires Suck, Meet The Spartans etc, and continue to do so
18. People who procrastinate
19. Men who beat their wives (I'm including this because there have been many cases of women being abused by their husbands here lately)
20. Finally, rich people who have the dough to buy expensive apartments but whine and complain about paying petty late interests (I know this because I work in a condo's management office)


I'll focus my next post on stuff I love. Hopefully.

There Goes My Baby

Marion Raven turns 29 today. Many happy returns of the day.

Today is also the day she's getting married, so congratulations are in order.

It feels like only yesterday when I first discovered her and Marit, only yesterday when I met her in person and shook her hand, only yesterday when I heard her perform live. Time really flies.