Archive | newspapers RSS feed for this section

Mom Loves Netflix

30 Jan

January 30, 2018

I was spending a nice evening at home with my mother, I wrote, knowing that she may read this. It was a Saturday night but hey- do I have anything better to do? No I do not.

We were watching TV. More accurately, we were not watching TV. It was on but I was at the computer where I may have been one of the last humans on the planet to finally see an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It stars some Jerry Seinfeld fella you may have heard of. Mom was reading the newspaper.

Reading the daily newspaper is a lost art, one that frankly deserves to be lost. Think about it. The paper gets printed in the morning, full of stories written about news the night before. It gets bought in the late morning then sits around until afternoon or evening. By the time you read about a bank robbery, the crooks have already been caught and are planning their escape. Many is the time, and this is true, I’ve said to Mom “wow that was some horrible tragedy yesterday” and she’d say “yeah, the Mets lost again.” Meanwhile I was talking about the latest natural disaster in which 287 Sumatrans died when their village was flattened by a hurricane.

But the plight of the poor Sumatrans is not what we’re talking about here. (Honestly, I say if you can’t stand the heat, get out of Sumatra.) It is the sorry state of television. There was nothing worth watching on TV that night, unless you want to see the 697th rerun of The Big Bang Theory where Walowitz gets shot into space, or an episode of Redneck House Flippers Live!

I asked Mom if maybe there was something she wanted to see on Netflix. She said that Netflix has all those good TV shows she’s been dying to see. How long has she been dying to see them? For about eight years, which is also about how long she has had Netflix. (In case you haven’t figured it out yet, she has no idea how to access Netflix. “What time is the Netflix on? Does it come on after Judge Judy?”)

Well this was her big chance because I actually know which button to press to get Netflix. HINT: It is the same button you press to get everything else. So, Mom, what should we sit down and watch?

“I want to see Orange is the New Black.”

 I was thinking more in the line of the new Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Me to Mom: “You want us to watch a show about women getting beat up and sexually assaulted in prison?”
Mom: “I heard it was good.”

So I did what any good son would do. I watched another episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (guest: Joel Hodgeson) while Mom watched Walowitz getting shot into space.

 

.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Saturday Comics: The Phantom Gets Good!

29 Dec

December 29, 2017

Let’s end the year by checking back in on one of the classics. It is the Phantom, a comic character from the Golden Age created by Lee Falk. He’s “The Ghost Who Walks,” but basically just a guy in a suit who fights crime. He’s the latest in a family line of crime-fighters to use that name. When we last checked in back in 2011, there was literally nothing going on. For an entire week nothing happened. And I mean that exactly as it sounds. Let’s go back and see, then we’ll check in with the strip today and see what’s up.

UPDATED from April 16, 2011DAY ONE:

OK, I get it. I came in at the end of an adventure. It looks like a happy ending. It is actually a good thing I came in now so I can enjoy the start of a whole new story tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

DAY TWO:

Well, that’s nice. Sort of the same thing as yesterday though. And it seems a bit of a waste, story-wise, to do it in one big splash but I guess it gets the emotion across. OK, let’s see where this goes tomorrow.

DAY THREE:

What the? What’s the point of this? Is the next arc about haircuts? If this were a play I could almost hear the stage manager hissing “vamp!” while the star desperately searches for her line. This is ridiculous, the big splash yesterday should have ended the arc. I’m getting a bit tired of this, hopefully things will move ahead tomorrow.

DAY FOUR:

Um, Ok. More wasting time. Maybe they haven’t hammered out the next script yet and just tossed this in? I can’t figure out a purpose to this strip, unless it is to reinforce their dedication to fighting evil? This isn’t much of a superhero strip, it is more like a bad show on the religious station with Kirk Cameron. I’m not hopeful for tomorrow.

DAY FIVE:

Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere.

DAY SIX:Huh? Where’s The Phantom? And isn’t that the guy who was supposed to be in jail? Who are these people? I sat through almost a week for this? That strip could have been told in three panels. And re-read the second panel. “Colonel Weeks met the unknown commander.” “Worubu doubts it.” There is a verb tense problem there, and I’m usually not that picky outside of a grammar blog but that is really annoying to read. I really hope The Phantom picks up but I’m losing hope.

DAY SEVEN:

UGH! Back to that? It’s like the Sunday strip exists in a different timeline, and maybe it might. Many strips do a separate storyline on Sundays because some papers only run the Sunday strips. So I can follow the annoying story on Sunday, or follow the slow and boring story during the week, or maybe wait and see if indeed that Sunday strip is part of the same story as the weekly though it doesn’t seem to be.

DAY EIGHT:

To Hell with The Phantom. Popeye never fails. I got more out of that strip than an entire week of The Phantom. And why not? It looks like they are running a classic Sagendorf strip.

That Phantom run may have been the worst week of a comic strip that I have ever read, and that’s coming from someone who read comics written and drawn by Rob Liefeld so you know I’ve read some bad comics. The artist of this strip, Paul Ryan, was the artist on one of my favorite runs of the Fantastic Four so this hurts all the more.

DECEMBER 2017 UPDATE!

Here are the current strips from Monday December 25 to Thursday, December 28: 

Whoa, what happened? First, you might notice a change in the art. Comic book veteran Mike Manley (another favorite artist, and cool name- “Manley”-) has taken over from Paul Ryan, who died in 2016. The strip looks great. I have to give credit to the colorist too. The explosion on day two really pops. But most notably,  the writing is top notch. It zips along! There’s action! I want to know what happens next. And look at the bad guy. Despite not knowing what the plot of the story is, I feel I know all I need to know about him at this point. As a new reader I’m already drawn into the action and fairly knowledgeable about the characters. Did they change the writer, you may be wondering? Nope, it is still Tony DePaul. So maybe the 2011 run was an aberration? Or maybe he simply improved. Either way, this week’s strip is a winner. I deliberately left out the Friday strip. And that’s today (as of the date of this posts publication) so go over to comicskingdom.com and see where this story is headed. I know I will!  

 

.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →