As I have stated in previous posts, I have gotten back into comics. As we all know all too well, when I start getting into something, I go full boar. I have been debating with myself about getting a reserve box at the local comic store (Phoenix comics). The problem is, they want you to select 10 monthly titles to start your box with. Every week when new comics come out, they pull the titles from your list and reserve them for you. I can understand why they want you to have 10 titles thought. This is because it’s not feasible to only pull one or two titles for people. It’s too time consuming. The benefit of course is that by having a box there I get 10% off everything (not just the 10 titles). Now, the question lies in what 10 titles? Obviously I have been reading a lot of Green Lantern and Spiderman, but what else? After conferring with Andrew and even Amy I came down to this list:

1. Green Lantern
2. Green Lantern Corps
3. Amazing Spiderman
4. Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman
5. Marvel Knights Spiderman
6. Batman
7. Infinite Crisis
8. Flash (For Andrew)
9. Green Arrow (For Andrew)
10. Birds Of Prey (For Amy)

Yes, that last one on the list is a comic just for Amy. We have been talking about this for a while now. She knows that I really like comics and such and was trying to find a new way to relate to me. On her own she started looking at some of the different comics (all be it that I steered her towards some I thought she might like) and she decided to try out the Birds of Prey. This one deals with Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, AKA, Oracle, as well as some other famous Gotham women. Suffice it to say, she loved it. She has already read through two of the trade paperbacks for the title and one of the issues.

Andrew decided to contribute to the box with Green Arrow and Flash. He had read a little about GA in some of my Green Lantern books and picked up on him. I know Andrew really likes Archery so it was a natural fit for him. The Flash title kind of came from left field, I guess I will find out more about that as we go along.

So there you have it, I am back in the comic book world! Of course, this comes at a point where one of my favorite characters has the choice to evolve or die and DC comics is apparently pressing the reset button! There will certainly be more to come! (And yes, I did pick up Batman: Hush. It was awesome and one of the main reasons that Batman is on the list! Thanks of the referral Erin!)

This weekend I went into over drive and took everyone with me. The house had gotten to be too much of a mess. It was really dragging me down when I would walk in and just feel down. So Amy and I talked about it and we tore through the place like madness! I even had Andrew doing some deep cleaning. Speaking of Andrew, I have another great store for the Tales of Teenage Years.

Let me set the stage. It’s Friday night. I have to go into work Sat. morning because of a special project. Amy had just bought me (and Andrew) Battlefront II, the new star wars game. We were up pretty late playing like usual. Around 11ish I decide to go to bed because I have to get up early. Not want to take away his fun, I stop by his room and tell him “Don’t stay up too late.”

“Ok dad” come back with shouts of “cover my position” from the pc speakers.

I head to bed and, since I was pretty tired, was out like a light. This is all well and good until my eagle ears hear someone walking to the bathroom at 5am. “No biggie” I think, it’s not like I haven’t had to go sometime in the middle of the night. Wafting in and out of sleep I look up and notice the light on outside my room. “Hmmm its 5:30, did he forget to turn off the light?” I get up and walk out there to find that the dining room light is on, Andrew’s door is wide open, and his light is on. Why? Because he is still playing Battlefront! “What the heck are you doing!” This is where one of his best lines comes in…

He looks at the clock and exclaims “When did it get to 5:30?? Last time I looked it was only 2!”

“2AM IS TOO LATE!” I screamed. At which point he jumped out of his street clothes and into bed hitting the power button on his PC in one fell swoop. It really was impressive. We made a point of waking him up around 9am for cleaning day. He knew it was coming. The whole day he kept trying to convince himself that he wasn’t tired. Needless to say he was out fairly early sat night.

Sunday was an easy going day. We had a great (somewhat late) breakfast cooked by a wonderful woman I know. Andrew and I made our way out to the Game Parlor (local gaming store). He wanted to play Magic the Gathering with some other people. We soon learned that Sunday is not the best day for this. Ah well, we might try again on Friday or Saturday. After that we did a little geocaching. We actually found two of the local caches and it was great to get out of the house and see some of the surrounding area.

I finished off the day playing some WoW of course. I do have to say that I was really proud of myself this weekend and last weekend. I avoided getting sucked into the game and playing all day long. This week looks to be a short week as I am off for Veterans day on Friday! WhooHoo!

So here we are, on November 1st again. It’s getting close to 2 whole years that I have been blogging. Amazing huh, yeah I thought so too. The cool thing about it is that I can look back now and see what I was doing last year and compare it to this year. I should probably step back and go over the whole weekend. Believe me there is certainly a lot to cover.

Friday: When I got home we decided that it was time to carve the pumpkins that we bought. This year we each had our own pumpkins and set out to carve our own designs. Andrew picked a basic jack-o-lantern face, Amy actually drew her own pumpkin face, and I went with (of course) a Green Lantern symbol. At first we were going to do all this outside but it just got too cold. So instead we opted for the kitchen floor. After getting all of our basic designs down I remembered a trick that I had learned a while back. I had seen someone who had carved out a really cool Haunted house. In the back of the pumpkin they carved a few ghosts. When you put the light in, the ghosts would be projected onto the wall behind the pumpkin! So I decided to try this trick on mine. What’s the best comic symbol to be projected? The BAT SIGNAL! Andrew and Amy both liked the idea so they did projections of their own. Amy did some hearts and Andrew tried to do an S for his old baseball team. (He forgot about the reverse projection problem) You can see pictures of all of them in the gallery of course.

Saturday morning: Yes, I will need to separate out Saturday because of all that happened. We woke up very early (well, early for a Saturday) and grabbed all our gear. You see we had a parade to attend! The Annandale Fall Festival parade was going on and the 501st was asked to march in it. Andrew had never seen us do something like this so it was a new experience for him. We were meeting up at Lori’s place at 8ish to coordinate. When we got there, Lori offered to let Andrew mach in the parade dressed in a Spare TIE pilot outfit that she had. Andrew was very excited. We had close to 20 total troopers to march the 1 mile parade route. All along the route we were encouraged to toss out candy to the kids along the street. Lori had this roll around R2D2 which worked great for carrying all the candy, except when it started getting off its wheels. I was at the back so I grabbed R2 and kept going. Andrew had an absolute blast marching along in his Helmet. He sat and talked with some of the other TIE pilots afterwards as well. All in all, a good troop.

After the parade was over we darted home to take care of some other things. We had the annual Patton’s Halloween party that night and needed to prepare. I started making some of my world famous chili, Andrew took a break and played around on the PC, Amy took care of some school things. After I got the chili done, Amy and I curled up on the couch for a much needed cuddle nap. (Told you Saturday mornings are early for me.) After our little nap, we got up and started getting dressed. Amy got a really cute 50’s girl outfit, withy poodle skirt and everything. I got into a 50s Greaser costume, with the leather jacket and the rolled up jeans. And lastly, Andrew was dressed in a Grim reaper costume. To set the mood, on the way down to Fredericksburg we tuned into the XM channel 5 which is all 50s music.

The party was hopping already so we gladly joined in. Marc had set up quite a few things for the party. His house is always very well decorated. We of course had a wide array of costumed folks. Little Red Slaughter-hood came by, as well as HBO’s own Ali G. There were the ever popular Ghetto costumes. Marc got the chance to show off his latest creation, a total home theater in his basement! Andrew loved it, he got to sit down there in total darkness and watch a few movies that he hadn’t seen. The pinnacle of the party came with Marc’s, ever famous, Haunted Woods walk. Last year it really just consisted of a bunch of drunken people wandering lost in the woods trying to scare one another. This year he actually threw some effort into it and had the trail all laid out and decorated! We partied till close to 1am and about that time I was spent. This, of course, meant the hour long drive home. We had debated about staying the night there but decided to just head out instead.

Not too much to remark about for Sunday. Woke up late and tried to find a new comic store. Amy had an errand to run in Manassas so we thought we would find one of the comic stores down there. No luck of course. Apparently some of the smaller stores are just turning belly up! The rest of Sunday was spent recovering. I am not sure why, but I was exhausted all day on Sunday. For a special Halloween treat, Sunday morning we watched Nightmare before Christmas, and to round out the evening we finished with Hellboy. Sunday was an early night.

