Come now, birdboy! You're not going to sleep on me already, are you? The party's just got started!

I just finished Batman: a Death in the Family. Holy cow. These are the kind of comic books I live for. It sure makes Frank Miller look like crap. Actually this story was pretty darn good. Apparently after fifty years of Batman, the editors at DC were thinking, we should bring Robin back, but we can't bring back Dick Grayson. He's moved on. He's part of the Teen Titans as Nightwing now, and it will make no sense to bring him back. So they created Jason Todd. I never really liked him, so it was a relief when he died. I guess that's how they decided whether or not he would live. After issuing the second to last book in this series they had a telephone poll asking people whether they wanted Jason to live, or die. At the back of the book it says the end vote was 5271 for, 5343 against. Bye bye Jason. But the way they killed him seems a little harsh, even to me. It does bring up an interesting point about the Joker though.

We all know the Joker kills people. Duh. That's his thing, he's good at it, and he loves it. But when we watch a movie about him, or read a comic book (which few people besides me does anymore) about him, we feel a sense of detachment. We don't know any of the people he's killed. We don't care about those people. They're not important to the storyline. They're just more of the Joker's victims. But in A Death in the Family it makes it more personal. You've seen this kid. You know what he's been through. His parents are dead, he just found out that his real mother is alive, and he's worked with the Batman fighting crime. When he dies it's actually a sad thing. It almost makes you hate the Joker. Batman doesn't kill him because he thinks he's too insane to know what he's doing.

The Joker knows. He always has and he always will.

"I know the difference between the crazies and the freaks like you who just enjoy it."

It really is a fabulous comic though. The term "can't put down" is an accurate description of me while I was reading it. I'm forcing myself to read Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again and quite simply, I don't enjoy it. Everyone (meaning the online community of comic bookers that I've talked to, or rather, read) seems to think that Miller's books are classic works of graphic novels, but I just don't understand it. Maybe I'm not old enough to understand it. That's what my dad predicted about Watchmen though, and I love that book. The only thing I can come up with is that it's just not a good book.

In other news, there are a bunch of new Umbrella Academies out, but the last one I saw was number 3 and I just can't get three before the rest of the series. I'm sure it's probably finished the series out by now. I've missed quite a few comic book wednesdays. Speaking of which, my dad got a popcap on his Sobe the other day that said "Comic Book Wednesday."
I want it...


HAHA XOXO

Falcone Floods The Streets With Drugs And Violence, Creating New Joe Chills Every Day!

I'm sick today while I'm writing this blog. I think that sentence might have been gramatically incorrect, but oh well. I hate being sick. I hate wasting my time, lying there, feeling sorry for myself. What a waste of time, really. I'm going back to school tomorrow no matter what. I'm so sick of being sick. The worst part of being sick is missing school and then having to make it up when you could have just done it at school and had no homework at all. I missed like three tests that I have to go in early to take now. It's very annoying. You would think teachers would have figured out a better way to allow students to check their missing work and find what they did in school that day. Thompson has the best for that kind of thing so far, but it could still be improved. Like, who knows how long it's going to take me to get caught up on Journal entries again.

While I've been sick I've watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight for about the tenth time and Batman Begins for probably the fifth. Christian Bale does a much better job as an actor in Batman Begins than he does in The Dark Knight. My mom came in while I was watching Batman Begins and proceeded to ask me if I knew that "That guy" (which she meant as Henri Ducard/Ra's al Ghul) was Liam Neeson. I told her yeah, I knew that, and she said, "Did you know--". I interrupted her and said, "Yeah I know his wife was the one that hit her head on the bunny slope when she was learning how to ski." His wife was the mom from The Parent Trap for all y'all that don't know. It really is sad that she died though. And over the stupidest little thing.

Anyway... I'm also doing my magazine article right now, and I'm doing it on an article about male lactation. That's right, male lactation. I didn't actually know this was possible until just now, but apparently dudes can breast feed. That's kind of cool, but kind of disturbing at the same time, I don't know why. It makes sense of course. I mean, why would men still have nipples if they had no use for it, er, them? Maybe eventually men will lose their nipples, but until that day comes they will probably be able to lactate. Haha... It's just funny somehow...

This was a great time to get sick too. I couldn't do anything with my relatives that were here for the last two days because I was sick. Colorguard stuff is today and then for the next two weeks too, so I better start feeling better fast. My mom is nice enough to go get the information for me from Davis High. Hopefully Kati is still doing it... I also have Violin Federation on Saturday and I haven't been able to practice my song for the past four days and I took a week off a few days before that. I also didn't get to have a lesson because I had to go to my grandpa's funeral. Right now, everything is kind of a disaster, but hopefully I'll be able to get it all sorted out soon.

HAHA xoxo

Things Are Tough All Over An' It Rains On The Just An' The Unjust Alike...Except In California

I'm not really sure if we were supposed to write a blog last week since it was spring break, so I guess I'll just write a really really long one for this week. Sounds good to me. Basically, I think I'm just going to tell all y'all what I did my entire break. The days are probably messed up Boy this'll be fun.



So first we drove all day to Beatty, Nevada. We ate dinner at our hotel, and the food was okay. I had a tomato soup and split a salad with my mom. I would have had a veggie burger, but they were out. We also went to the Death Valley Nut and Candy store, known as Eddie World, and I was very disappointed. I thought my parents said that Eddie World was teh biggest candy store in North America, but it's actually the largest candy store in Nevada. It's pretty darn small.

Anyway, day two. We went to Death Valley for the first time on this day. Now, remember that Death Valley is in California, and we were staying in Nevada. It was a little bit of a drive into Death Valley. We went to a few different places. I can't really remember what we did on that first day, Mostly just sightseeing and stuff. It was either this day or the next day that we visited the lowest point in North America. It was pretty dang hot there. It seems like it was about 95-97 degrees, but Beatty where we were staying was not nearly as warm. We ate breakfast at a Mexican restaurant that wasn't bad, and we ate dinner, well those of us who did, ate this creepy little "Beatty Club" Restaurant. They had bras stapled to the ceiling and dollar bills from everyone who felt like leaving a little note stapled to a wall. There was also this sculpture, and from far away it looked like it was just a man's face, but when you get up close you realize that that face is actually composed of the bodies of naked women. It was kind of cool in a bizarre and perverted way. Anyway, the guy who made my burger was talking on the phone, and I don't think he ever washed his hands. We decided that all of the restaurants in Beatty are actually fronts for brothels or drug dealers.

On the third day we went to Albertson's because all of the restaurants in Beatty are disgusting. I got a Starbucks Coffee which was very good after eating all the crap in Beatty. We got plenty of food for the rest of the week. The rest of that day we spent wandering around Death Valley and it's surrounding area. We went to this little spring and saw these bright blue fish called pupfish. Apparently they are named that because the swim around and play like puppies. We also went birdwatching for a little while for my mom.

Fourth day was spent looking at all the stuff we had missed. We went to the Racetrack where rocks slide on their own, and no one has ever seen them move, but they leave behind trails in the mud, which is dry by the time you can look at the trail. We spent the rest of that day at the sand dunes and we got ready to leave for Vegas the next day. An interesting sidenote, while we were at the Sand Dunes I stepped on a stump and cut my toe open, and it bled like nothing else. It didn't hurt or anything, but I left a nice little trail of blood back to the car.

On the fifth day we went to Las Vegas which is about a 2 hour drive. We stayed at the New York New York Hotel and Casino. All we really did on that day was relax and go shopping. I got some awesome perfume at Rue 21. I actually like that store. We ate at Il Fornaio at our hotel and it was really good. The bread was fresh and delicious. *DROOL* breadddd...

The sixth day was pretty much the same, we ate breakfast and dinner at Il Fornaio again, and we went shopping. We walked 2 and 1/2 miles to the mall each way because we thought it was closer than that, plus another 6 hours of standing around in the mall, and by the end of the day my feet hurt! They hurt the next day too. Oh, we also got a phonecall from our grandma on this day that our grandpa had had a small heart attack. We asked if he was still at the hospital and she said no, he just got cold, so we were just like, whatever.

On the last day we ate at Il Fornaio again, and we went on our way home. This is what happened when we got to Ely and my mom checked her phone messages.



I saw 5 rainbows on the way home from Ely. It was raining after we left the Subway in the town. Six days ago we left that same gas station only we were heading the opposite direction. When we had gone there the first time there was a little boy there, telling the lady how to make his sandwich, and when he catapulted his arm up to the glass covering, used to keep his grubby fingers from actually touching the tomatoes, or meat, or whatever topping it was he wanted to point at, he smacked his hand, or, more precisely, his fingers. That was Sunday April 5th, 2009 our way to Death Valley, California. It was ironic really that we were listening to David Saderis' book on tape on teh way to Ely on our way home. He was talking about his yaya. It was humerous really, the story of his grandma. At the end of the story David simply says that it was a relief that she was gone. The story was really quite funny at teh time. Like all of his writing, funny, and sad too. He's really a lucky guy to be able to reflect on his life so easily. When we found out about my grandpa's death all I could think about was Sedaris' yaya. It was so weird that we were just listening to that before we stopped. Plus we had just visited DEATH valley. The weirdest part of all was when my brother started crying. I remember hugging him the same way that girl did when her brother was crying. A week ago. The same thing, different circumstances.

Strange.



HAHA xoxo