Trinity War and More

This week I'll be taking a look at DC's Justice League #22, the first part of the big crossover "Trinity War". Part 1 is written by Geoff Johns, the creative head honcho of the New52, and illustrated by Ivan Reis. DC has been forcing its many books into crossovers since the beginning of the reboot, allowing a 5 or 6 issue arc to establish the various titles, then shoehorning in an event or crossover between many titles. Some were good, some were not. For example, the forerunner seemed to be the "Night of the Owls" event that ran through the core Batman title with tie-ins throughout the other Bat-family books like Nightwing, Batman and Robin, and the rest. This event was well done by Scott Snyder with minimal intrusion into other titles by the tie in issues. Then you've got "The Culling", and event throughout the majority of issues of Teen Titans and Superboy. These two books were supposed to overlap but were just one big ham-fisted headache penned by Scott Lobdell, a guy who forgets that it's not the 90's anymore.

"Trinity War" could turn out to follow either of those. It has a structure similar to "The Culling" and Justice League's previous crossover "Throne of Atlantis" (which I actually enjoyed and was pretty simply executed thanks to both JL and Aquaman being written by Mr. Johns), where you start with JL #22 as Part 1, then pick up Part 2 in Justice League of America #6, and Part 3 in Justice League Dark, etc etc. This is a simple structure that allows the story to move on quick, as opposed to the "Court of Owls" story which only took place in Batman which, like every other title, is a monthly book. This allows Johns to get Trinity War out of the way quickly so he can then move on to his 7-part "Forever Evil" (pfhahaha) story and DC's latest mistake, Villains Month. But anyway, on to the book itself.

In the New52 universe, there are three mysterious entities that may or may not have something to do with why the DC 'verse was rebooted in the first place, if they decide to even address that. They are Pandora, The Phantom Stranger, and The Question. We don't know much about them, since Pandora only just had her first issue released last week, while Phantom Stranger has had a short and as I hear it mediocre run of around 10 issues. While we don't know much about them, other than Pandora releasing the 7 Deadly Sins on humanity, there have been tensions among the world's superhuman crowd. America's secret organization ARGUS has formed a team of heroes and anti-heroes to take down the Justice League if they should go bad. This is their "Justice League of America". There's also the magic-using Justice League Dark which didn't do much in this issue but they have been burned by ARGUS in the past. This first part focuses on the hero Shazam traveling to the nation of Kahndaq which has banned any superhuman fly-bys. Both the Justice League and the JLA want to keep this from happening but for different reasons, which brings them both into a conflict.

As the first issue of this event, we get the deft writing of Geoff Johns. He establishes a little bit of needed info if you've just been reading JL. Otherwise he flies right into the two teams and their various concerns. Johns and JL are basically the core of the new DC universe as far as I can see, and he definitely wants this to be their first BIG event. You know, besides all the other ones editorial wants their writers to interrupt their individual stories for. Johns has been writing for DC for a while. You love him or you don't. I loved his run on Green Lantern, and what other stuff I've read (such as old DC's Justice Society) has been pretty good. He does good team books as well as decently-focused individual character books like Aquaman. Ivan Reis draws this book as well as his other work from earlier Green Lantern and the previous issues of JL. As you can see from the spread above, this event will allow him to make some dynamic pieces, of which this first issue has a few.

This first issue establishes what the main problem is without getting too much into it. It could have been a stronger hook, but with comics how they are, we had a bunch of titles serving as a "prelude" to it and comic solicits saying "read this pleasepleaseplease". Some of the dialogue is iffy, as you can see The Question to the right talking about EEEEVVVVIIILLL, which there is a lot of in this issue. But maybe that's just how The Question talks in the New52, and I'm kinda looking forward cautiously to how Johns treats the character. Since the JL books keep their fingers on the pulse of the new DC universe, this is really their first "big" event, so I want to see where it goes. If you've been reading Justice League since the beginning of the reboot, this should shape up to be bigger than "Throne of Atlantis" and worth following. The only wild card is how Justice League Dark, the one of the three titles not written by Johns (instead by Animal Man's Jeff Lemire), fits into his story. Luckily we've got two weeks (I think) to find out instead of two months.