Halloween!!! Monday was Halloween. Since I normally dress in jeans and a polo for work, and they don’t really let us dress up in costumes, I decided to spice it up a bit and threw on the ol Suit and Tie for Halloween. I don’t know how many people asked if I had an interview lined up. The evening time was a little more hectic then usual though. Andrew had asked earlier in the weekend if he could go Trick or Treating with one of his friends from school. I was excited that he was making friends around the area so I thought it as a great idea. The problem was that I needed to pick up Amy at around 6:15. So I started the run around of trying to buy some candy for the trick or treaters, get my Son out the door around 5:30ish and then at 6ish go get Amy and be back in time to give candy out at the door. Amazingly I got it all accomplished! Not only that, but this year I had TWICE as many kids at the door as last year!!! (Yes I know that means only two people, but hey, improvement is improvement!)

One last bit of good news before I wrap up this post. I got my ring!! The Green Lantern costume is finally coming together! I believe it was Friday that I received the mask in the mail and then yesterday evening I got the ring. Only thing missing now is the actual costume! The mask is amazing! I picked it up from Xtreeme Design FX. It’s a very thick latex type material painted a bright strong green color. It fits really well. The ring was purchased from one of the Ebay sellers. Apparently they deal in a lot of silver type stuff. It came out really good. As soon as I get the full costume you can bet there will be pictures here.

I know I haven’t written all that much lately. It’s not entirely my fault you know. There just hasn’t been all that much to write about. The last few weekends have been pretty tame (not to mention the weather has sucked) so we haven’t really gone out to do anything. This coming weekend looks to be quite a lot better. There are two big events happening, and of course they are on the same day, Saturday. Then there is always Monday which is Halloween! Not sure if you remember last Halloween. I tried to give out candy and spent the whole night sitting there in my Scout costume with no takers at the door. Well….. hopefully that will change this year. You saw how my front patio is completely decorated and has been for a few weeks now. I know the neighborhood kids have stopped by to see it. With any luck that means that they will come by this time.

Saturday will be Andrews’s first 501st event!!! In the morning we are all meeting up to walk in the Annandale Fall Festival Parade. Parades are always fun, seeing the reaction from the crowd as you walk by, kids running out to take pictures, even older folks coming over to recount their first watching of Star Wars. Andrew will finally get to meet some of the Garrison and see what it is we do. After the parade we will come back to the house and change costumes for the Annual Patton Halloween Party! Last year we had a blast and it’s always great to see everyone do costumes that aren’t Star Wars. See, here is the funny thing about the garrison, I think we spend most of the time that we just hang out with each other searching for and showing off non-star wars costumes! Halloween is a great time for this! It’s like, the Star wars costumes brought us all together because we like the costuming and the sci-fi, but we find out that we all like new and interesting costumes as well! There will, of course, be pictures coming next week.

I have re-discovered my love for comic books! When I was young (around the age of 13-15) I got into comic books. I can still remember the first one I picked up and considered my step down the comic road. (I know I read some others earlier in life, but I never really got into them until this one.) It was a collected paperback of a series that ran in Batman called Batman: A Death in the Family. I was up in Oregon visiting my grandparents with my best friend Ryan. We had stopped off in a local comic book shop to check it out and both Ryan and I picked up the same book. This was the tale of Jason Todd the “new” Robin for Batman. It recounted the tale of how Batman found him and led into how the Joker killed him. (It’s a good read, you should find it.)

It was also on this trip that Ryan and I went cliff climbing along the beach and he fell and slid down about 40 feet of rocky cliff down to the beach. He cracked his head open and nearly died. I remember watching him slid down, and my adrenalin took over. I Jumped off the cliff down to him (Landing in a blackberry bush, thorns = ow) feeling no pain in myself. I briefly checked him and he was still alive, I then tore through the forest that separated the beach from my grandparent’s house. My dad and I ran back to Ryan while my grandparents called 911. He had to be airlifted off the beach because they couldn’t get the ambulance down to him. After the paramedics got there and he was taken care of I just collapsed. I barely remember sitting down on the beach and pulling thorns out of my arms and legs.

Wow, and to think I remember all of this because I tied it to a comic book. Almost every day for the rest of the two weeks that I was in Oregon I went back to the store to pick up more comics. I loved Batman. Just the fact that a regular guy with no special powers could go out and make a difference in a world that doesn’t always work the way it ought to. Of course it helps to be a billionaire to buy all the cool gadgets. I was also a big Spiderman fan. Spiderman was just a kid that got thrown into a life he never expected. He always had a good cheerful attitude about it as well. Somewhere between my late high school years and when I joined the military I kind of trailed off of comics. I still have most of my collection as well as additions from a friend’s collection. Every now and then I would pop into a store and check out some of the latest books, but nothing ever serious.

Well, as I have stated, I have now rediscovered my love of the pulp. John called me up the other day saying that there was a new storyline going through Spiderman that would change everything! He said it was a must read so I was off. There is a great comic book store that’s not terribly far from my house, and the people there are awesomely friendly. When I walked in and asked about the story they were really helpful and even caught me up on what was going on in Spidey’s life. While there I also picked up a whole string of Green Lantern comics. GL has defiantly become the new obsession. Once again, just a regular guy that had his life altered by a power ring. It’s defiantly the new hotness. Look for more Green Lantern posts soon.

Andrew has also picked up the comic bug. He has started reading Green Lantern with me and even asked if he could pick up a Green Arrow. I had never read Green Arrow so it was a new experience for me as well. The plan now is to go through and sort/clean up the whole comic collection and really see what it is we have. I haven’t looked at the whole collection in a few years so it will be fun to sort through it with him. It will also give me the chance to re-read some of my old classics! Just remember, Wednesday is new comic day!

Well, Halloween is near upon us! I love this time of year. It’s the time of year when people like me thrive the most. We are no longer weird, for one day we get to be the cool ones. This last Sunday we took some family time and went out to a local nursery to get some pumpkins and decorations. Then we spent the rest of the evening decorating the front porch of the apartment. (I really hope the housing people don’t mind). I loaded some pictures up in the gallery.

The other thing I have been getting into (or I should say back into) is comics. I miss my comic books. I found a local comic store that’s really nice and has some great people working there. I started reading the new Green Lantern books and there is a new story line in Spiderman that’s looking to be pretty good. Maybe I will post something later on my love for comics. This post is taking me far too long to type as it is. (I keep getting distracted with that silly work thing)

Ok, I think I have officially played too much WoW this last weekend. It was Columbus Day so we had Monday off of work and school. The general plan was to sleep in (accomplished) then maybe check e-mail and play online a little, (also accomplished) watch a movie or some TV, then maybe get outside. Overall the weekend went well. It rained almost all weekend so that put a damper on any real outside plans. I did find a really good comic book store near by. I have been thinking about getting back into some comics. I picked up a few of the new Green Lantern comics. They are pretty good. I also got the chance to pick up the Serenity comic books. There were three total and the third just recently came out. Thankfully they had the other two there as well. Given this, I think it’s time to go over Serenity. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to skip this part. (And go see the gorram movie!)

Serenity!
Long ago there was a silly little TV show called Firefly. I saw the previews for it on FOX and it looked pretty good. I decided to catch the first episode and was enthralled. It’s a science fiction show, with spaceships and lasers and such. Yet, there is this whole old western feel to it. As I have said before, it’s like Star Wars meets John Wayne. I was there for every airing. Some of course got missed because FOX thought it was more important to show Baseball instead, and not reschedule firefly. When it came to the end of the season I watched the last episode and was somewhat confused. It would seem that they were introducing the characters for the first time. Why would they need to do that at the end of the season??? Well, it wasn’t just the end of the season, Firefly had indeed been canceled. To make matters worse, a few web searches uncover the truth about the show, FOX screwed it up.

What was shown as the Pilot episode was actually the second episode. The real pilot was aired last. I believe there were a few other show mix up’s as well as some skipped episodes. And they wondered why there was a confused and low turn out in the ratings. Thankfully there was a DVD set of the show released that had all of the episodes in the correct order. I bought it as soon as I could and commenced Firefly overload. It was glorious! FOX execs were such idiots! Apparently I was not the only one who thought this as millions of Brown Coats (official firefly fans) around the world stormed the stores and bought the DVD in mass. Based on all of the DVD sales and the incredible fan base that this “Single Season” show had, Universal Pictures offered Joss Whedon the opportunity to make his major motion picture directors debut. Serenity was born.