Some other comic highlights:
 - Superman Unchained #2 by Scott Snyder looks to be interesting, introducing a new character from Supes' past into the mix of hidden terrorist plots by the group Ascension. Snyder is known for his writing in Batman focusing on Bruce Wayne's inner thoughts and is very personal and kinda dark. He brings that to Unchained with some good insight into Supes' mind and that he doesn't ALWAYS know what to do. I haven't read a lot of Superman books, so maybe this isn't all that great a job, but I'm liking it so far. At least, it's better than the core Superman book launched for the New52.

 - I recently picked up the first trade of Irredeemable by Mark Waid. It is about a Superman-esque superhero who "goes bad". But not like sudden mind control or evil clone, but a slow erosion of his principles and personality over time. Waid poses the possibility that not all heroes are emotionally equipped to deal with the praise and criticism of being a hero, and shows what could happen if a god-like being just can't take the pressure and stress anymore. The first volume brings in some classic hero tropes and makes them go wrong, such as revealing his secret identity costs him a possible marriage. It's an interesting idea that I think I'll keep going on with for its run of 37 issues.

 - Having seen some of their books pop up in my Amazon recommendations, I looked into Valiant and their heroes like Shadowman, X-O Manowar, and Bloodshot, some popular comics from the 90's that weren't from the big two publishers. They recently did their own little reboot by launching four (I believe, more have been added) titles that have all received relative praise. So I picked up the bargain-priced first volume of their rebooted Shadowman ($9.99 for a trade with 4 issues, an incentive to give the first story a shot, something more publishers are doing now it seems). Having only read the first issue of it, it seems it's right up my alley. It's got themes of family and powers passed down through generations with a horror vibe. Sounds like Animal Man. I'll be looking into the other reboots too because I already like this book.

So that's it for now. Back next week with another comic review.

A Bit About Anime Midwest

This past weekend I went to Anime Midwest at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Rosemont, IL. It's a big anime convention, naturally. But with this one there has been some drama behind the scenes involving people behind the convention and things I won't get into other than my opinion that I didn't quite care if the con was ran smoothly and I didn't have to be witness to any of it. Like almost all cons, I spent the whole weekend there; Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was the first convention that I'd be bringing two of my hometown friends who normally don't hang with my con-going friends.

I was anxious to say the least. As Jim Gaffigan has said, mixing two groups of friends is stressful ("Yeah, these people don't know I drink. And don't be thrown by my British accent"). Would they get along? Would they behave themselves? My groups of friends do vastly different things on their downtime, mind you, and I didn't know how it would go. Minus the joking at my expense of torching the place, my doubts were unfounded and things went smoothly and they all made friends which was cool.

Friday my carpool of friends TJ, Melysa, and Caleb hit the road to Rosemont. I didn't get the best sleep so I had a nice headache most of the day. Waiting for other friends to show up, we scoped out the hotel and where the various event rooms were. There was a dealer room with all kinds of junk to spend money on, a game room, tabletop rooms, panel rooms, and the main ballroom. I actually attended some panels that day. The first one was "Breaking Into Comics" which was run by Russel Lissau and Steve Horton, two comic writers who have been around the industry. These two guys I have seen at other conventions around the midwest area, but I never much paid attention to them. The panel was interesting, but was mostly just people asking questions without a WHOLE lot of actual ins and outs of the comic industry. It was good insight, however. Also, I walked away with their main piece of advice; DO THE WORK. Just DO IT. If you want to be a writer, don't want to. Go be it. It's a strange thing to grasp, because if only things were that simple. But maybe it is. I need to get on that. Actually try my hand at writing something out like a comic script or a page layout or some characters sketches and see what I feel best with right away and work from there. I'd love to do it all but who knows. Much like the last panel, I went to "Making Webcomics Part 1", the first in a trilogy of panels all weekend about, naturally, making webcomics. It was interesting but didn't give me much more than the previous panel. Both were well done though, without any problems with guests or attendees.

The night ended by my showing my two friends around the con area and giving them the low down about where they could go and a bit about etiquette, since they missed the deadline to pick up badges that night. Late that night around 11pm, my friends Brock, Evan, Matt, and I went to the karaoke room to sing "Rocky Road to Dublin" as done by the Irish Descendants. We got the whole room clapping around and most of them joined in the merry jig that ensued. It was amazing and we will be doing it at any con we can and I can't wait.

Saturday was equally eventful, but my stress levels were all over the place that day so I didn't really do much convention stuff besides wander around. My good friend Brock presented his panel "A Primer to Doctor Who" which went over fantastically, much like the first time he did it at Kitsunekon a few months ago. The Masquerade, the costume contest, was that evening. It was... far from amazing. It was the least organized part of the con I could tell of. The line for it basically filled up the whole of the lobby in a horrible mass and was delayed by a good half an hour. Even after that delay the contest itself lasted maybe 40 minutes, most of it being the MC's rather unprofessional commentary. I asked myself if the contestants found him rude at all that he kept interjecting into their walk-ons. Whenever I could actually hear what he was saying (the tech crew had an off night it seemed), he was always doing the same joke of asking female contestants for their numbers. It wasn't funny the first time, nor the subsequent twelve times. But that may be harsh since the whole thing was a disappointment. I wasn't wowed by any of the costumes. Maybe I'm just to expectant of cosplay contests being a way for the best costumes to show off. Good work to all of the contestants though, I don't want to put any of them down because I know costumes are difficult regardless of what they are. But few of them really stood out. There was a group of Silent Hill cosplayers that did pretty well though.

That night, my friends and I actually went to an 18+ panel, one naturally for adults only. We had never been, so it was... an experience for all of us. The panel was taking volunteers to dub over Hentai games based on improv topics provided by the audience. It started out pretty hilarious but devolved into ear-piercing screeches of god knows what that lost any humor. To me anyway. Other people found it hilarious. After that we all lined up for the rave, the Saturday night party of lights, noise, and sweaty people gyrating and bouncing around to the beats of the music. I was there with my friends pretty much all night, on and off with breaks from the chaos. The night ended and the morning began sitting in my room discussing many things with friends Aaron, Kristen, Autumn, and Cody. Then I got about three hours of sleep. Maybe.

Sunday was a headache trying to get shit out of the room before noon. It all worked out in the end though. The day consisted of one last lap around the dealer room to buy stuff (I nabbed a Doctor Who licence plate border, One Piece figurine, and some comics signed by the aforementioned panelists). The afternoon was spent with our big group splayed out in the chairs in the lobby just talking about life, the universe, and everything, which is one of my favorite parts of conventions. Just as an aside, talking out loud about things just helps compartmentalize all the stuff that goes on up in your head, which I had a lot of.

The drive home was to the music of the Digimon Movie soundtrack. A mix of music from the TV show and hits of the late 90's and early 00's. Nostalgia up the wazoo.

It was overall a good weekend in terms of the convention itself. I avoided any drama and had a good time with friends. Personal anxieties of this particular weekend convention were for the most part unfounded. So I'll put this down as a win. I likely won't go next year however. It's mostly due to it being over the 4th of July weekend, but a little to do with the drama that I heard so much about that I just wanna be as far away from as I can. Neither I nor anyone I know personally is involved, but I just don't need to hear it; I just want to have a good time.

So with that I eagerly await this year's Ramencon in Indiana in September.

______________________
So everything's not perfect
Don't matter 'cause you'll rework it
Nothings holding you
Never stopping, never stopping, never stopping now

Everybody Read Animal Man

...and Swamp Thing.

I mentioned them a few days ago and how great they were. It's been a busy week with the 4th of July and working at a grocery store, it's a big week for people who eat food. I've not had time to read all the floppies this week, but so far DC's stuff was pretty good. Batman Inc, is winding down to the final issue (at least of Grant Morrison's years-long story arc), Detective Comics is re-introducing Wrath into the Batman corner of the New52, and Green Lantern is still showing some promise two issues into the new writer's run.

But I did manage to finish the second volume of DC's Animal Man of the New52. I can't recommend it enough. Swamp Thing is very much related to the concepts of Animal Man, as I wrote a few days ago, but if I HAD to pick which of the two is the better book, it would be Animal Man, but by just a hair. If you don't read it for the art (gruesome as it may often be), or the story of primordial forces destroying the balance of the world, read it for the following:

At it's core, Animal Man is about a family where the father has abilities beyond imagination. The book shows the effect of Buddy Baker's place in the world on the family. And it gets better from there.

So yeah.

Anywho, tomorrow morning I head out for Anime Midwest in Rosemont, IL. I'm quite excited but also anxious as always because people. But I won't have anything more for here until Monday at the earliest with details of the con experience.

That is all.

_______________________

(Read Animal Man)

Stuff and Things

Just gonna talk about things I've been doing the past few days. Not much.

Picked up a copy of Okage: Shadow King, an old JRPG for the Playstation 2 by Zener Works. $8 at Half-Price Books. I love that store. I remember playing it years ago as a kid and being really excited for it, but I never got anywhere in it. Now I'm older and can appreciate its cleverness and tongue-in-cheek humor. The battles are repetitive and arbitrary, but the story is unique with some witty dialogue. The story centers around a young boy named Ari whose father finds a mysterious jar. When Ari's sister gets attacked by a ghost and cursed to speak only pig latin, Father decides that the jar must be some sort of mystic artifact that can cure her. It does, but the ritual releases a demon by the name of Evil King Stan. Stan wants to reclaim his former glory as the Great Evil King, but he can't because his essence was spread over the years to many lesser Evil Kings. Stan merges with Ari's shadow and commands him to find these impostor Kings and slay them. It's all very interesting in a "WTF" sort of way. I'm really digging it.

I also got into the Final Fantasy XIV beta. It's pretty cool, but so far boils down to yet another WoW clone. Which isn't BAD per se, just that besides the setting of being an FF, it's nothing special. Yet. But I dunno if I'll stick around. I know I'll get addicted and be tempted to shill out the money for a subscription. Nope. Also my video card is either on its last legs or I just need to clean the fans. It crapped out on me once yesterday. And good GOD my computer chair is squeaking like mad.

I went and watched DC's animated film "Batman: Under the Red Hood" and I liked it. I want to read the comics it's lifted from, and I'm also digging around for the other pre-reboot Batman arcs that aren't written by Grant Morrison. I've got my fill of him for a while, since I'm almost caught up with Batman, Inc. I've also gone back to re-read the New52 Swamp Thing and Animal Man, since I wanna catch up with those, as they are both amazing books. Swamp Thing is written by Scott Snyder, who's been having a great run on Batman stories the past few years, and has done American Vampire, so he's no stranger to dark stories. Yanick Paquette is the illustrator for the first chunk of issues, and the arts is gorgeous. Vibrant colors, thick lines, creative panel placement makes everything flow. Animal Man is also great, with a story by Jeff Lemire (also no stranger to the horror genre), and art duties by Travel Foreman. This is a much more, um, visceral book. It's quite explicit with the imagery, where Swamp Thing is more tame. Both books deal with the world of the Green (plants, Swamp Thing) and of the Red (animals, flesh, Animal Man). They individually tackle the hidden third world of the Black, aka the Rot (dead stuff, naturally). You can imagine the kinds of things the Rot would be. Both books illustrate the Rot as macabre and gruesome, but Animal Man's Travel Foreman draws some truly disturbing imagery. Both books are creatively and visually gripping, and I'm waiting on the second collection of Animal Man to reach my doorstep so I can catch up. They are both books that people need to read if they haven't already.

Finally, next week I'll be hitting up an anime convention in Rosemon, IL called Anime Midwest. Last year was really fun, even though I really didn't do much except hang out. This year I plan on actually attending some panels, as there are a bunch about webcomics and voice actors. I plan on having a write up of my experience next week.

That's about it for now. Just stretching my typing hands tonight.

__________________
I become the distance.
I am the sober and irrelevant.
I don't feel part in this,
What is there to believe?

*Clever Title Here*: Comic Review

Every Wednesday, new comics hit the newsstands and comic stores. Every Wednesday I have a pile of new comics to read either physically or digitally. So every week, maybe on Wednesday, or maybe the next day, I'll try to pick out one issue to go over and talk about. Ideally, this would be a 1st issue, a last issue, the start of a major arc or crossover event, or something other than just "the next issue". But today, since it's my first installment of this, and that I couldn't get said comics yesterday in a timely manner, I've got two issues to really go over. Otherwise, I'll give my brief thoughts on the many other issues I've read this week. So let's get to it.

The first proper review is for DC Comics' 1st issue of "Larfleeze", written by Keith Giffen and J.M. Dematteis, and illustrated by Scott Kolins. Larfleeze is a character created by Geoff Johns during his acclaimed run on Green Lantern. In his expansion of the GL mythos, Johns created more colors of the Emotional Spectrum, such as Red Lanterns stand for Rage, Blue Lanterns stand for Hope, etc. Larfleeze was the single holder of the Orange part of the Emotional Spectrum, Avarice. His whole thing was that, unlike the other colored Lantern Corps., he was the only wielder of the Orange light. His Power Ring could increase its power seemingly without limit and his ring's "constructs" were the bodies of those he has killed with his Orange power, effectively creating and controlling an army of constructs. The flip side of this was that Larfleeze was perpetually greedy and a bit dim. After the events of "Wrath of the First Lantern" (Johns' big finale of his GL run), Larfleeze was basically sent to the edge of the universe nearly powerless with only his alien butler for companionship. This story picks up after that, much like the other titles in the New52 Green Lantern group of books.

This first issue reestablishes Larfleeze's character with a (possibly inaccurate) life story reiterated by the sleaze himself to his butler, since at the end of the universe there isn't much better to do than tell stories. However, at the end of the issue his story gets interrupted by something that calls this part of the universe home. It's not a very eventful first issue, but it sets up the character of Larfleeze for anyone who doesn't already know about him (and let's be honest, if you don't know, then you don't care about the GL part of the DC Universe too much and this book on the shelf won't attract someone who isn't already terribly familiar with its continuity). What we get from it is the setup for what would make a decent mini series of maybe 5 issues instead of the ongoing series it's supposed to be. I really don't see how they can make this character into something readers will come back for each month. But I've been wrong before. So far we've got the makings of a clever romp through the outer reaches of space with a greedy little monster and his companion/slave.

Keith Giffen is a writer I've not read much of, but I have heard good things about. His issue of Green Lantern: New Guardians was not what I expected, but it was setting up a new series called Threshold which has since been cancelled, I believe. With Giffen on the plot and Dematteis writing the scripts, however, we get some clever dialog and an interesting set up for the rest of this particular story. Giffen also wrties Larfleeze like he was depicted in New Guardians; as a conniving, greasy, and sometimes amusing ball of greed as opposed to the more sinister version that Johns wrote before the reboot. Scott Kolins' art is actually pretty good too. It leans ever so slightly towards the cartoony than many more realistic approaches the Green Lantern books have had over the years. The colorist makes good use of the various colors and glows of the Orange light, and the whole thing has a unity in its orange gutters and dialog boxes.

All in all, for the Green Lantern fan this offers a more focused look at one of the lesser known Lantern colors with not much to offer right away. But, with good back-and-forth between the two main characters, some well timed gags, and a sudden appearance of conflict near the end, this COULD be an interesting title. But with all of the problems DC has been having, trying to make this a continuing story could prove difficult. Even if Giffen manages to get a huge arc out of this I have little faith in DC keeping this around for long.

The second book I picked up to review was Marvel's "All New X-Men" #13, written by Brian Michael Bendis and art by Stuart Immonen. The main idea behind this book is that, after the events of the Avengers vs. X-Men crossover, Hank McCoy (Beast) traveled back to the past to recruit the original team of X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, and Angel) to come to the future with him to shame the main timeline's Cyclops into... I dunno, undoing all his actions from the aforementioned conflict? It's confusing to explain, and silly when you ask why is this a good idea. But the status quo is that the young, original team of X-Men are now living in the current X-Men continuity. Meaning some amusing or depressing conversations between a young Bobby Drake and his older self, or a young Angel asking his future self why he suddenly has metal wings. Bendis writes these conversations amazingly, since his forte has always seemed to be dialog between confused teenagers (great for Ultimate Spider-Man, silly and grating for Avengers). Bendis is basically in control of the X-Men corner of the Marvel universe for now, and ANX-Men, along with his also ongoing run on Uncanny X-Men, show that it is actually in capable hands. The past team getting timey-wimey'd off to the present is hard to get over for the first few issues, but it actually works out.

Anywho, the story right now is that Mystique is up to her old (or new) tricks, using her shape-shifting ability along with Lady Mastermind's illusion abilities to make it seem like this old team of X-Men have been robbing banks and dealing with HYDRA. This issue focuses on Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, and the original X-Men finding their hideout to bust some heads, without spoiling too much. Stuart Immonen has been on art duty for all 13 issues, and it has been really good. Just good design, layout, and action in the whole package, as you can see from this spread near the end of the issue (forgive my poor scanning abilities).

There's not much else to say on this. It's continuing Bendis' plot and developing how these younger X-Men interact with a confusing modern world. It is an interesting status quo for the X-Men, but all the time travel antics in this and many other books are setting up for something big in the Marvel U.

So this is roughly what I'll be doing each week, hopefully. With my work schedule never being totally set in stone, I don't know if I'll be able to make this every Wednesday, as this post clearly illustrates on account of it being Thursday. But at some point each week I will try to pick out an issue to review in such a way. Since I'm sure I'm boring anybody reading this by now, I'll leave it at that.

Yay, comics!

On comics

Hey again everybody (all... zero of you probably).

One of the big things I wanna do on this blog is talk about comics. I want to offer my opinions on various titles, books, authors, illustrators, etc. I'd like to review them occasionally and talk about what's going on with them. But first a little about comics and I.

As a kid I read comics a lot, mostly collections of funny pages strips like Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Foxtrot. I'd find my way to reading through Star Wars and X-Men comics on and off as I grew up, but I've always read comics in some capacity. But a few years ago, my sophomore year of college I believe, I really dug into them. I had stopped reading comics for a while, and just read books about the various Marvel and DC heroes such as the DK collection of guidebooks so I'd know about the increasing amount of comic-to-film adaptations I was interested in. But on a whim I decided to get back into X-Men. I knew about some of the big events at Marvel such as the Civil War and House of M but I didn't know what they were. So I managed to dig back into X-Men by reading the second volume of "New X-Men" by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost. Reading through that got me to read through House of M, and reading that got me branch out to other X-titles, as well as going back to read through Grant Morrison's run on "New X-Men", the re-naming of the core X-Men title that was launched in the 90's.

And from there, well, I read a fuckton of other comics. I made my way to DC comics and read though Geoff John's run on Green Lantern (having just finished this past month with his final issue of, what, ten years?). Likewise, I found my way to other DC comics like Batman, the Flash, etc, etc. Now I have a decent collection of comic trade paperbacks.

As you can see, I've got three almost-full shelves taken up with just my Marvel and DC stuff. Top shelf is DC (52, Animal Man, Batman, Doom Patrol, Green Lantern, Seven Soldiers, among others), middle shelf is assorted Marvel (Annihilation, Captain America, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc), and the bottom shelf is JUST X-Men related material, in (mostly) chronological order instead of alphabetically.

 

This shelf is dedicated to comics of other publishers like Dark Horse, Image, and whathaveyou. I've got stuff like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Maus, Penny Arcade, Scott Pilgrim, Sin City, Star Wars, and The Walking Dead. Along side that are two cardboard boxes of single comics I have been buying for a few years. That is just my physical collection. I've also got about 18 gigs of comics on my computer, some of which I haven't even read through yet.

So I've crammed a lot of comics into these past few years. I hope to post my thoughts on various comics in the future, and I'm going to kick myself to really keep this going and maybe make something of it. Like many comic readers, I've had my share of thoughts for my own comics, but I haven't done much with them besides what's in my head, since my writing and drawing skills lack on account of my spending five years on a college major in the natural sciences. Hrm.

But in the future expect a lot of comic discussion. For example, next week Wednesday the new comic issues hit the stands. One of the handful I'll be picking up is the first issue of DC Comics' "Larfleeze", a major character spinning out of Geoff Johns' "Green Lantern" run, and I'll be talking about it a little either that day or the next, along with the rest of my haul that day (All New X-Men #13, Uncanny X-Men #7, and Wolverine and the X-Men #32 (my gosh, that is a lot of X-titles)). I hope to do this sort of thing every week by picking my favorite issue of the week and talking about it.

But that's not all this blog will have. It won't all be about comics, but also video games, news, whatever the heck I feel like posting, reasons why I say "heck" and "gosh" when in this same post I use the word "fuckton", as well as other junk.

I guess stay tuned for more things???

_________________________________________
I am Iron Man

Holy first update in like two years Batman.

I'm gonna try to actually post shit here now. Instead of blurbs on facebook, I'll try actual sentences here. Well, not well-written sentences, but sentences nonetheless.

We'll just do an easy write up of the events of last night. I drove out to the nearby Applebee's to hang out with good friends Brock, Chavez, and Evan. While waiting on the other two, Brock and I ran through what we've practiced for our karaoke song for Anime Midwest in a few weeks. Got some beers. Yet again tried to convince Chavez to come to a future anime convention in September. Ordered some half-price appetizers. I got a plate of sliders with fries, and, like any type of "slider" *cough White Castle*, it only SOUNDS like a good idea.

Once all four of us were comfortable with our drinks and/or food (or Chavez's glass of water), Brock decides to ask the waitress if she could whip up an Adios Motherfucker. Imagine a Long Island with more booze, and blue. It was actually quite tasty. I'm sure if you asked, Brock will regale you with the tale that he already heard secondhand about three dudes who had several of these drinks.

It was actually not bad at all. But shared between the four of us instead of Brock drinking all of it. This is also when we discovered the best name for a shot; a "Lactating Hermaphrodite". It exists.

Back to Brock's house for Vesper Martinis (the "James Bond" martini; they're gross don't ever drink them), but this time half drunkenly blasting Rocky Road to Dublin by the Irish Descendants and singing along. More hanging out at Brock's place until near 2 am and we all head home.

I wake up and feel awful. I didn't drink a lot so it's probably not a hangover but what do I know.

So I'm gonna try to post more here, but on what I'm not quite sure. I'm sure I'll discuss school and "learning" more about Conservation and Environmental Sciences (my major that I will be getting a B.A. in in the fall), how I wish I took a long hard look at what I actually want to do with my life, what I may end up actually doing (or not doing, and that is a looooong list), how scary the future is, talking about art, comics, games, toys, and maybe posting up some of my own of the above for critique or review or whatnot. We'll see what happens.

_____________________
"Hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road, all the way to Dublin. Whack ful lul de ra."