The world as we know it has advanced and evolved to the point of oblivion. The super powers sent ships out to discover new systems and new planets. Distant planets were tera-formed to sustain human life. In this new universe a collective of core planets formed the Alliance and sought to bring order and compliance to the rest of the worlds. Some of the outer planets did not agree. this is when the war started. Sadly the brown coats (rebels) did not succeed and the Alliance took control of all the planets. Captain Malcom Reynolds is a former Brown Coat looking to make his way in the ‘Verse. He’s got his ship, his crew, and his jobs (when he can find them). He also seems to also find a load of trouble where ever he goes. The latest trouble come in the form of two fugitives. It would seem that the Alliance is going to every extreme to get them back. There is also a little mater of this secret that one of the fugitives knows. Information that could destroy all that the Alliance had fought to hide.

Ok, enough back story and synopsis. The movie was awesome. Flat out. If you are a fan of the TV show you will be in awe, shock, and scared. Serenity (the ship) is back and as wonderful as ever. You can tell that they made a few alterations to the set, the ship looks a little darker then before. The characters are more fully developed as well. You don’t have to muck about with the whole “This is Jayne, he is the bad ass of the crew” introductions. When Jayne came on, you knew who he was. They also went more into the back story of the Alliance and how ruthless they can really be. The biggest discovery of the movie would have to be the reavers. We touched on them in the show but never really got the whole story. Now we do and what a story it is. Everything I loved from the TV show was in the movie, the humor, the drama, and all the action you can pack into an hour and 59 min.

When I say that you will be shocked, I mean it. At the end of the movie all bets were off and I had no idea what was going to happen. With a TV show there are certain things you know that are a constant. The hero usually wins, all of the main characters will be back and all within a 60 min window (or 30 min if it’s a sitcom). With this, I was blown away. You know, I really don’t want to say any more about it. Just go see the movie!

Someone somewhere has managed to get the first 10 min of Serenity to stream in full screen. Check it out here. Sadly, this end right before one of the cool scenes with the whole crew. But it does set the stage and theme of the whole movie. I will try and post my review tomorrow.

So, one of the other random things I did this last weekend was to make some comic book desktop wall papers. Something for your windows background. One of the forums I read has a comic book section and they were talking about backgrounds and wall papers. Most of them were posting favorite scenes from comic books and profiles of characters. The problem I have with backgrounds like that is that they are way too busy. There is so much going on that it distracts from your real desktop. So I made a few of my own. Something simple and not distracting. Some of the other readers liked one few I did and started making requests. Here are the ones that I have done:

So we had a rather interesting incident in our house hold this last Monday. It would seem that our young Andrew had forgotten his keys and phone at home while he went to school. This doesn’t bode well for someone who wants to get into where he lives. When he didn’t check in I, of course, started to worry a bit. I called his phone (which I realize did no good, because he forgot that as well) and I kept getting a message saying that the call could not go through. After we sorted out the whole key issues and got Andrew settled down, I went to investigate the phone problem. You see we bought him one of the Pre-Paid phones so that any calls he made, he paid for. When I went looking at phones, the guy at the store told me that the In-Pulse phone would be perfect for me. I am a verizon customer and with this phone he would be able to call my phone (and any verizon phone) for free. He said “They have a 99 cent per day fee, but that’s only on days when you use the phone.”

Well, after this fiasco, I called the customer support for In-Pulse and found out that the plan is actually 99 cents per day, every day. This would essentially make his prepaid phone a $30 a month phone plus 10 cents per min. This was the stupidest thing I had ever heard for a prepaid plan. I went in to the store and threw a fit. For the next 2 hours I sat looking at plans and re-structuring my home plan to add a new phone for him. Turns out that my plan was so old, if I added his phone and upgraded my plan, I would pay the same and get more minutes. Thankfully they took back the In-pulse phone and gave me store credit so I was able to upgrade so that we all have camera phones now. For now it’s not a big deal, he doesn’t spend all that much time on the phone. But I know that we are just entering the teenage years. Why do I feel like this is going to come back to get me.

Go see it!

Now.

Shiny
(Full review later this week, need time to process and don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone)