If you’ve read this blog for a while or listened to the podcasts you may have heard the name of my hetero lifemate, Mr. Michael V. Cannetti. If you are unfamiliar with the term “hetero lifemate,” you’re clearly not a Kevin Smith fan for one. But I will paste an excellent definition that I lifted from the good old Urban Dictionary anyway:

A best friend who is so close, that were they not to match your sexual orientation, you would be married to them.

That certainly describes my friend and what a scary universe it would be if he were a woman, but I digress. Mike and I met in college; unfortunately late if you ask either of us, but we’ve done our best to make up for lost time. Whether descending on the unsuspecting masses in Atlantic City or doing some surfing photography where we plan to some day actually capture an image of Mike up on his surf board, we have loads of fun.

In fact we are oddly beyond the norm as friends go. We have come to the conclusion that we are almost the same man living in two bodies, or probably better put, two sides of one coin. What do I mean by this? Oddly coincidental things like the fact we are born exactly half a year apart to the day, or can guess things the other is thinking. We even had one incidence where I was asleep and dreaming about Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow from Family Matters) at the same time Mike was up watching a movie he was appearing in. I shit you not!

Besides all that we share a ton of interests and are genuinely the best of buds. But we are also total assholes to each other. Not in any mean way, we just prod at each other as most guy-friends do. But we just find it particularly entertaining.

Some examples throughout time can certainly be found in our many back-and-forths on facebook or in situations like our cold-war-esque prank war which every once in a while rears its ugly head. Heck, he even recorded a whole video response to my first or second podcast (I forget which but maybe I’ll post it soon) chewing apart in his mind, the things I did wrong.

So with all that said, why did I say all that? Well because ongoing as a new feature I’ll be posting little snippets from us, the Bromantic Basterds, as they happen for your entertainment. Additionally we plan on doing some podcasts when we both get a free minute. So look out for more in the coming months and in the meantime enjoy this…

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If I mentioned last week that I had nothing to say then went on to talk about DC’s launch of their mobile platforms, then I really have nothing to say this week…

So I’ll talk about Wonder Woman! Even better, I’m going to mention an article from FOX  News I found while researching this post. Exciting, huh?

First of all if you haven’t heard, for her 600th issue Wonder Woman has dropped her somewhat iconic “Stars and Stripes” costume that she’s worn for the better part of 70 years in favor of the outfit in the image above/right. I say the better part because there was a point in the sixties where someone decided to strip her of all her powers and reboot her as more of a Lara Croft girl power character. But let’s not discuss that…

I should also mention despite Wonder Woman really being one of the biggest three icons of DC Comics (Along with Superman and Batman), she has never really done much for my tastes. When she is incorporated into large story arcs she can sometimes be a really awesome character, but I get bored of a lot of her regular arcs fighting Hades and other Greek mythological characters. It’s funny too because I do like Greek mythology generally but it sometimes felt funny for a superhero to be fighting in those situations where I’d really rather see someone like Hercules or even Xena. Though the animated Wonder Woman movie from March 2009 had the Greek stuff and was IMO, totally the best of the DC Animated movies so far. Go fig.

Though they vary from her many reboots throughout time, in her origins, Wonder Woman (hereupon referred to as WW), was raised an Amazonian and blessed by the gods with powers. Via a series of events, she is sent as an ambassador to the world of men. Now that last bit especially is a key thing to remember as this post proceeds.

The FOX article titled, New Wonder Woman Loses Patriotic Costume in Favor of ‘Globalized’ Duds, begs the question, has Wonder Woman and through her, DC Comics, given up on her/their patriotism. I can’t say I’m surprised to see this type of story and least of all from FOX News. But the first chord this struck in my head was, I hadn’t even considered that angle.

I first heard of the change a few days ago when a  friend posted an article about the change on Facebook. When I saw the image I think the first thing that popped into my mind was how similar the design was to the typical 90′s look of the short jacket with rolled sleeves as seen on Superboy after the Death of Superman saga and various characters in the X-Men universe. So in a way the article raises a valid point. Why exactly are we losing this otherwise branded look? But then that line of thought led me to wonder why it’s taken as long as it has to change.

In my experience with WW, the reasoning behind her initial Stars and stripes look was the character was created in the WWII era which made it only natural to appear so patriotic. It also means that the era in which she was created made the most sense at that time for her costume to appear that way. I’ve seen it explained over time in the comics world at least that she, an Amazonian, was outfitted in this manor to respect the traditions of the place she would go to be an ambassador. Naturally since the story had her heading back to America she donned the symbol of our country.

Now times have of course changed and so has her story. This is where I’ll refer back again to the line I mentioned earlier, that she is an ambassador to the world of men, and not specifically America. When you think about it in that light, it seems she got her initial outfit wrong to begin with. Were she created at a later time, perhaps would her outfit would have bore the symbols of the United Nations?

Clearly early on in her writing in the Golden Age, she was a female counterpart to other characters like Superman and Captain America. She fought for the American way. But over time as the character returned to more natural roots that fit her backstory, America lost some of it’s focus in what WW specifically was fighting for. In the more recent decade and the stories I have actually read, she acts more as an ambassador of peace to the world than anything. And she is not as far as I know, an American citizen. She hails from Themyscira, the hidden island of the Amazons, and often makes reference to that as her home.

So is losing the American flag bikini set really that big a stretch given the direction the character has taken over all these years? I am left almost surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner. As I go on to read more of the FOX article however, I was shocked by at least one fan’s criticism of the change. Antony Coukos, described as a “Wonder Woman collector and curator of ExperiencetheWonder.com” mentions:

“Rendering the patriotic elements of her classic hero costume to ‘accessories’ that look be-dazzled onto the clothing – such as gold stars on the shoulders of a blue leather jacket – definitely seem to portray Wonder Woman less as the Ambassador of Peace we have come to love over the past 70 years.  This version looks more like what we might see in a fashion magazine featuring a street-wear look ‘inspired by Wonder Woman’.“

The part that sticks out to me most is that in Mr. Coukos opinion, losing or lessening the American symbology makes him feel like WW is now actually a lesser symbol of peace. I should first say that I am as patriotic as they come and love this country as much as any other American. But how does our flag represent peace on a global scale? We are certainly not the most peaceful country in the world (The Global Peace Index (GPI) cites New Zealand with that honor by the way). Is that to say WW should have been wearing the NZ flag all this time?

On the other hand, a few years back during the Infinite Crisis storyline, WW actually took the life of a villain while boldly displaying her stars and stripes outfit. Surely that action which shook the comic world at the time was more of a display of throwing the “Ambassador of Peace” gig out the window than donning a pair of pants?

Honestly, I don’t think Jim Lee’s new re-design of the character vastly changes her positioning on America. Or at least I will be surprised to even hear much in the way of discussion of America from the character at all. As I said, its mostly myths, monsters and super-villains these days. Even the one-time television face of WW, Linda Carter, agrees saying:

“She’s got an attitude, and if this is the new thing she wants to wear, well by God she’s going to wear it. And I like that. And I hope somewhere in the story someone mentions, where’s the old one? And she says, ‘Get over it.’”

The FOX article also doesn’t go on to mention *why* the change was made. I should say that it cites reasons in the real world such as trying to make the character more marketable to an international audience, especially with the upcoming WW movie in the making. But it forgets to mention the actual character’s motivations.

Reading from the DC Source blog, one quickly finds out that in the story, events starting in issue 600 and moving forward have the gods making a change to the past; as such, that Themyscira is no longer invisible and protected from the outside world, and that WW is sent away as a 3 year old before the island is attacked. After 20 years she is back to the Wonder Woman we essentially know, but clearly with a different past. It’s the age-old time travel question; if something significant changes in your past, will it change who you are now? Among other things, WW never would have been sent as an ambassador, and specifically to the U.S., so logically her costume would never have so richly incorporated those symbols. The blog also mentions that it is a change representative of what it claims female fans have been asking for, for years; an outfit that can allow her to be taken seriously as a warrior and which also has the added convenience of pockets. I am summarizing… but they wanted to move her into the 21st century.

You could accuse the story and its writer’s of being unpatriotic I suppose, but really it seems more like a business and story push rather than a stab at American values. The article does also cite several sources from DC who mention other reasonings behind the change, and even that if you look closely, really all the icons are still there but just downplayed. Which is true. WW still bears white stars on her shoulders, present on a blue jacket covering a red armored shirt. An outfit which much more closely resembles her original duds than lets say, Donna Troy, a.k.a. Wonder Girl a.k.a. WW’s duplicate/sister who now bears a black starry outfit. Of course that’s a stretch because a lot of people reading this blog might be asking who Donna Troy even is, as she’s clearly not as mainstream a character as WW herself.

The point is, I don’t think of DT as being more or less patriotic and I certainly don’t believe the same for WW. If anything it’s another step in the evolution of the character and hopefully we’ll see if this change sticks or is crucified by the fans. There is already some interesting reading to be had in the comments section of the above cited DC blog from fans who both approve of or oppose the change. Ultimately fans guide where characters go and if there is enough outcry from one side or the other, you may see WW’s outfit revert back or change even further. Only time will tell.

Here is this week’s comic picks! Happy reading!

Well, this post is going to be a short one today because I actually don’t really have any specific topics to discuss. Big pull list today which is always good. Of course it also means I’ll have a lot of reading to do.

One item of interest is that DC has finally launched it’s mobile platform for distributing comics. Partnered with Comixology (where I do all my pull lists) and Playstation Network, you will now be able to download your favorite DC comics and take them with you on the go.

Having looked through the app itself it’s pretty nice, but also a little sparsely filled with comics. I was also hoping for a cost of $0.99 for each book since printing and shipping costs in this format are non-existent, but they are charging $1.99 each. The official press release claims that comics will range from $0.99 to $2.99, but I only saw $1.99 ones currently.

The app itself is free and is available on the App Store for iPod Touches, iPhones and iPads today. As for the PSP, I’m not familiar enough with the device, but I assume it has a PSN store you can grab it from.

If you’d like to read the whole press release from DC, you can do so here: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: DC COMICS LAUNCHES DIGITAL PUBLISHING

Here’s this weeks picks, happy reading!

Oh, sorry about that. It’s Wednesday, and I haven’t posted in over a month. For shame! This also complicates today’s post because I wondered what I should talk about. I read several great comics or series in this time span afterall.

For one, Brightest Day and the Flash are both coming along quite nicely. I also read Final Crisis… what an astonishing disappointment that was. But the book I ultimately decided to talk about today was the phenominal series, Y: The Last Man.

I’ve been reading Y for several months now. My good friend and comic’s connoisseur, Mike, suggested it to me a few years back and once I started, I was hooked.

Y tells the story of a man named Yorick Brown, who is left the only surviving male human being after a freak apocalypse of sorts kills everything on the planet earth with the Y chromosome. He is accompanied by his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, who is also male and mysteriously also survived. Thus begins a quest spanning years and continents to find his loved ones such as his sister, mother, and ultimately his fiancée, Beth. And as well to try and solve the glaring mystery of what killed all the males on Earth.

Yorick makes many friends and enemies on his journey. On the good side people like Agent 355 of the Culper Ring who acts as his constant bodyguard and Doctor Allison Mann whose expertise is needed to try to cure the plague. Most prominently on the bad side is the Daughters of the Amazon and members of the Israeli Army. In between is a cast of characters as wide and diverse as possible which really made the many adventures of the last man on Earth a pleasure to experience.

The premise of being the last man in a world now ruled by women is interesting enough. But the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, masterfully avoids the immediate things that come to mind in this situation. Instead of going crazy trying to get with every woman he meets, Yorick actually wants to stay faithful to his girlfriend Beth and often has to go to extreme lengths to keep it that way.

The character of Yorick is interesting as well because he is not your typical hero. Most heroes in comics either wear spandex and do amazing things beyond mortal men, or are people as plain as can be. Yorick is an interesting point in between. He is an escape artist and uses his skills throughout the story to help in various situations. He also has an undeniable ability to run headfirst into the worst of situations and manage to survive. All the while quoting from a vast knowledge of pop culture references. This in particular is always funny because it is in such stark contrast to Agent 355 who is as stoic as they come.

Like most post-apocalyptic stories the world which we once knew is forever gone and lying in rubble. Highways are clogged with the hundreds of cars of dead businessmen who were commuting to work when everyone was wiped out. Most of those cars still contain their deceased owners. Planes came crashing down, power plants went offline and governments literally crumbled.

The interesting angle this story gives you is also an introspective look at the imbalance that even now still exists between men and women. For centuries men have ruled over women in our societies. In more recent centuries women have improved their place in the world. But even now there are more male doctors than females, more politicians, more engineers. The book really examines what happens when this chunk of society is suddenly removed, what the landscape would look like after.

The women of course begin to adapt and rebuild. One time super models now act as caretakers of the dead, piling the bodies of deceased men into a garbage truck and burning the remains in a football stadium, which of course with no female football players is no longer used by anyone. On the flip side, others desperately seek to unlock the secrets of human cloning, so that our race can survive beyond the current generation.

I could go on in length about the interesting perspectives this book offers, but honestly the best thing I can write in this whole blog is this: go out, get and read Y The Last Man. It’s really that good. And compiled into trade paperback graphic novels it’s easy to gather all the material.

The book is drawn nicely, simple but beautiful at the same time. Often hints and easter eggs are laced into the panels of the pages and you can really appreciate the level of work that went into it. And the story is always masterful right through the shocking, twisting end.

The book deals with many mature themes and is therefore laced with scenes dealing with such. Violence and sex permeate a lot of the story, so I don’t suggest it for young readers. But above all else, Y: The Last Man is a prime example of how the comics medium has really evolved into something that is prime for adults to enjoy.

Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!

Batman R.I.P. to most people is old news, but I’m always in a state of playing catch-up so for me, it’s new. It’s also probably the major contributing factor to my being totally lost while reading this book. From start to finish I was so very confused. Confused about characters, their motivations, the backstory, and the significance of the events unfolding before me. It’s with that in mind that I will be writing this review with a lot more aid from the DC Wiki than the book itself. Even then, I’m sure I’m still missing some major points.

While I usually talk a bit about the plot, I am honestly a bit too lost to really rehash but what I will say is that throughout the story Batman is basically in a state of losing his mind. Batman books always tend to deal a lot in the realm of the psychological. This book was the epitome of those types of concepts. From early on when a trigger word drops him into a quivering mass on the floor, to hanging out with a homeless man who turns out to have died before Bruce met him, to running around with a baseball bat in a crazy red, yellow and purple version of the bat suit and calling himself the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh with Bat-Mite tagging along.

So you can see where a Batman lightweight like myself would be in a “WTF mate?” mindset throughout. But here’s the thing: I have read several other Batman storylines where he was working through the Scarecrow’s fear gas or other villains who employ psychological attacks. In each of them, though at times quite trippy, I was able to understand what was going on more or less.

Written by Grant Morrison, Batman R.I.P. left me with way more questions than answers. While the story as I read it (the deluxe edition hardcover) was a compilation of regular issues, it was a bit of a benchmark event. For someone who isn’t so entrenched in the goings on of the Caped Crusader I felt way out of my league throughout the whole issue. While the story in and of itself was fairly self contained it almost relied too heavily on your having a very intimate knowledge of not only Batman, but of many of the characters immediately surrounding him and otherwise.

Past that, the writing, especially in dialouge was just all over the place. Again the story takes on almost a dream-like mentality because Batman is at the edge of reason. But it’s hard to tell at any given time if he is having a moment of awesome Batman detective clarity or a total mental breakdown. Everything is presented so matter-of-factly that you are just along for the ride because any second guessing what’s going on will leave you flat on your face. OK, Batman and Bat-Mite are sitting on a roof and Bat-Mite is trying to convince Batman to hide from criminals but he’s too busy arguing with a pair of Gargoyles about how the city is like a grid. Why? What does this serve for the story?

At one point Bat-Mite tells Batman he can no longer come with him because he is the last sense of reason and if Batman goes any further there can be no more reason. Ok wait, Bat-Mite represents reason? Um, what? This is clearly where you have to start questioning what you’re reading. When you are agreeing totally with a Hyper-Imp from the 5th dimension who may or may not be a figment of Batman’s imagination. It was at this crucial juncture I was feeling like Bat-Mite, wishing I could just stay outside and let the rest blow over.

At any rate, the story by the end was good enough I guess. But on the whole it was a real let-down. My next read is of course Final Crisis, also by Morrison, and I have to say I am worried. I guess some part of me really needs a lot of these stories spelled out for me. I don’t mind doing some thinking to understand these stories but it seems like half of this was so over-thought and could have been stripped out. At it’s essence, the whole story of Black Hand could easily have been condensed down to one issue. The rest was psychobabble fluff that didn’t make sense for all the wrong reasons.

When I read Batman I read it because he has awesome adventures. He’s the worlds greatest Detective and a human being who has pushed himself to a physical peak. While I get that there are many stories like this that wade in the realm of Bruce’s amazing psyche, I’d rather see him applying it to something. This, where for page after page he’s just meandering around seemingly like a loon, just really doesn’t do it for me. At least not for any period of time longer than a few pages.

The Batman that is in total control of the situation, no matter how dangerous or strange or amazing is the Batman we all know and love. The Batman that is in control even when the bad guys think he isn’t and it seems like all hope is lost. In Batman R.I.P. I just wasn’t getting that sense. He seemed more like a whirling dervish going through the motions of the story with little glimpses of the real Batman shining through only when plot points became totally obvious. Yes, you could say the fact that he trained himself so well that he created a backup personality of himself to help if he were ever under mental attack is pretty amazing. But for me, it’s almost too amazing. Though I do have to say I liked the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh running around cracking skulls with his Louisville Slugger.

My sole pick for the week is Brightest Day #1 which I also had the benefit of reading since it is in fact Thursday, and I have to say it was pretty good. It’s setting up some threads for a new mystery and should be a lot of fun. Seems the resurrected heroes aren’t quite done with death just yet. Happy reading!

This was the first con where I really made an attempt to get some signatures from writers and artists that I really like. I was very lucky to get Geoff Johns and Alex Ross to sign several of my things. I tried more than once to meet up with Jim Lee but has bad timing for his scheduled times and was unable to find him elsewhere. I did manage a few other signed items by other people too, but I’ll get into more detail on that and the items when I show them below.

First, here are three comics I actually brought with me from home, specifically to get them signed. To really show my comiccon naïveté I figured 3 comics was a good number to bring. So I selected my three favorites in both story and cover art. Well, didn’t I feel silly (or maybe normal?) when walking into the lines with fellow fans I discovered they had entire pull suitcases or boxes on carts with them, filled to their brims with years worth of comic books.

My first time in the Geoff Johns line I was told in order to optimize time there’d be a limit of 10 items per person. Well holy crap! I guess I was under the limit then huh? Especially since Angie was with me the whole time, I could have really had 20 things signed. Well, not to look foolish I grabbed some extra things for him to sign, but I’ll mention those later.

The three comics I had him sign were Green Lantern #50 Jim Lee Variant, Blackest Night #6 and Blackest Night #8. Here’s pictures of all three with his sigs. You’ll also note that on GL#50 I also got Doug Mahnke’s signature as well. It was just my luck and entirely unbeknownst to me that sitting right next to Geoff at this particular time slot, he was signing as well. So when Geoff signed it, he passed it right over to Doug. Sweet!

The next three are all items I got signed, but also got them at C2E2. The first is a very special copy of Blackest Night #8. I had to do a bit of research on this but it turned out to be pretty impressive. See, in one of the DC panels they posted a number to text a message to in order to win a signed copy of the hardcover collected edition of Wednesday Comics. I did so and got a message back that I had won! The only problem was I got the message at exactly 7:00 PM. Which is also exactly when the show floor closes, plus I was in the middle of another panel. So the next day I stopped by the DC Booth and they explained that there had been a mistake and that I hadn’t actually won. Several people had gotten the message but it was only meant to go to one person. They had given away the prize already, so they decided to give me a copy of this comic instead.

When I first got it, I was thankful to them and the guy who gave it to me said “it’s probably worth more than the Wednesday Comics book anyway”. Figuring this was a standard variant I figured he meant because variants usually sell for $10-25 or so anyway. Like I said though, in researching this book I noticed that the standard variant looked different. It had a colored-in background and some different colors and lighting effects on it. Well, it took a bit of digging, but I found out that this particluar copy was handed out only to retailers who attended the C2E2 Diamond Retailer Summit dinner two days before the show started. I don’t know the actual number of printed editions, but it makes this very rare. Then I went ahead and got Geoff to sign it, so now it’s even rarer. You can find it currently selling from many retailers for upwards of $150-$300.

The other two I mentioned are copies of The Flash #1 and Brightest Day #0. Both I had to buy at the show because I was flying to Chicago on the Wednesday they came out. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find them for the longest time. I figured it’d be easy to buy new comics at a comics show, but many if not most of the retailers on the floor were trying to expunge their collections of trades and back issues. I eventually found one selling the new issues though and picked them up. Geoff was kind enough to sign both when I caught him after a panel. Brightest Day however, I was able to get Peter Tomasi, who you’ll recall I lauded several posts back for his amazing work on Green Lantern Corps, to sign Brightest Day beforehand.

That’s it for the comic books themselves. Here’s a few more items I manged to get signed. First up is the Limited Edition C2E2 show poster I received for being a VIP. I had intended to get one of the two I own signed by as many writers and artists I like as possible. But after the first time I got it signed I stopped that idea. It’s actually a pretty funny story.

You’ll remember a few paragraphs up I mentioned how I felt a little empty handed when getting Geoff to sign things, so I added a few more. Well, one of these posters was one of those items and when I unfolded and handed it to him he went, “The Avengers… Huh…” Which was funny, really and truly, but I was horrified. I had just offended the man who singlehandedly gotten me back into comics by asking him not only to sign a poster that he had no hand in, but asking him to sign a poster in the DC booth, at a DC signing with a team of characters that are not even remotely affiliated with DC. I tried to justify to him that it was the C2E2 show poster that I was trying to get signed by multiple people, but I realized it wasn’t worth trying to explain my failed concept. This moment represents my low of the show, I felt so dumb. Now I can only laugh at it. Thats how my quest for signatures ended as I realized most anyone I’d want signing it, work for DC.

Of course, pictured below you won’t find Geoff’s signature. While I still have that poster as well, I opted to photograph the version that makes more sense. That being; one signed by the amazing artist, Alex Ross (who designed the poster). You’ll notice it is #28 of a run of 500 which makes it another great collectible, especially signed by the man himself.

The other poster I got signed was this brilliant and huge poster that DC was giving away for Brightest Day. No real unique story to this either, but it was another item I threw on the pile for Geoff to sign feeling empty handed. The only funny part of this poster is the odd spot at the bottom with the sponsors. I’m considering snipping those off as they otherwise wreck it.

The next items up in my little showcase are another pair of limited edition items. For the C2E2 show, DC Direct offered 1,500 copies of two action figures. A Black Lantern Hal Jordan and the White Lantern Sinestro. They were sold by Graphitti Designs in a raffle format. You would have to line up at certain times of day and try to draw a red ticket out of a bag full of blue ones. Well, I managed to get lucky once more and pulled a red ticket out while hundreds of other people got blues. With my red ticket I got a bracelet and with my bracelet I was able to cross the show floor back to Graphitti Designs’ booth which was literally located on the exact opposite spot from the ticket booth.

The figures themselves are awesome and come packaged in a book-style type of container that fastens shut with a piece of velcro. Each contains the figure itself plus the corresponding ring. Yes, that means I have a White Power ring. Rest assured though, I was told at the show that everyone else will be able to get their hands on them with Brightest Day issue #1.

Besides these figures I also picked up a shirt from Graphitti Designs. I didn’t personally take this picture, it’s from their site. But you get the idea.

Finally I’ll wrap this up with three amazing pieces of art. Another first for me, I picked up several prints I saw and loved throughout my time at the show. The first is by an artist who also owns a store called, BuyMeToys.com. His name is Casey Heying and he regularly does the art for a series called The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles. His booth had a very large version of this print posted on its wall and immediately caught my eye. I talked with him for a while and he was a really nice guy. He explained to me he decided to do a Blackest Night piece instead of Brightest day because he had some serious time constraints coming up to C2E2. He wanted to include the White Lantern logo, but decided it was best to leave it as it is. I really love it, and think he did an amazing job. I need to get it framed up soon. He also signed it for me at the bottom.

The last two here I came across in the Artist Alley. I stopped and started talking with Gabe Eltaeb, colorist for more than several issues of both Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. Another really nice guy, Gabe had a bunch of prints of his art available for sale. What genuinely caught my eye was the first piece you’ll see below with the “chibi” New Guardians and Nekron. Larfleeze always cracks me up in the comics, but here especially he is very funny. I would love for Gabe to pitch a series featuring chibi Larfleeze. The second piece below was a joint work that if I remember correctly was penciled and inked by Nick Runge, someone who I am not really familiar with, and colored by Gabe. It’s another great piece, I have to give it to Nick. A little different but pretty cool. Nick was also on hand, siting next to Gabe, but I didn’t really get a chance to talk with him much. Both did sign it however.

And that wraps it up on my main take of swag. There was lots of little things I got too like a collection of buttons given away for free at the DC booth. I also got a set of mini-buttons from a retailer that featured all the various lantern corps logos. I got an amazing Flash poster as well, but somehow managed not to think to get it signed on the several times I saw Geoff. Lots of little things like that. But this was all the main good stuff.

Expect another post sometime soon about the show in general and maybe some shots from around the show floor. See you next time.

When I was at C2E2 I attended several DC Universe panels with the amazing staff of DC. A lot of focus was put on the new direction of the DCU into the “Brightest Day”. For a lot of my favorite characters, this is spelling out big things. Amongst the many things talked about, the New Guardians are here to stay (at least for now), and there will be a whole new Green Lantern series, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I wasn’t so sure about Brightest Day. Like I said, going into Blackest Night I knew what I was getting into, I knew what sort of story to expect and which characters would be involved. I am now happy to say that Geoff Johns himself, sitting no further than 20 feet away, personally assured me on all my fears for Brightest Day.

Brightest Day itself will focus primarily on the 12 characters brought back to life in Blackest Night #8. Why are they back? Why were they, out of thousands or even millions of others, chosen? That’s the focus of this new series. They have an important mission to complete that they don’t even know fully the reasons for yet.

As death was the theme in Blackest Night, life is the theme of Brightest Day. At this point in time all the heroes are contemplating what has happened and where their lives are going next. Several of the ongoing series are being paired up with some new series going forward. Obviously series like Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps will carry on from where Blackest Night left off. New series include: The Flash, Green Arrow, Justice League: Generation Lost, Birds of Prey, Titans: Villains for Hire and of course the headline of the series, Brightest Day.

It’s an exciting time to see all these new series being birthed from the recent events in the DCU. Each of these new series brings something to the table and each should have very interesting takes on the characters. Despite another of my previous posts, I am actually looking forward to where the new Flash series is going. In addition, the Green Arrow series should be very interesting and will be dealing directly with Oliver Queen’s choice to take a life, while being spared his own after his trial in Star City. In fact, I think we will see some big things coming soon for Green Arrow.

Brightest Day issue #0 was interesting for a lot of reasons. But perhaps the biggest mystery of all took place in the final panels of the book. Deadman, or now, “Aliveman” as Geoff and crew are calling him, appears amongst the destruction in Star City. In an unbelievable moment, a forest grows from the spot he stands in the shape of a giant star. Geoff in particular talked several times about how important Star City was about to become. Could it be ground Zero for Brightest Day? He insisted that something was lurking in that forest. Possibly something other than Oliver Queen.

Green Lantern #53 was also very interesting. Most of it was spent checking in with various members of the New Guardians, but also shedding a little light on where these characters are headed in the “reborn” DCU. I am really looking forward to the next issue because Sinestro has informed Hal Jordan that the White Power Battery is specifically asking  for him.

We also see a mysterious character who enters a chamber where Parallax is chained to a giant monolith with the Sinestro Corps logo on it, amongst similar monoliths for all the other corps. This was another point Geoff spoke on several times. We finally saw all of the emotional entities in the last Blackest Night, but he assured everyone attending that we would see them all again, and soon. I am thinking this new shady character will be the main enemy of the new Guardians in Brightest Day. He is gathering the entities and will use their power for his own.

I could go on forever, but there is a lot of exciting things happening. I am really looking forward to the coming months. Today, I am most excited for Green Lantern Corps #47. It should shed some light on what is coming up for the corps, especially now that they lie in pieces after the Black Lantern attacks on Oa.

Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading in the Brightest Day!

The show was a lot of fun and there were a whole lot of very talented people who created and wore some of the best cosplay outfits I’ve seen in a while. I plan on posting more information all throughout the week but my first post is dedicated to those folks who stopped and let me take their picture. So as a special edition of Pete’s Wednesday Comics Picks, I am picking out some of my top favorite cosplayers of C2E2.

I will also link to all the photos below at the end of the post. If you find yourself or a friend in one of the photos, please comment and let me know what you think! If you find any where I didn’t know the character as well, please let me know who they are.

First though, I’d like to talk a little about the photography itself. As you can see on this post’s main image I created a backpack rig for myself that set me up with a flash umbrella. I think this made a world of difference in the shots this year as I had a nice nearby indirect source of light to brighten all the subjects up. When you’re in those big convention halls with the super high ceilings its tough to get your subject lit without a flash, and direct flash sucks as it leaves them too bright or washed out. This interesting concept really paid off and I am really proud of it. I may have to try it again at some other shows.

What really cracked me up was that no one really seemed to find it odd to see me walking by with this giant umbrella looming over my shoulder. A few people, mostly other photographers, approached me and commented on the uniqueness of the idea. At least one guy in artist alley started creating a back story for me, calling me Satellite Man! It was very funny. It was also very painful. The bag with extra lenses, my netbook and other miscellaneous gear easily weighed at least 20 lbs and I would definitely start feeling it after a few hours.

Anyway, on to the picks!

Best of show
Starting this off with a bang, here is my pick for best outfit at the show. This took a lot of thought because there were so many people who did such a great job. But there was one person who pulled off such a great job not only with the costume itself but staying in character as well that it had to be him. Best in show goes to Captain Jack Sparrow who not only looked perfect but put on a fantastic show of mimicking the character just right and a voice to match.

Most Creative
While everyone who donned a costume and strolled up and down the many alleys on the show floor are incredibly creative people, this award goes to a person who I thought really was very clever with their costume. The award goes to Neytiri for many reasons. First, she painted her whole body blue head to toe, did a great job with the outfit itself, had awesome little ears and made a prosthetic for the nose. But the best part? The part that I found to be such a creative idea? She painted the big yellow Avatar eyes on her eyelids, and when asked to pose, would simply close her eyes and suddenly come to life as Neytiri. Very, very well done!

Funniest
Not everyone who sets out to a comic-con like C2E2 in costume are going for laughs. Some do. In particular this next guy had me cracking up every time I saw him, which by just looking at the picture you’d have to ask yourself why. To be honest I don’t know who he’s supposed to be, maybe just some creation of his own. If you know, please do tell me. But he won because he on several occasions made me laugh out loud. The first was when I handed him my information slip. If you were photographed by me at the show, you’ll remember this as the little piece of paper that had info to come find this very post. I don’t think anyone could have been more excited than he was. He didn’t talk ever during the weekend but instead made a bunch of happy squealing noises and emoted his excitement through and through. Another highlight was when a Stormtrooper went after him and he tricked the Stormtrooper and got away by pointing at nothing, getting the Stormtrooper to look then taking off in the other direction in as cartoony a way as possible.

Cutest
I know what you are thinking. “Cutest? Really? At a Comic Convention?” Bear with me… I don’t know why but there was such a presence of cute little kids dressed in costume this year. Even if their parents weren’t these little tikes were sporting the gear of their favorite (or maybe their parents’ favorite) superhero. I in fact can’t give this award to any one in particular as they were each adorable, so they all win this award equally for being such good sports.

Hottest
Again you are proabably saying to yourself, “Hottest? Really!? At a Comic Convention?”. Plus you might also be saying, “Right after you showed me adorable children in costumes?” Well to the latter, I am shameless. And to the former, we geeks can be a very hot crowd when we want to. While I can personally only attest to the hotness of the ladies at the event, I’ll give an award for this to both one girl and one guy to be fair. I am also not giving it to “booth babes” because they are hired to be there and I’m not sure you’d see them within 10 miles of the place otherwise. (I did get an email from one who told me she especially took the job to be there, so kudos to her and anyone else who did! I’m sterotyping a bit, going for the cheap joke at least, but so many in my experience have been people that couldn’t have been any less interested in the material at hand. I’m sure there are tons of people who pride themselves on being ranked amongst us geeks, so I’m really happy to hear even more confirmation there are those of you out there who are! Thanks Maygin!)

For the hottest lady award, I am giving it to Ironette. The shiny red and gold short-shorts and top plus her clever flashlight energy repulsors certainly weren’t repulsing the male fans who passed her by. For the hottest man award, I am giving it to a Jedi I spotted who opted for shiny blue body paint instead of a more traditional Jedi tunic. And I can see why, as this guy seriously works out.

Coolest
You’ll see a lot of different people in costumes at con’s like C2E2 that are trying to look heroic or villainous. Many who look charming or disgusting. But there is a sect of people that no matter what, just look freaking cool. This guy dressed as Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7 is amongst them. I mean just look at this picture. He exudes cool.

Most Badass
There  were seriously a lot of people in costume that looked really badass. But one stood out as one scary mofo and that goes to Red Skull. With that crazy red skull for a head, the imposing uniform and those icy blue eyes, I would not want to run into him in a dark alley. He also had a pistol he pointed at people constantly and some crazy glass cube (apparently the Cosmic Cube; I’m not up to speed on my Captain America villains to be honest) which makes him even more badass!

Best Team
There were many groups at C2E2 from Ghostbusters to Batman Villains. But the best group as far as I’m concerned went by X-Force. I didn’t get to ask them about themselves but I think they are a family. It shows just how out of the loop in the Marvel universe I am right now that I can’t name any of the characters besides Wolverine and X-23, so please feel free to help me fill in the blanks. I especially liked the little wolf creature who had the hardest job of the bunch if you ask me.

Best costume from TV or a Movie
This is a category for all those who don’t fit in the realm of comics but have a big presence at this types of shows anyway. Icons from tv and movie pop-culture who you instantly can recognize in a crowd. There were many to be seen, many of which were from Star Wars as tends to be the case at these conventions. There were oh so many to chose from but ultimately I keep spotting this one guy as one of my many favorites. When you walk by a bunch of Stormtroopers or Darth Vaders, their outfits are always so impressive. But you can also have a hard time telling if it was the same guy you saw before. That was not the case with the winner of this category. While he was dressed as the well known bounty hunter, Jengo Fett, he didn’t have a helmet with him, insofar as I saw anyway. And he happened to look a lot like Temuera Morrison, the actor who plays Jengo in the movies. So Jengo Fett gets this award not only for the great outfit but for standing out of the faceless crowd.

Best costume from a Video Game
Like the previous category, this is for those I spotted dressed specifically as characters from Video Games. This was another hard pick as there were some great cosplayers in this category. I saw more than several people from Team Fortress 2 which cracked me up, especially one Blu Scout who had the mouth to match the character. But the winner for this category goes to a guy who created his very own COG Soldier from Gears of War. His armor lit up and the outfit looked great. The hat really completed it and while I’ve not personally seen this character in the games, it feels like he could easily fit in to the next installment.

Best costume from Other categories
What do I mean, from Other Categories? Well there was a shocking amount of people dressed as Steampunks or in Renaissance garb. There’s the always popular anime and manga based characters and some I had no idea who they were. The winner for this goes to the Steampunk category. While I spotted one guy who had a wheelchair built out in steampunk, this guy just had on a plain old steampunk outfit. But something about it really caught my eye. I still can’t tell you what exactly, maybe that boss pipe, but the photo will speak for itself.

Best Comic Book Hero

As the last but certainly not least photo I’ll talk about, I wanted to call out the best hero from a comic book. A lot of people really shone in this category from the many Green Arrows to the Rorschachs to the members of the various Lantern Corps. But one stood above the rest and did so in flesh-colored tights. My good friend Thom spent Saturday of C2E2 patrolling the show floor as the caped crusader’s ward, the boy wonder, Robin. Everywhere we walked people stopped him to take pictures. In the costume contest he was called the bravest man at the con for his outfit choice, and I have to give him the same. So congrats to Thom for best Comic Book Hero!

For everyone else, You all looked amazing. Thanks for stopping by and reading my post. I make posts like this every Wednesday and I would love for you all to stop back and check them out. If you find an image of yourself, please comment and let me know what you think. And a very special thanks for letting me take your picture! Here is the link to the rest of the set of C2E2 Cosplayers Pictures. Check back in the next few days for more pictures from around the show floor.

http://tinyurl.com/C2E22010

And of course, I can’t forget to actually post this week’s comics picks! I’ll post last weeks as well since I couldn’t post then. Happy Reading!

I captured several hundred shots of people in amazing costumes, and images around the show floor. Well done to you all for those amazing outfits! I hope you enjoyed the con as much as I did.

I’m currently working very hard on sorting through and touching up everything. Please check back within the next few days and I’ll hopefully be able to get them ready and posted.

In the meantime, feel free to check out the rest of my blog. Of particular interest to most of you will be my Pete’s Wednesday Comics Picks posts.

Please also check back for more C2E2 posts throughout the week and maybe even a special podcast episode.

On the long awaited return of the PeteCast podcast:

An introduction
A big change in Pete’s life
2010 Challenge Update
What’s up with Pete?
Queue it up – The Hurt Locker

Subscribe on iTunes and get new episodes automatically when they are posted. Use the link on the right sidebar or click here:

I must apologize for my lack of a post yesterday. Not to mention the missing Friday Weight loss results and March Wrap up. They are all coming soon, I promise. It’s just been an interesting two weeks for me that has not left enough time for the PeteCast blog. Anyway, on with the comics.

As I said in the title, I’m a day late and a comic short. That’s because I not only am posting today instead of yesterday, but because I did not make my Midtown Comics trip. So today I’m going to talk about someone who is never late for anything, because he’s the fastest man alive; the Flash. And in particular, since there are more than several Flashes these days, Barry Allen.

The Flash is a funny character for me. There are times where I really like the concept, there are times I hate it. The character overall is a good guy and friends with Hal Jordan, so that gives him some points in my book. But at other times I get lost on his concept.

Way back in time, the flash was just really fast. He had an accident with some chemicals and a lightning bolt and wham, now he can speed around the world in an instant. Or can he? See this is one of the reasons why following the Flash is hard. Depending on who is writing him or what situation he’s in, his powers tend to change. Of course this happens with a lot of super heroes, but the Flash in particular seems to stick out in my mind.

For instance, in one issue he might be racing Superman around the world. In another he runs so fast he actually jumps forward or backward in time. In another he is vibrating so fast he can move through solid objects. In yet another he’s vibrating sooo fast that he can vibrate through alternate *dimensions*. I mean, I guess all this is feasible if he can go so fast, but it just seems like he can do whatever the situation calls for because “he is fast”.

Lets talk storylines. Flash isn’t someone I have followed heavily. I’ve caught glimpses in the major story arcs like the crisis books. Recently I read both Flash Rebirth and Blackest Night in which he is a top tier character in both (most obviously in Flash Rebirth). Both also written by Geoff Johns. Now Flash throughout time ends up being an important character in those major arcs for one reason or another. The “Speed Force” especially has become one of the bigger mysterious forces in the DCU. But even those two books by the same writer are so vastly different, it might as well not be the same character.

Flash was great in Blackest Night. There’s no arguing it. The whole thing starts with Hal and Barry talking over the grave of Bruce Wayne and ends on the same note. Inbetween he fights the Black Lantern Martian Manhunter to a standstill, amongst others and becomes a Blue Lantern because of his undeniable hope. Flash Rebirth on the other hand was very hard to follow. Maybe thats in part because I am not the biggest Flash fan out there and missed a lot of the major reasons why things were significant. But compared to Green Lantern’s rebirth series, it didn’t even hold a candle to it. I’m not just saying that because I’m a GL fan either, its because the GL series was so epic from start to finish, while Flash Rebirth just felt like it was happening and thats it. It was particularly tied to the “Flash” characters, meaning all the multiple Flashes and their offspring.

Even that is contrived, you’ve got Jay Garrick the original Flash retconned to be the Flash of Earth 2. There’s Wally West, originally Kid Flash who took over in Barry’s absense and given powers in the exact identical way that Barry got them. Then you’ve got Bart Allen, Barry Allen’s grandson who traveled back from the future. Then there’s the Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, one of Flashes main enemies and apparently something like a “negative” or opposite to Barry’s “positive” speed. And that’s just the main ones. There’s also other speedster type characters that tie in like Jesse Quick/Liberty Belle and her father, Johnny Quick. There’s Max Mercury, Savitar and Lady Flash. Hell, there’s even Wally’s small twin children, Iris and Jai. The list goes on and on, but the number of speedsters is almost ridiculous.

Anyway, lets bring the point home. In my picks this week is the Flash: Secret Files and Origins 2010. I have no idea if I’m actually going to pick this one up or not. I think I’ll have to do something I almost never do, which is leaf through it a bit. On one hand it could help me understand the character and his accomplices a bit better. On the other I might not care.

The trouble is Flash seems to be shaping up to be a major player both in his new ongoing Flash series as well as Brightest Day. Going into Blackest night I *knew* I wanted to read it all because I love Green Lantern. I am lacking that same enthusiasm for these Flash-related series. Its a tough call, and I think only time will tell what I ultimately end up doing.

Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!

It’s been a very interesting plot to say the least, filled with many twists and turns. No one can say that Geoff Johns isn’t truly a master of his art. What makes Blackest Night such a great series is the many different mysteries that it offers up while also forcing our favorite heroes to come face to face with those they have lost. It’s full of raw emotion which while in most stories like this is something of an undertone, here it is the main focus. The Black Lantern’s feed on the emotions of the living and in turn the living need to try and deal with those same emotions to come to terms with life and death. All the while, death is staring them literally in the face.

I think Blackest Night has definitely catered to many fans of many different publications. All the major players had to deal with shadows of their past and many lesser known characters were proven to have great depth as well when faced with their individual losses. It goes to show that in in all of the years DC has been publishing stories of these characters that some serious weight has piled up on them. It makes the characters so much more real, so much more relatable. After all, who of us hasn’t lost someone or something in our lives? We all wish we could see those lost loved ones again, but at what cost?

That is a question our heroes have had to answer over and over again lately. Some were overcome by their torn feelings and joined the ranks of the Black Lanterns. Others had the inner strength and courage to face their past mistakes and live through to a brighter day.

On the whole the series has been magnificent because while so many arching plots deal with some villains megalomaniac plans to control the world or destroy the heroes, this plot seemingly is an attack on life itself. Life from everywhere in the universe. It’s the type of all encompassing sweeping plot as seen in the crisis books. But at the same time, in those so much more focus was on finding and beating the bad guy. In this the villain, Nekron, has almost been an afterthought. Instead the struggles have been internal troubles manifested into reality by the perished loved ones of the protagonists. Its very deep ideas in a medium that tends to be thought of as children’s rags.

Of course outwardly it’s, “Superheroes vs. Zombies”. But Geoff and the other amazing writers at DC have managed to make it so much more.

At any rate, I’m very excited for the conclusion of the series and to see what comes next. Any way it goes, sweeping charges are coming to the DC Universe and come Brightest Day I imagine we will have a very different group of heroes than before.

Happy reading, here’s the picks:

Go-o-oal! Go-o-oal!
Hey! Hey! Hey-Hey-Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey-Hey-Hey!

Click me for the Rangers Goal Song

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 190.0
Current BMI: 26.60
Weight loss from start: -43.7 lbs.
Progress: This week marks the successful return to my previous weight loss track record. Losing a total of 3.1 lbs has landed me today exactly on my initial goal weight of 190.

GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!

I feel great and am so thankful for all the help and support I’ve received from friends and family. I am now officially making 180 my next goal and I’ve set a time of 2 months to try and do so.

There’s not terribly much more to say about the week. I had a scare where I went up 1.1 lbs one day but came right back down again over the next 2. I did some serious working out with our trainer Missy for the first time and she showed me a lot of great exercises I can start doing while on hiatus from the gym.

The one I knew about but forgot to look up was the first issue of The Guild. The Guild has up until now been a web-based series starring Felicia Day and an ensemble cast. It’s published by Dark Horse and when I saw it on the rack I figured I’d give it a read through. Not sure what to expect from it besides probably more of the goofy characterizations that they portray in the web series.

The other that I didn’t know about was due to not doing my homework. Part of Rise and Fall that I mentioned 2 weeks ago, leading out of Cry For Justice. This one features Roy Harper, A.K.A. Arsenal, A.K.A. Red Arrow. I flipped through briefly and it looks like this covers what happened to Roy during the events of Cry for Justice which led to his now armless state. Curious to see what happened here.

Perhaps I’ll mention more about these in an upcoming post, but for now here’s the updated picks and wishing you again, happy reading!

Blackest Night and Green Lantern got me back into collecting comics. As the series is quickly winding down now, it sort of feels like the end of an era. All those tie-ins that have made my Wednesday Comics picks weightier are now all but done, leaving me with weeks like this with only 1 pick or *gasp* none at all! Of course, after Blackest Night, comes Brightest Day. But I’m not entirely sold on it yet, so I’ll have to see which direction it takes.

I also had a lot of expectations of what would happen during and by the end of BN. Surprisingly enough I was right on almost all counts. Almost. Lets start at the beginning…

A few issues along I started discussing the series with my good friend Mike. I theorized several ideas to him. One example, said that one of the four Earth based Green Lantern’s (Hal, Kyle, Guy, John) would die. I thought this because with such big events like this in the DCU, usually main characters tend to end up dead. With 4 GL’s just from this one planet it seemed inevitable. Well, as it turned out I was partially right, Kyle did in fact get killed. He was brought back, which I was almost more surprised by than his being killed off, though both events were shocking to say the least.

But the biggest theory I tossed out there was: before all is said and done, there would rise a White Lantern Corps. Now while this may not seem like such a stretch you have to take this in context. This theory was made before the events of this series got going. Before anyone mentioned that the universe was all darkness before the light came and splintered creating life. Before we really knew much of anything about Black Rings or Black Lanterns. In fact, I sat one day and created the following image in photoshop. One that has received enormous daily hits on Flickr every day since I posted it back in July of 2009. In it you’ll note I left an open loop for a White Lantern Corps logo (I’ll have to finish it now that we’ve finally seen what the White Lantern Corps looks like).

(Click for larger)

I had reasons for theorizing that this would end up being the case outside of just, “well its the opposite of black”. Anyone familiar with some areas of science or color theory, both things which I’ve studied throughout my life via various science and graphic design classes will quickly see what I’m getting at. Color theory basically states that in the visible spectrum of light, white is a total of all colors while black is a lack of all colors. Now, if you’ve ever sat and tried to see what color you get by scribbling all the crayons from your big Crayola box together, you often end up with a dark brownish mucky mess, not white. So you are probably asking yourself, “what’s he going on about?”

To understand what I mean, let me put it into real world perspective. Imagine you’re out walking barefoot on a nice summer day. You come to a road. The blacktop is of course black and is stiflingly hot. If you walk on it you’ll surely burn your feet. But if you opt to walk on the white painted line, surprisingly you’ll find it is way cooler and bearable to walk down. That’s because the materials of the road are reflecting or absorbing visible light and returning that as varying degrees of heat. See, color is a bit of an illusion. Without getting too technical and discussing various wavelengths etc, all things that take on a color have certain properties that define what parts of the visible spectrum of light will be absorbed and which will be reflected. In other words if something is “red”, the material of which it is made reflects the red part of the visible light being shone on it. So it itself is not in fact “red” it just has the ability to reflect red light, thus it appears red to our eyes.

Taking it back to my hot road example, the blacktop, being black, absorbs all of the visible wave spectrum converting the light to heat, and showing visibly as black. On the other hand, the painted line, being white, reflects all of the visible wave spectrum therefore not allowing any light in to become heat, and showing visibly as white. There’s a lot more to it than this and you can search the web for things like white, black, color, light etc if you’re really interested. There’s plenty out there that describe it in far greater detail than I am now.

Enough science? Back to the comics? OK… So I theorized that the White Lantern Corps had to exist when all of the splintered light (various Lantern Corps) came together as one. Well this kept becoming more and more likely as the series has progressed finally leading up to the discovery of Trespasser, the white light entity.

However, this is also where I was entirely wrong. Along with the WLC, I theorized that Hal Jordan would be the very first White Lantern. Why? Because he’s the only person to have ever worn the rings of all 7 other Lantern Corps. I figured it’d make the most sense that he had experienced wielding all of the other light’s powers.

So it was to my utter shock and dismay that Sinestro, not Hal, was the first White Lantern. Apparently Geoff and crew planned for this and assumed most fans would be stunned, as is evidenced in the final version of the front cover. Just read Sinestro’s speech bubble in the image below… “You were expecting someone else?!” They are certainly not without a sense of humor!

(Click for larger)

I don’t honestly know how to feel about Sinestro becoming the White Lantern. I suppose he’s as entitled to it as anyone else living, but Sinestro has never been the epitome of “life”. If anything he’s always sought to extinguish the lives of those who don’t follow his word and fear mongering. Assuming, of course, that the White Lantern Corps and the Trespasser entity are representative of “Life” as The Black Lantern Corps and Nekron are representative of “Death”. His motives are all wrong, only seeking to prove finally that he is the greatest Lantern of all time, not Hal Jordan.

Either way it should be interesting as the final battle literally is now life vs death. I can’t imagine the outcome as it raises so many questions. If life prevails will fallen heroes of the past like Martian Manhunter and Aquaman just return from the dead? With a new Aquaman series starting up in the midst of Brightest Day, it sure seems like it. And what will happen to the different corps? Will they again splinter and go back to warring with each other or maintain their fragile peace? Will they all join together, shed their colors and become the new White Lantern Corps? What will happen to the Guardians now that they have been proven, for perhaps the last time, to no longer be worthy of that title? Will Sinestro merging with the entity of life help change his corrupt ways? Is Hal Jordan or Sinestro truly the greatest Lantern?

A lot stands to be answered, and soon. Today’s GL #52 and next week’s Blackest Night #8 of 8 should hopefully put a definitive end to at least some of these mysteries.  But for now, I’m left to worry if Sinestro taking charge won’t be the beginning of the end for all the corps. We shall see.

In the meantime here’s my pick (in case you hadn’t clearly already guessed). Happy reading!

UPDATE: I made two last minute additions at the comic store, see here for more info.

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 193.1
Current BMI: 27.04
Weight loss from start: -40.6 lbs.
Progress: Clearly last week’s hopeful prediction of making this the week to hit 190, was off. There’s clear reasons why I failed this week. Of highest note was eating out two nights in a row. It’s just too hard to stick to the diet when you’re out with friends at places like China Fun and Gus and Gabriel’s Gastropub. And another factor was bad timing every night leading to only 1 or 2 gym stops.

At least the gain was not so significant as to negate a lot of progress. Last Friday I was at 192.7 meaning I’ve only gained 0.4 lbs from last week. I did get as low as 192, but didn’t break it, so its also not like I got down to 190 then came back up. Overall I’m not surprised or really that upset about it. I’ll just make the effort to curb it this new week and try to jump start it again.

I debated going back to phase 1 for the week, but think I’m just going to focus on phase 2 eating but really making sure I don’t bend the rules at all.

On a positive note I have ridden my bike to and from work the past few days and am excited to keep that up. We will be putting our gym membership on hold once the weather is really nice enough to be able to work out outside.

I have to admit, I was for a long while after hearing about this movie, not at all interested. The prospect of a movie about a guy flying around the country firing people for a living  just seemed like something I could skip. Especially given the still shaky but slowly recovering job atmosphere we are all living in, I was immediately filled with nothing but disinterest. Clearly I skipped it in the theater, but like most new releases, I tacked it onto my saved list for Netflix.

Even when my in-laws saw it and reported that it was in fact a very good movie, I still really didn’t feel the need to see it with any expedited rush. Not even after all the Oscar buzz. But as fate would have it, it got cycled into the top of my queue along with another bunch of new releases and ended up being sent to me on it’s release date, last Thursday, March 9th.

Before I delve any further, here’s the Netflix description:

Up in the Air

2009 — Rated: R — 109 minutes
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) racks up miles flying around the country firing employees on behalf of companies. But he faces losing the job he savors to recent college grad Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) — and losing the ability to escape emotional ties to anything. A connection he builds with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), however, might change his outlook on the future. Golden Globe winner Jason Reitman’s smart comedy also stars Jason Bateman.

Having now seen it, I actually really liked it. George Clooney cannot be said to be anything but a top actor. While he tends to be be one of those actors that always feels like, “George Clooney playing George Clooney as ______”, he does an excellent job of making those characters enjoyable. This movie is no exception.

As the description above indicates, the main character named Ryan, has an odd job that he is quite good at. When his boss calls him in for an emergency meeting he discovers that his job and life are about to take a drastic turn for the worse. A recent college grad named Natalie has come up with a computerized system to fire people over video conferencing software which would otherwise replace the need for people like Ryan to be traveling constantly.

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Unlike you or me, Ryan literally loves to travel for business. This news then, clearly hits him like a ton of bricks. He spends all but a few weeks out of every year away from home and loathes the time when he does have to come  back. His boss sends him off for one last hurrah until the new system can start being integrated, and sends Natalie along to gain valuable insight from the master of the trade.

From here the movie is on autopilot taking you from this man who lives, eats and breathes everything travel, examines what makes him tick and eventually breaks him down. At the start his goals are to hit a not so modest number of miles traveled in his lifetime and to spend his time meeting new people and going wherever the job takes him. By the end he realizes that all his notions of happiness are as hollow as his existence however, and suddenly finds himself all alone in the world. In this respect you really see how he effects those around him, not ever really letting them in until it’s too late and he is left wondering if his life has been meaningful. It’s quite powerful and I was surprised to find it in such an otherwise convoluted story.

Natalie, young, inexperienced and full of hope and dreams realizes slowly that all her education has taught her nothing about the real world. When you first hear about her new video-based firing system you suddenly are thrown for a loop. On one hand you see Ryan axing people from jobs they love or need and you think, “how could someone do this for a living?” But then this new system that doesn’t really even put the two people truly face to face manages to feel even more cold and heartless. This is especially true in one scene where Ryan and Natalie are called into a location only to discover they will be firing someone through the new video system. Things take a very sour note however when they realize the man they are firing is actually located in the room next door. Encounters like this and another that takes a very heart-wrenching turn towards the end of the movie quickly make Natalie realize she isn’t cut out for this business.

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The other of the three main characters in the movie is a woman named Alex. When Ryan first meets Alex they hit it off as both discover each other to be constant travelers. The two begin a funny and completely loose relationship meeting for sexual romps when they happen to both be in the same regions of the country, often during layovers between flights. They joke and astonish at each others track records and wallets full of rewards cards for airlines, hotels and car rental agencies. On Natalie’s pushing and after several events, Ryan does what he would otherwise never do; try to pursue an actual relationship with Alex.

There are several other threads to this story, most prominently one involving Ryan’s sister getting married. He of course is mostly estranged to his family not having physically seen them in several years due to his traveling. He invites Alex along to the wedding as his own relationship seems to be blossoming, claiming that for once in his life he actually wants a “plus one”. It’s at this wedding and the events leading up to it that he starts to realize that he may be getting to a point where he would like to settle down and start a family. But sadly his fate as with those of the others in this film, is not how they expect things to be. Everyone eventually realizes the truths they held to be evident are really just all facades they try to hold up. Facades, that eventually break and crumble.

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I don’t want to get too deep into the story for fear of spoiling the plot for anyone who hasn’t seen it. At any rate, it’s well worth seeing. I was surprised to find such a good movie under the circumstances, but it was exactly that nonetheless. Going perfectly along with the themes in the movie, things aren’t as they always first appear and sometimes you can really find out something different when you least expect it. I certainly did, and I think you should too.

Verdict: Queue it up!

Here’s a look into my queue for some more possible upcoming titles for future Queue it up’s:

(Hover your mouse over a cover to see the title)

Yes it’s true, only one pick this week, and that is Green Lantern Corps #46, the final chapter for the GLC in the Blackest Night Saga. What a saga it has been. The GLC, like everyone else in the DC Universe has been hit quite hard by the plague of the undead Black Lanterns. However, the GLC comics to me at least, have really shone amongst the brightest in this series.

This entire time, the Black Lanterns have been assaulting Oa; home to the Guardians, the GLC Power Battery and the Green Lantern Corps itself. It’s been a very serious struggle since the beginning. All of the Corps with little exception was called back to Oa to help fight off the dead. But it just kept managing to get worse and worse. The black rings descended like a swarm on Oa and claimed the bodies of the honored dead members of the GLC’s past. With their numbers now exponentially higher, the BLC made things even worse by bringing back painful memories for many of the core whose previously deceased friends now faced them head on. Kyle Rayner, Kilowog, Arisia and others all had to fight their past friends, comrades, family and loves. It was painful to see them come to terms that these were no longer their loved ones, but empty shells of what they once were. They powered through and overcame by their sheer will and determination.

Others came to help, including Munk of the Indigo Tribe and a member of the Star Sapphires. Through their combined powers with the GLC they managed to fight off even more of the Black Lanterns.

Then in a moment of true bravery, Kyle Rayner gave his life to protect those who were left from the imminent explosion of a power battery. This act of self-sacrifice in the face of the evil hordes threw Guy Gardner over the edge. Succumbing to a Red Lantern Corps rage ring and going berserk with both the red and his green ring, Guy seemed unstoppable. Meanwhile Kyle Rayner is saved by Soranik Natu and a Star Sapphire at the last moment, much to the relief of Kyle’s fans everywhere.

However, Guy is now on an unstoppable killing spree. While his combined emerald rage destroys many Black Lanterns, or at least, keeps them at bay for the moment, the Central Power Battery is still under attack and soon falls under the Black Lanterns might. That is, until Mogo, the sentient planet and member of the GLC, shows up and pulls them all into his core, leaving them forever entombed in his fiery center where they cannot escape.

With the Black Lantern threat quelled for the moment, Guy Gardner’s rage shifts totally onto his comrades. Mogo and the rest of our heroes do their best to help Guy free himself of the red ring, but it is no easy task. Mogo in one last desperate act manages to help Guy by purifying his body and blood of the red ring’s effects.

Seriously… what a rush. This arc in the GLC comics has been amongst one of the most thrilling of any that have happened. As of the end of GLC #45, our heroes have been teleported over Earth with marching orders for all of the warring Lantern Corps to join forces for the final battle with Nekron and his Black Lanterns. It should be quite a showdown. Go green!

We are also left to wonder about the fate of John Stewart and the Alpha Lanterns. Can’t wait for more on these!

Here’s this week’s pick, happy reading and the luck of the Irish to you!

The principle is simple, I place the movie(s) and description(s) here, and talk about what I did or didn’t like about it. It’s basically a brief movie review for new movies that are just releasing on DVD/Bluray or stuff that’s been out a while. Most of the time it’ll be for things I haven’t seen. That’s the beauty of Netflix; miss it at the theater, see it at home. Sometimes it’ll be for movies that I have seen, just watched again and would like to recommend. And sometimes, just for fun, I’ll throw out some random movie pick that I haven’t seen in a long time, haven’t rented recently, but just thought I’d talk about.

Then after all that, I give it a rating and say if I’d suggest you, “Queue it up!”, or “Remove it!”. Then you should do exactly as I say. Simple huh?

Sometimes there will be only one movie, sometimes a few. Depends on how many I watch in a given time period. I will be trying to apply this to movies streamed instantly as well. I’ll also try to include what the next item on my queue is in anticipation of the next Queue it up review, but sometimes Netflix doesn’t always send the item on top. Que será, será.

Expect the first Queue it up soon!

This past weekend I saw Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D. Most of my region was experiencing a nor’easter or some similar type of storm. I was supposed to originally help out with an MS Society charity event helping children of parents with MS to go ice skating. I was also supposed to go to my nephew’s birthday party which coincidentally was also to be an ice skating party. Long story, but I ended up not being able to do the first because of the second, and not being able to do the second because of the weather. So Alice it was.

I guess I should start by saying this is probably going to focus on my problems with the movie a lot more than what I liked about it. I rated this movie as a 3.5 stars out of 5. I’m still a little undecided to be honest. Sometimes I feel like being generous and giving it a 4, sometimes a 3. But I think it’ll have to stay in the middle.

(if you are wondering about my ratings, please refer to Pete’s Rating Scale)

There is not one single inherent problem with Alice so much as a bunch of little quirks that add up to a much greater whole. I guess it’s best to take it one step at a time and explain the things that bothered me enough to rate down what could have otherwise been a great movie. And before I even begin, let me just throw this here so no one can complain…

Spoiler Alert! Plot details ahead.

OK, first off I am not put out at all that Tim Burton decided to do his own thing with the Alice mythology. After all, almost every adaptation has deviated from the original concept time and time again, especially the beloved Disney animated classic. Additionally, I love the pairings of both Alice and Looking Glass. A lot of this movie is drawn from one of the very first scenes in Looking Glass, in particular, the poem about the Jabberwocky. As the Jabberwocky poem is often regarded by literature nuts as one of the greatest all time pieces of nonsense writing, it’s perfect that it’s given such high esteem in this film.

Instead of the normal jaunt with the 6 year old, in this version, Alice is now about 20 years old, and remembers her original adventurers in Wonderland only as a recurring dream she’s had throughout her life. It’s no surprise then that when she ends up in Wonderland once again that she feels she must be in a dream as well. This is one of my biggest problems with the story. She actually thinks it’s a dream for about 95% of the movie. To which she endlessly makes reference. This was just really annoying. In the very beginning of the movie it is established that she has this gimmick she worked out with her father, where if she pinches herself, she’ll wake up. Well, she pinches herself, makes a comment about how it’s odd that she isn’t waking up and instead of having that, “Oh my god, this is REAL!”, moment she continues believing everything is just a figment of her imagination. She even tells a few characters so to their faces. This one dumb device is an example of what ends up leading to most of my issues with the movie…

“Pointlessness”. It’s pointless because all movie long people are telling her it’s not a dream then she finally talks with a character again near the very end and he mumbles something like, “blah blah blah the last time you were here”, and then BAM! She suddenly realizes it’s not a dream, but a memory! Come on! Really? What a pointless exercise.

In short, the MacGuffin for the movie is that the “Frabjous Day” is coming, on which Alice must kill the Red Queen’s champion, the Jabberwoky, which will restore everything to its rightful way. Lets take a step back though, in the years since Alice was here last time, I guess, Wonderland… oh excuse me… I mean to say, Underland. Oh yea, forgot that. See it’s not called, “Wonderland”, it’s called “Underland”. Alice just said it wrong when she was little and no one corrected her because she was cute or something. And also because changing the name fills up like 10 minutes of useless plot. It also leads one to wonder why they didn’t just call the movie, “Alice in Underland” in the first place. Sorry… So in the years since Alice was last in Underland the place has gone into the shitter, so to speak. The Red Queen who is a mash-up of the Queen of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland and the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass, rules over the land with fear. Her sister, the White Queen who apparently is beloved by all has been ousted from power. So now all the goofy critters and talking flowers et al from her time as a child now are each members of an underground resistance to take out the Red Queen and restore the White Queen to power. What? At one point they show Alice in flashbacks when she was here as a child and everything seemed just peachy. So what changed? The Red Queen was seemingly in power then, why wasn’t everything so horrible back then too?

Anyway, the White Rabbit went and grabbed Alice to come help because it’s what she’s supposed to do. Hmm… lets take a closer look at that statement. The movie starts of course in Victorian times and Alice is to be betrothed to the son of her father’s old business partner. The son who sucks in every way imaginable (of course) asks Alice to marry her in front of a large group of people who are all there because everyone except Alice knows that this giant party is their engagement party. Of course Alice is supposed to accept the proposal because the times being what they are, it’s what she’s supposed to do. Ahh, see where they are going with this?

So back in Wonderland she is actually on a quest of self discovery to learn that she can choose for herself and not have to do what she’s supposed to do. Well, it doesn’t quite go that way. See there’s this scroll called the Necronomicon or some other similarly ridiculously and pointlessly named scroll that shows the entire history of Underland. On it, it depicts Alice slaying the Jabberwocky on the Frabjous Day. Hence why the “white” critters are so excited, because their savior is returning to thwart the evil Red Queen. This scroll pops up several more times throughout the movie and always looking in on this same scene. But there is all this confusion if Alice is the right Alice, or if the White Rabbit grabbed the wrong one. Here’s an idea… Why not look a little further ahead in the scroll and see who wins?

Not unlike Alice believing everything is a dream for 95% of the movie, all of the people of Underland, except the Hatter for some reason, think that Alice isn’t actually Alice for most of the movie too. The Hatter though, knows it’s her instantly and never says anything contrariwise (the Tweedle’s favorite utterance). The Catepillar knows too, but he thinks he’s clever by telling everyone that it’s not her, when in fact he means, it’s not her *yet* because, you know, she needs to become who she once was again, or something.

Basically, the movie is Alice in Wonderland meets the Matrix: Neo (Alice), A.K.A. “The One” (A.K.A. The Champion)  must go down the rabbit hole (umm… actual literal translation of that concept?), learn kung fu (get the Vorpal Sword),  and believe in himself (Realize she is the true Alice or something) to beat the Matrix’s (Red Queen’s) champion, Agent Smith (Jabberwocky) and free all the enslaved humans (some talking animals and a Scottish guy with a funny hat) from the Matrix (Underland).

Oh. On that note, lets discuss the Hatter. Clearly in the advertising of this movie Alice herself is a bit of an afterthought. Who do you find featured in all the posters and trailers? Willy Wonk… I mean, the Hatter, played by Johnny Depp. It’s no surprise because thanks to Burton’s wonderful mind, he is in image, one of the best parts of this re-imagining. Except that on film he sort of falls apart. What I mean is, in some moments he is as wacky as ever sipping tea with the March Hare and Dormouse while reciting the famous nonsense riddle, “Why is a Raven like a writing desk?”. At other times, seemingly out of nowhere, his eyes turn yellow for some reason, he gains a ridiculously over-the-top Scottish accent, and acts like a murderous lunatic. In the end during the big battle he wears a kilt and carries an enormous claymore broadsword which he wields with the precision of a battle-tested warrior. Huh? It seems like more than just being “mad” he’s suffering from a case of “what-the-hell-is-this-character-supposed-to-act-like-itis”.

Back in my Matrix analogy, the Hatter is kind of like Morpheus. He alone sees Alice as being their one true savior, and is the person she must be brought to in order to really get her quest under way. He gives himself up to save her, which then she goes and tries to save him, again just like in the Matrix only with a Cheshire Cat instead of a helicopter. He also speaks very softly and with pearls of wisdom through hidden meanings, until a fight breaks out then he is a kung fu beast, flailing around wildly with his sword. Maybe not exactly, but definite parallels can be drawn.

While we’re on characters, let me do a quick rundown of the baddies. There is the Red Queen played by Helena Bonham Carter. She has a big head. For no discernible reason. I guess just because they could do it and figured, “why not?”. She rules over everyone because she has a massive army of metal hulking playing cards, the Bandersnatch, the Jubjub bird, and of course, the Jabberwocky all working for her. Also this guy with a heart-shaped patch over his eye. So of course with these gigantic evil beasts doing all of her dirty work, the people of Underland live in terror.

Early on Alice and group are attacked by said playing card army, patch-wearing guy and Bandersnatch. Alice is slashed across her arm at one point by the Bandersnatch and narrowly manages to escape with the Dormouse while the others are all taken away to the Red Queen’s castle. Shortly thereafter Alice encounters the Cheshire Cat, my personal favorite character of the movie, who informs her that the cut on her arm is evil or something, and if it is not healed/purified soon, will be really bad. She opts to just cover it up instead  and spends most of the movie that way. It was at this point, I was like “Cool!” and started thinking it would become infected with evil and make her want to turn on her comrades until something happened to bring her back to the light, but no. Later on she just gets it healed and it’s fine. Served no purpose. Pointlessness again.

I could go on and on about things like this, but it’s basically the problem I had with the whole movie. Underland/Wonderland is supposed to be a place that makes no sense in a silly way. In this movie, everything makes no sense in the annoying, this really makes no sense and serves no purpose kind of way. The ultimate examples of this come at the end of the movie.

Firstly, Alice finally realizes she is their champion because even though the White Queen tells her it’s her choice, she opts to do what she’s supposed to do, and puts on the armor, carries the Vorpal Sword and manages to slay the Jabberwocky. Time out! I have to mention that she pulled a Schwarzenegger kill-line as she kills the Jabberwocky. Of course throughout the whole movie the Red Queen is constantly screaming, “Off with his/her/their head/heads!” So what does Alice battle cry as she kills the Jabberwocky? Yep. They did that. Sad isn’t it? Anyway… She kills the Jabberwocky, the Jubjub bird is killed in battle and the Bandersnatch who earlier just decided he liked Alice and sided up with her are therefore all out of commission. But the Red Queen still has this giant army of Heart cards that could easily carry on her reign for her right? No, they just all throw down their weapons. They aren’t even in risk of losing. Sure they are battling it out with the White Queen’s army of chess pieces, and sure the “champion” jabberowkcy has fallen. But they all are just like, “Nope, we’re not serving you anymore”. In fact everyone on the Red Queen’s side does the same, including her eye-patch-man-servant guy.

The White Queen won’t kill the Red Queen because its against her “code” so she banishes her to wander in the “outlands” forever. She also sends the eye-patch guy with her. So eye-patch just decides he cannot friggen stand the Red Queen all of a sudden and tries to kill her. They stop him, but still send them off together. What? Why has he been hanging out with her, helping her this whole time, all kissy face and whatever, and then he hates her so bad he wants to kill her as soon as the Jabberwocky isn’t around? What? What’s with all of them? If they all hated her so much, why not just outright join the White Queen from the start? because they’re afraid of this one Jabberwocky creature? I mean, I guess so, but really? Especially because wandering around the White Queen’s palace, all is really just fine there. Shes not in hiding, she doesn’t appear to be under constant attack or really in any kind of danger. I think everyone could have just gone there and hung out and drank tea and it would have been fine.

Well, besides this, to celebrate the Jabberwocky’s death and the return of the White Queen to power, the Hatter breaks out into some dance whose name I can’t pronounce even if I remembered it where basically he wobbles around and parts of his body spin around to some zany electronica sounding music because, I guess they figured, “why not?”. This was by and far the most uncomfortable part of the movie. I don’t think anyone in the theater was thinking, “Holy crap, what a cool dance!” Everyone seriously had to be sitting there squirming in their chairs as if some nasty hideous, sweat-soaked, fat, naked guy was trying to shimmy by them to go get more popcorn and got his feet stuck in some old spilled soda and was now dangerously close to losing his balance and falling back, mushing his butt checks on your face. At least, thats how I felt.

I don’t know. I had a lot of high expectations for this movie and they were dashed. It seemed rushed, or like the writers couldn’t exactly figure out what they wanted for the plot, or what character’s motivations should be. Technically, the movie was beautiful, although the inclusion of the 3D element felt like a total afterthought; tacked on merely to try and ride Avatar’s coattails. It wasn’t entirely bad, as you see I gave it a half decent rating. It was fun and if you’re willing to look past all the stuff that makes no sense for the wrong reasons and focus entirely on the stuff that makes no sense for the right reasons, challenging as that may be, then this may be for you. If you are any kind of die hard fan for the original works and are opposed to changing the material, this is most definitely NOT for you.

At times I really enjoyed myself during this movie, at other times the actors and actresses in it seemed to be wondering why they bothered. Most particularly Anne Hathaway as the White Queen who’s arms remain loftily in the air throughout the whole charade I guess, as a joke on being proper or something. It seems like at times you could almost read in her eyes thinking to herself, she is amazing actress and yet has been reduced to a Kewpie doll princess. She seems like such a flake, I’m not sure Underland has been left in any better hands.

The movie ends back in the real world on just as nonsensical a note. She comes back out of the rabbit hole, even though her life here is arguably way cooler and more fun, and despite the Hatter begging her to stay. Back down to the party she goes, but because she learned she can do whatever she wants in Underland by having done what she was supposed to do and not what she wanted, she of course tells the guy she won’t marry him. She also tacks on her advice for several other people nearby wasting more precious minutes and ends by making a creepy business deal with her father’s ex-partner instead. What?

So she sails away on a boat to explore the world and the Caterpillar now turned butterfly lands on her shoulder and she says hello to him and Neo gets off the phone and flies up into the air over the city to the tune of some Rage Against the Machine and ah shit, I’ve had enough. You get the point. Too many utterly pointless things and cheese to make it a 4 star movie, plenty of fun and rollicking adventures and silly characters to make it a 3. So, 3 and a half it is. See it in IMAX 3D or don’t, doesn’t matter. If not, give it a rental.

Alice in Wonderland

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 192.7
Current BMI: 26.98 (need to doublecheck, have been bad about remembering these lately)
Weight loss from start: -41.0 lbs.
Progress: I’m happy to say that I have stepped off my roller coaster ride (at least for now). This week with little exception has been back on the downward trend. I’ve been eating properly, cheating extremely little and exercising aplenty. That’s how I’ve managed to hit another fantastic milestone; over 40lbs. lost since start. In fact, as of today its 41… but who’s counting?

I am just shy of hitting my goal now. If I can repeat the results from this week, next week (which incidentally was a total of 3.5 lbs lost), then I will clearly jump right below 190! Only 2.7 to go for that mark and I think it’s completely doable by next Friday. So stay tuned for a milestone post!

As I said, I’ve been exercising a fair bit this week, but nothing overboard. I was happy to have nice enough weather the other day though that I was able to ride my bike to and from work for the first time this season. I really love biking, not only because it speeds up the otherwise slow walk, but because it’s just plain enjoyable. Of course everything was dead along the path; the trees, the flowers, the bums. Ok, maybe not the bums. I didn’t see any of those. But you get my point. Hope everything starts kicking into springtime bloom soon.

It’s also possible that I lost a pound or two just from my gigantic Final Fantasy XIII post from yesterday hahaha, no really, go read it.

All joking aside, this week has helped to boost my morale again. Last week I was feeling pretty down on myself. I know 1.6 lbs is still a good loss, but I have a long way to go to get rid of this stubborn belly fat and slow downs like that don’t make you feel too confident about it. Anyway, I’m back on course now and looking forward to bigger and better results.

Way back in the year 1997, a game was released for the Sony Playstation called: Final Fantasy VII. It was my first real foray into the RPG (Role-playing game) genre. I absolutely loved it. I’m sure I had seen or dabbled in other RPG’s before (probably Secret of Mana or something similar at friend’s houses), but this is my first real sturdy memory of playing all the way through an RPG that I myself owned.

The game featured a cast of ragtag heroes that were all fighting for one reason or another and involved a sweeping plot that went from rebellion against a mega-corporation all the way to an alien presence trying to attack the life energy of a planet by smashing an enormous meteor into it’s surface. Way out there stuff; but that’s the very definition of a lot of “JRPG’s” with the “J” standing for Japanese.

I think what sold me mostly was the story and longevity. I couldn’t honestly say how long it took me to beat the game, but it definitely had to be a long time. And I was horrible at it, so I cheated like crazy. Thank god for Game Shark!

So why all the talk about FF7? Well because like I said, it was my first step into this genre that I’ve now spent so much more time in. It also made me a permanent Final Fantasy fan and has made me excited for this new entry into the line.

So here we are, 13 years later with a Final Fantasy of the same number; 13. FF13 was announced several years back and has had one of the slowest information leaks of any games in recent memory. Throughout all of that though, fans of the series have been going nuts for the release and finally as of this last week, we now have our hands on it. A long time coming, does the title deliver? Well that’s a matter of opinion of course and the reviews have been quite varied.

Before I really dive in, as the title of this post directly implies, these are just my initial impressions. I haven’t finished the game. In fact I’m only around an hour or so in. So I can’t really refute or backup what a lot of the critics and fans say. I can only offer my initial thoughts and feelings and how that relates to my own style of play and interests in games. I will however also make comment on what I’ve read and heard elsewhere, and how I feel about those thoughts and ideas. Now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way…

Many reviewers have panned the game with their biggest claim being that it’s too linear. Many, if not most RPG’s usually give you a world to explore, with towns and people to meet and talk to. The qualm with FF13 seems to be that you are practically on rails for a large portion of the game with these longstanding staples of both RPG’s in general and particularly the Final Fantasy series, seemingly thrown out the window.

From the little time I’ve spent so far, I can confirm without a doubt that you are treading down a narrow path in at least the beginning of this game, and if it’s setting the tone for what’s to come, I can see where a lot of fans might have a problem with it. I’m not sure that I do yet, to be honest. I grew up playing a lot of games on paths. In fact, I’d argue most, if not all games are on paths. Some may be a little more narrow than others, and perhaps some are masked just a little better than others so you never notice. I will say FF13′s path is noticeably slim. But so are a lot of games. What’s important is determining for yourself, “is that the measure of a game?” I’m not so sure it is.

Think of how many platformers or even FPS games you’ve ever seen where you don’t get much choice in where your character can go. It’s usually “forward” with some twists and turns, stairways and pitfalls. At the end of the day you still mostly follow a linear progression. The exception to the rule is of course the so-called “sandbox games” like Grand Theft Auto IV. These represent the opposite spectrum from FF13 for sure. But even they have their limits. GTAIV for example would only allow you into certain areas of the game to start. It’s a weak example, I know, but you have to take into consideration, “when does the linearity of a character’s path truly affect if I will enjoy this game or not?” The parts I’ve ventured through so far have been almost as straight as an arrow. But I’m not sure I needed a winding path or wide open field to make my experience thus far any better. In fact it may have made it worse. The setting I am in currently has the heroes trudging ahead at a rapid pace to help save civilians and put a stop to the bad guys, thus far introduced as “PSICOM”. I’m not sure wandering around aimlessly would vastly improve this mechanic.

Here’s another question to ask yourself… What is a video game at its core? Usually a story accompanied by some type of play mechanics that enable you to go from beginning to end while providing challenges along the way that you must overcome. From what I’ve played so far there is plenty of both. In fact if the game can truly be faulted for anything, is that there is way more story than playing. This is another argument critics have made. The game focuses too heavy on story, not enough on playing and is therefore more like an interactive movie. Well, on this point I can’t say I totally disagree. For every minute of playing thus far there’s probably been 2 of CGI cut-scenes of the characters talking about this or that or flying around in hover-cars etc. Some of it you see and think to yourself, I’d like to do that. But at the same time I sit back and really enjoy the spectacle of everything thats happening.

RPG’s in particular are always more story heavy than any other type of game. FF13 seems to take it to a little bit of an extreme. It’s an odd mechanic, but again one that I’m not really hating just yet either. I don’t know what’s exactly to come, so I can’t say for a fact that when I’m 20 hours in and still sitting idly by while the narrator, Vanille bops me endlessly over the head with her Austrailian-accent-laced-exposition, that I won’t be pissed. On the other hand maybe the story will be so engrossing to me that I’ll be looking forward to the next cut-scene to divulge the next hidden mystery. I am a LOST fan after all. That means I have 2 things going for me. Infinite freaking patience and an insatiable need to gobble up the loose crumbs of a story. (I even hear that this game uses a ton of flashbacks!) For now I am engulfed in the midst of lots going on with very little information. They call that “the hook”. The thing that sinks its claws into you and makes you want to learn more about all these characters.

Speaking of which, I have been loosely introduced thus far to several of the main cast including the main heroine Lightning, a(n) (ex)solider with an agenda and Sazh who seems to possibly have been a pilot but is now tagging goofily along behind Lightning trying to figure out her angle. He also has a small chocobo chick that lives in his afro, which is priceless. On another front (literally) there is Snow, the main male hero of the story who is leading his team of young rebels named NORA against the PSICOM troops in an effort to help save civilians from being slaughtered. It’s through these actions that he indirectly meets Vanille, a cheery red headed girl and Hope, a young boy whose mother… well, I won’t spoil it. But anyway these groups are slowly coming together. As anyone can foresee, they will soon meet and become a team because their mutual backgrounds and chance meetings are bringing them together for a unified purpose. Pretty much the way every other FF game I’ve played has panned out. But still they are each unique and I am interested to learn their backgrounds.

Oh… there’s also this whole thing involving these god-like creatures that rule over Cocoon, where our heroes live and its shadow world, Pulse, below and there’s this century-long ongoing war between the two and people can be outcast and have to live on Pulse, where there’s all manner of horrible creatures waiting to kill them all, yadda yadda yadda. So bring on that thick soupy story goodness.

The last thing I should talk about is how amazing this game looks. I did a funny thing. I own a PS3, but have only ever used it as a DVD/Bluray player. I own 2 other games for it but haven’t gotten into them yet. All the lead-up to this game changed dramatically when it was announced that it would launch for Xbox360, my true platform of choice. But it was developed primarily for the PS3 since the beginning. I debated for along time which platform to choose. I ultimately went with the PS3 because the CGI scenes which make up so much of the experience were uncompressed 1080P, unlike the 360 which was forced to compress them down to 720. On a game like this, that is so driven by its overwhelmingly gorgeous cut-scenes and even amazingly detailed environments, I decided I wanted to see it in the best possible format. PS3 was the choice for that this time. Something I thought I’d never say, so way to go FF13.

But getting back to my point… this – game – looks – freaking – great. You’ll have noticed that I’ve plastered this post with the visages of the game’s main characters. I actually can’t help myself because they are all so meticulously created and rendered, each is like a moving piece of art. Their facial and body expressions when animated are among the best I’ve ever seen. And while maintaining that anime-esque cartoony look, they are in many ways more human than most game characters I’ve come across. Don’t believe me? Click any of those images and see their full-sized amazing counterparts. I will say though, these are representative of their CGI cut-scene counterparts, however their regular game versions are really not that far off. The environments, while I’ve only seen a  limited selection, have gorgeous work both near and far. I took some time at one point to scan around the war-torn horizon at pillars of fire and smoke emanating from buildings in the distance. Fantastic.

Anyway, there is a lot more I could say both good and bad about things like the voice acting and wonky camera respectively. There’s also a lot I don’t feel inclined to talk about yet like the battle system, since I’ve experienced only its most humble beginnings. So I’ll save it in case I ever get around to writing a full review. In the meantime, for any RPG or Final Fantasy fans out there, it’s worth checking out.

I am being a bad comic-geek this week and skipping my trip to midtown. It’s not for lack of decent weather. On the contrary, it’s gorgeous out and I’d very much like to take a break from work to walk over to Midtown Comics. The trouble is as I mentioned, I only have 2 picks for the week and as of right now, only 1 for next week (combined trip methinks).

I actually had 2 lined up originally. Then an issue got pushed back, so it went down to one. I then found out about a follow-up one shot for Cry for Justice, so I added that last minute. So now it’s back to two and all this math has exhausted me.

Needless to say, I am excited for this one-shot, as I discussed in last week’s post that this would probably be the result of the end of Cry for Justice. However, I am behind in my reading and have yet to finish Cry for Justice. So I am worried that this cover that I’ve displayed on today’s post should have come with a spoiler alert. Comic covers often lie, but this one seems to be a bit specific and so is it’s variant. Oh well.

The other pick is yet another in the Modern Warfare 2 run, which in my opinion is taking waaaay too long to deliver. There is nothing overly spectacular about this series. The art doesn’t particularly scream anything about taking weeks on end to finish. Yet this series has been slowly trickling out since early November if you can believe it. With this being only issue number 4 of 6, that means it’s been averaging less than an issue per month and I shouldn’t expect it to wrap up before May or June at the soonest. Bleh.

I’ve already long since beaten the game it’s based on and moved on and beaten a few more in that time. Not to say that’s an accurate measure of how long a print run of comics should take, but it is starting to feel old and musty. I barely remember the series exists until a new issue pops up in my pull list. I’ll likely have to start reading from the beginning too because its telling a fairly compact and linear story, and honest to god I don’t remember how it started. They can’t all be winners I guess.

Anyhoo here’s this weeks (meager) picks, happy reading…

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 196.2
Current BMI: 27.47
Weight loss from start: -37.5 lbs.
Progress: That was my week; the roller coaster week. All ups and downs. I write today on a bittersweet note. You see above my current progress has me at 196.2 which is 37.5 lbs down from my start. Awesome right? Sadly other days in this week I was as low as 195.3, 38.4 lbs lost. Oh well.

The sad thing I am learning about my body and this diet… as long as I stick to all the rules 100%, I lose weight. The second I deviate even slightly, up it goes. Of course that makes sense, but it is also very aggravating. I know a lot of people who don’t work out a ton or do anything really, eat whatever they want and stay thinner than me. So I guess my body hates itself. No fast metabolism for me.

Was hoping this diet would speed it up so much that it could carry over on the very few days where I do cheat. The other day we had some pizza. That immediately knocked me up from that 195.3 back up to even higher than I am at in my current number. How can one meal make the difference of adding over a lb back on vs several days of loss? You have to take into account that I went to the gym both Monday and last night and did a good workout both times and having been walking to and from work again. So there’s no good reason why I wasn’t countering the weight loss either.

Eh, enough venting, I knew this was an uphill struggle from the start, but it is very frustrating. Because of the fluctuation, on the whole I only lost 1.3 lbs this week, making it the worst week to date. Of course it could have been worse; I could have gained weight. But still, it doesn’t feel great and especially after such a good week last week.

Meh, here’s a sine wave. Click it to see it in motion, it’ll graphically explain why my week sucked….

(click for larger)

]]> http://petecast.com/?feed=rss2&p=648 1 http://petecast.com/?p=632 http://petecast.com/?p=632#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:27:31 +0000 Pete Labrozzi http://petecast.com/?p=632 Wednesday rolls around again, and despite the weather being fairly crummy, I have a mission! Why? because it’s new comics Wednesday!

This week I am heading over to good old Midtown Comics to pick up this weeks pull list, as well as last weeks. I couldn’t be more excited to finally get my grubby mitts on Blackest Night number 7! And speaking of the number seven, this week’s picks also features another “7th” issue; Justice League – Cry for Justice #7.

Cry for Justice (CfJ) has been an interesting series from the start. I picked up the first one because my man, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, was leading the charge. CfJ explores several heroes coming together and demanding justice. The idea is that most heroes sit around and wait for something bad to happen, then proceed to stop the bad guys. However, a few select heroes are tired of this approach to fighting crime, and want to take the war to their enemy’s front doors instead.

Thus begins a series of parallel story arcs that slowly have intertwined back into one over the series run. Number 7 is the final issue and promises to change the lives of some of our heroes and the DC Universe forever. I know, how often do we hear that? But the way this has been leading up so far, I can actually believe it.

While not seemingly as important as the events of Blackest Night and slow to start, CfJ has overall been a great series, especially for the interesting and very different art style. The first issues spent most of their time introducing the cast of characters for this romp, setting up exactly why they are in need of justice and drawing lines in the sand between themselves and their comrades. This last point is important. The title suggests that the Justice League is on board, while in fact practically everyone disagrees with GL. He recruits Green Arrow and a few others to his cause, but Superman, Wonder Woman and other mainliners are mostly M.I.A. in this plan for justice. Instead the cast is filled out with select individuals who in their own time have had success in individual runs or team series but tend to be more or less “B” characters these days.

(click for larger)

The villain of the series, Prometheus is amongst the most serious bad guys I’ve read in comics. The writers chose to retcon his character for CfJ. Apparently when Prometheus first appeared several years back, he was pretty bad, but then sort of turned into a joke. Now they make it out that the *real* Prometheus simply went away for a while and some moron impostor took up his name and garb. Well, this guy is no poser as he kills the Tasmanian Devil and turns him into a rug in his lair as just one example. He is utterly ruthless and incredibly intelligent. He is likened to being Batman’s equivalent in mental prowess, strategy and ability, except purely evil.

(click for larger)

As I mentioned briefly before, one of the main things I’ve liked about this series is the extremely out of the norm art style. Most series and artists stick to the sort of normal standard look. These characters and scenes all look like they were painted, similar to Alex Ross’s style seen in so many covers. At the same time its not nearly as photo-realistic as Ross’s work either showing almost a “scratchy” crosshatched look similar to what you’d get from colored pencils. So it’s an interesting and fun blend of two distinct styles which I’ve really found to be quite enjoyable. However, I’m glad its limited to this series’ run because while very good looking, I don’t think it meshes with what I and a lot of other comic fans are used to or comfortable with for longer series runs. You can see what I mean in the examples above and below, you can click each for a larger view.

(click for larger)

Anyway, I cannot wait to see what the end of this series brings. Supposedly its going to spark some kind of new series or change in existing ones. Should be interesting to see what comes next.

One other note before I drop my pull list for the week. You’ll notice the list includes Mass Effect: Redemption #2. While I listed this a while back, I missed getting it in the store and it actually sold out! So I am grabbing this re-print this time around. Here’s hoping Midtown got it.

Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!

I have been making a push to try and post lots of fun content on the site. In the future this will only expand. I have been doing my best as well to get the word out there about the PeteCast. I set up recently a feature that automatically posts an alert on Facebook when new posts are made. With these alerts showing up both from me and to fans of the PeteCast there has been a fantastic raise in traffic.

However, I know I can do better. So I am happy to announce the addition of the PeteCast eNewsletter! You can read more about it by visiting the eNewsletter link in the right side column or by clicking here.

By signing up for the eNewsletter you will receive as-it-happens alerts or weekly/monthly recaps (you can change these options in your eNewsletter preferences). This way you can stay up to date with all the happenings of the PeteCast and be the first to know about new articles and features.

As always, please let your friends know and thanks so much for reading!

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 196.2
Current BMI: 27.47 (I think, may need adjusting)
Weight loss from start: -37.5 lbs.
Progress: While not quite reaching the sheer success that was January, February over all has been another fantastic month for my weight loss challenge. If you recall from my last monthly wrap-up post, I finished off the month at 208.6 lbs, a loss of 25.1 lbs from the start. As of yesterday, February 28th, I was at 196.2 lbs, a loss of 37.5 lbs from the start and 12.4 lbs total loss for the month. It’s just under half of what I lost in January alone, but is still a phenomenal amount as far as I’m concerned.

It has been obvious to me that the first month would tout the most loss, and if I continue the diet in the correct fashion, should slowly decrease more and more each month as I get closer to my goals. Speaking of which, I am now just 6.2 lbs away from my first goal of 190lbs, and a few posts back I announced my plans to reach a second goal of 180lbs.

For illustrative purposes, here below is my WeightBot chart for the month. You’ll notice its a smoother downward curve this time, not nearly as sharp and quick as January. And it comes with a few “bumps” for times when I gained weight back, most prominently after the Valentine’s dinner that I talked about in this post.

(click for larger)

Challenge #4: Read more!
Progress: A few posts back I made a final write up for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The book took me quite a long time to finish; longer than I’d hoped anyway. But it felt good to finally get it out of the way. I’ve yet to fully jump into something new, but according to this challenge’s schedule I have until the end of April to finish whatever it is anyway, so I’m not worried.

Challenge #5: Blog all this crap!
Progress: I posted a total of 15 new blogs throughout the month of February. I was surprised to see the number this high since January had 18 and I felt like I had posted a lot less this month, but surprise! I guess it’s partly due to the slightly less constant, yet ever persistent weight loss updates which are now permanently housed on Fridays except for special occasions. Additionally the number is rounded up by the new weekly “Pete’s Wednesday Comics Picks” and the other occasional posts like the very first “Gadget Watch“, of which there will be another shortly.

Anyway, I’m impressed with all that February had to offer both on the PeteCast and out the in the real world. Thanks to all my February readers and as always, please tell your friends and check back often. Thanks again!

]]> http://petecast.com/?feed=rss2&p=600 0 http://petecast.com/?p=591 http://petecast.com/?p=591#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:30:59 +0000 Pete Labrozzi http://petecast.com/?p=591 Another Friday and another few lbs. shed. The effects of the diet have kicked back in quite well this past week, so here’s the results…

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 197.5
Current BMI: 27.65
Weight loss from start: -36.2 lbs.
Progress: This marks the end of my 8th week on the South Beach Diet and this week’s results rank as the 5th best week of the bunch. Not bad at all. With a total loss of 3.6 lbs. since last Friday, I have hit milestones like dropping under 200 lbs. and 35 lbs. total lost since start. If you saw my last weight loss update, I am also planning to create a second goal of 180 once I reach 190. Especially since 190 is now only a mere 7.5 lbs away. I can’t believe how successful I’ve been in this venture so far, and I can only hope this progress keeps up.

I don’t have a ton to say about this week’s loss in particular. I attribute it mostly to just sticking with the ideals of the diet and not letting myself slip. Of course tonight was a bit of a “movie night”, with some low fat popcorn included, so the scale might be angry with me tomorrow. I’ll just have to wait and see. I am being complimented by co-workers on an ever increasing basis and I am finding more and more clothes that no longer fit me. One sweatshirt in particular now feels like I am wearing a parka instead. I’ll need to do some clothes shopping but I’m going to hold out until I feel I have reached my final goal size.

Also, if you’re wondering about this post’s picture this week, I was looking for something fun and “Friday-ish” and found my favorite lasagna loving cat and figured, “why not?” Anyway, thats all for now, tune in next week!

There were some books I was realy looking forward to today, but due to some unfortunate circumstances I was not able to go to the comics shop. My poor little pup, Gus, somehow got himself a stomach bug. So he had to come to work with me so I could keep an eye on him. Can’t take him across to Midtown, so this weeks picks will have to wait until next week.

It’s a shame too because the big pick of the week was Blackest Night number 7. It’s been a while since #6 came out back in December which makes the anticipation for this one, which promised some answers finally, even worse. I love this cover too, as it features the “second tier” of the New Guardians; very cool. Well, I’ll just have to wait another week, and try to remain spoiler free.

My picks also contains the finale of Flash: Rebirth which has been in my opinion, a series stretched far too thin. While good, it’s been so spread out that I mostly forget what happened from the last issue each time. Not to mention, these events are supposed to have taken place entirely before Blackest Night even started, and now with Blackest night just issue from being over, it seems very silly that this is just now wrapping up.

Taking a leap from my current picks list, I have been working through some older books. I had set out a while back to try and catch up somewhat from around the 2005 area on a few different series, and several of the big series, like 52 and Final Crisis. I also jumped way back and am in the middle of Crisis on Infinite Earths and will be starting Emerald Twilight and a few other GL books like that. Wish me luck!

Here are this week’s picks, happy reading…

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 199.3
Current BMI: 27.90
Weight loss from start: -34.4 lbs.
Progress: I wanted to make note that today, for the first time since 2006, I have finally made it back under 200lbs. At a current weight of 199.3 I am ecstatic about my progress and looking forward not only to completing my goal, but also to never breaching 200 again. I write that on a wary tone, because so many times in my life I have gone back up to weights I hoped not to reach again. But with the plan I am on now, I think I should be able to really stick to it.

My initial goal is now just 9.3 lbs away. I have mentioned multiple times my first goal is 190. It seems so reachable now and in such short order, that I am looking to finally announce officially my next goal. I had wanted to reach my 190 goal first, but breaking the 200 barrier has really given me a great sense of accomplishment. With that said, I am making my second goal 180 lbs.

Ideally I would like to reach even lower numbers, but I want to make my goals reachable for the immediate future. I am venturing into unexplored territory for myself at this point. I haven’t been lower than even 195 in so long that I can’t even remotely guess when it was. Maybe at some point in high school, but I honestly don’t know. It makes it impossible to guess if the rate at which I’ve been losing weight will remain the same or really start to plateau out.

To reach 180 would be something I could not have imagined previous to my diet’s start. Breaching 180 would put me into the “normal” zone of weight for my height. If I can reach my second goal, who knows, maybe I can even reach a third or fourth. The diet has gotten easier over time, but the results have had hiccups occasionally. It would make sense for more of that to continue, maybe even worsen. But for now, my first and second goals seem reachable and that’s what I am going to focus my energies on.

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 201.1
Current BMI: 28.15
Weight loss from start: -32.6 lbs.
Progress: Like last week, this was a much slower week than previous weeks. Though my results were slightly better than last time. This week I lost a total of 2.6 lbs. As I’m told anything over 2 lbs is supposed to be very good, I am happy.

The reason I attribute to this week’s slowdown was Valentine’s day. To celebrate, the wife and I went out for a fantastic dinner which I told myself I could get whatever I wanted. And I did. A nice filet mignon with a side of broccoli and cheddar bites. And I finished it off with a mint ice cream with chocolate fudge cookies minced up in it. Obviously a huge leap off the wagon for the night, but it was worth it and I enjoyed myself.

I also felt like I deserved it because of another minor victory from my weight loss. A while back Ang had gotten me a nice dress shirt which both of us really loved. The first one had a problem where it wasn’t manufactured properly and it got some rips along its seems shortly after I got it. But after I exchanged it for a new replacement one, I was unable to wear it for long because I ended up putting on too much weight. When standing, I couldn’t get some buttons to button, or buttoned but very tightly. While sitting the fabric would pull at all the buttons across my stomach, making it unwearable. Well with all my loss I went to the closet to try it on and lo and behold, it fit even better than perfect. I’ll include a picture below, a little personal victory photo.

(click for larger)

Alas, the next day I had gone up 1.3 lbs., a defeat to the previous few days weight lost. It started coming back off slowly, and I had a day with no change. But yesterday I dropped 1.7 lbs. just in that day alone and another 0.2 today.

I have another 1.1 to lose to get to 200 lbs. which is very exciting, and I am also at the 3/4 of the way to my goal mark. With 49 days gone by since I started, I am averaging a 0.7 lbs. loss per day, 4.7 lbs. per week and 20lbs. per month. I think its going extremely well.

I was discussing with Angie last night that I have come to a point now where I am no longer feeling a lot of physical cravings on any given day. Some days I do and if it’s bad enough, I allow myself to indulge in an extra protein bar, string cheese or similar. Nothing overboard. However, I do admit to having a lot of mental cravings still. As I’ve mentioned in the past, often walking by delis, diners or restaurants I used to frequent daily often makes me think about the great food I used to get. This can be a bit of a bummer. Add to this the often fantastic aromas permeating the office air while I much on my measly lunch. It can tend to be a bit of a disheartening thing. But I am working through it. No major slips yet besides controlled ones like Valentines, which is important.

Anyway, I’m hoping this next week will return me to the area of over 3-5 lbs. lost. I know I’ll be heading to the gym tonight and tomorrow at least, so I’m sure that’ll help a bit.

I went over and did my weekly shopping of course for the newest issues. I picked up everything on my pull list, plus one title I was debating over. Let me talk a little bit about some of the ones I decided to grab. I’ll place the cover art and titles of each below. You can click the cover art for a bigger version.

First, here is the additional pick that I decided on once I got to the store and saw it in person. I read about it last week but wasn’t convinced if I’d like it enough. However, leafing through the pages it seemed pretty cool, so I added it in. Especially since even though it’s new release, it still was under the 40% off sale. This volume collects the origins of over 50 of the DCU’s top characters.

DC Universe:
Origins

 

Secondly, I wanted to get the following two hardcover trades that I have yet to read. I definitely have to as they are major milestones of the past few years:

Final Crisis

Batman R.I.P.

 

Finally, as an ever constant Green Lantern and GLC fan, I had to round out one of my collections. I have all of the Geoff Johns penned trades of Green Lantern from Rebirth up until the prelude to Blackest Night which is when I started collecting the regular issues. My wonderful wife also got me GLC: Recharge and I have the Sinestro Corps Wars trades which included some of the GLC from the middle. I needed to finish this collection off with the missing Green Lantern Corps run. So I picked up all of the following to complete the gaps I was missing in between:

Green Lantern Corps:
To Be a Lantern

Green Lantern Corps:
The Dark Side of Green

Green Lantern Corps:
Ring Quest

Green Lantern Corps:
Sins of the Star Sapphire

 

Thats all for this special edition of Pete’s Wednesday Comics Picks, happy reading.

Truth be told, I am picking up quite a backlog of issues. As I mentioned last week, the storm kept me from going then. But the previous week I skipped too in lieu of picking them all up last Wednesday. So I have to pick up issues for 2/3, 2/10 and today, 2/17.

Midtown Comics also just so happens to be having a big Presidents Day week blowout sale of 40% off a lot of trade paperbacks, graphic novels and more. So I may take advantage of the vastly reduced costs to get a few I’m missing.

I have been catching up on all my blackest night tie-ins and several main run issues. Green Lantern #50 mentioned a few posts back was fantastic and really makes me wonder where our heroes are heading. With the “New Guardians” teaming up to try and end the scourge of the Black Lantern Corps, what will it mean for their respective corps in the future? Taking on the Black Lantern Spectre is no easy task either and Hal made a huge sacrifice to try and get the upper hand. I hope it pays off.

Anyway, here are this weeks picks. You’ll notice if you had a sharp eye that the Modern Warfare comic I have listed this week, was also in last weeks picks. I guess it got shipped a week late. I also missed adding in Adventure Comics #7 BN tie-in last week. So I went ahead and updated last weeks post to have the correct books.

Happy reading!

“Sir,” replied the commander, “I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo; and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.”

Challenge #4: Read more!
Books Read: 1 of 6 to complete challenge.
Progress: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is done. Can you believe it!? I hardly can. I sat myself down last night, and for several hours powered through the last throes of this seemingly rather large book.

It’s a hard thing determining the length of a book on the Kindle. In all actuality, “20KLUTS” as I shall hereafter refer to it, sure seemed like a lengthy one. Truthfully the book may be shorter than it seemed to me, but it was an odd kind of book. Let me explain.

20KLUTS by far has to be one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. That’s not to say it’s strange due to its content of a marvelous electric-powered underwater ship, or for the strange sights and places visited in the vast journey under the seas. Instead, I mean it was odd in that like the rolling waves of the seas, it suffers from so many ups and downs it leaves you seasick.

The book starts off slow in its first pages, as I mentioned in a previous post where I rehashed the start of the book (found here). It quickly builds up steam, then slows down again, then something amazing happens, then some boring stuff happens. We spend a chapter discussing the various flora and fauna found at the bottom of this region of the world science lecture style. Then, another chapter where the heroes narrowly escape a run in with several giant squids who attacked the ship.

In one chapter I was at the edge of my seat worried for the crew of the Nautilus who found themselves trapped in an impossible situation; locked in between 4 walls of solid ice from a flipping ice burg at the south pole. After days of manual labor with diving suits and pick axes and with only minutes of fresh air left on board, the nautilus breaks free and smashes through the ice cap venting in fresh air so that the men on board may live another day. Or another where Captain Nemo’s fury is unleashed on a warship, sinking it and its crew to the ocean depths.

But in between these glorious thrilling chapters comes so much downtime. Discussions of what fish were caught in the nets or the taste of a particular bird once caught. The colors of a shell or the rarity of an egg. It’s not to say the content is uninteresting. I loved the book wholly and was never so bored by the intellectual content as to skip ahead, instead I was interested by the observations. But gluing these two elements together at such extreme opposites made the book very confusing, or at least made it seem as I mentioned, like it was running far too long. I believe you could actually turn 20KLUTS into two separate books. An action adventure book, and a textbook like narrative telling of the hidden secrets of the sea.

When I try to picture this book in one summed up mental image, it would be like this: Imagine you are in diving gear with famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, carefully examining some never before seen marine life on the ocean floor. You move slowly, methodically and carefully so you don’t disturb this tiny fragile life in front of you. Suddenly you turn around and look behind you. You see a nuclear submarine shooting lasers at underwater ninjas with jet packs! You turn back to see the tiny lifeform, it is eating part of a sea plant. You are marveling at how its tiny mouth moves slowly and methodically to put bite-sized parts of the planet off. The ocean sands are smooth and wave with the currents around the little create. BOOM! Even underwater the sound is deafening. The ninjas have managed to cut a hole into the submarine using their powerful plasma swords from the future! They have detonated the subs nuclear core and the ship is now imploding from the outside water pressure. In fact, its forming a black hole! Its sucking in everything around it, even the ninjas cannot escape! In your final moments before being sucked into the vacuum you notice the tiny creature has finished eating and is now merrily swimming about. You take note of the sheen of its scaly flesh as it glistens with reflections from the massive explosions happening behind you. Then you die.

I mean seriously, its like the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced. Given the scene I just described had a lot crazier stuff happening and was so short it probably doesn’t give the full effect. But you would literally spend 10-20 minutes a chapter either biting your nails or reminiscing about your high school biology course. Back and forth, back and forth. Imagine driving a Ferrari for 10 miles, then getting out and walking 10 miles to a waiting Porsche and driving another 10 miles, get out start walking etc.

Anyway, I think I’ve hammered the point in. For a book written in the late 1800′s it was a fascinating and entertaining read. It didn’t feel too outdated, but at the same time hypothesized about technologies and places which at the time were unexplored and now have since been discovered. In that way it was very interesting to read the whimsical guesses and stretches of the imagination. The book was solidly built in the real world at times, reading like a biology text on the various creatures of the sea and high fantasy at others with the strange adventures of the crew. I found out there is something of a Sequel explaining more about the mysterious Captain Nemo called, The Mysterious Island. One of the big shames of 20KLUTS is it never fully reveals enough about the man behind the machine. I guess I’ll have to try and read that one at some point. As for 20KLUTS, I highly suggest reading it to anyone with the patience to do so.

Now that 20KLUTS is naught but a memory, and one sixth of my tentative reading challenge complete, I will be moving on to another book. I haven’t decided which just yet, but it will most likely be science fiction as I could use a romp in space after my trek under the sea. It will also probably be shorter and dumber.

One requirement is clear: No more fish.

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 203.7
Current BMI: 28.57 (need to double-check)
Weight loss from start: -30.0 lbs.
Progress: This has marked the slowest week yet in the diet challenge, with only a 2.0 lb. loss since last Friday. It was an odd week. Luckily, I don’t think its outcome really means my progress is slowing. I just had a few days where I probably overate or didn’t eat the right things, and I got little exercise of any kind due to the great “blizzard of 2010″.

For several days my weight would go down by 0.4, then the next day up by 0.4, then down 0.4, then up 0.4 again in a zig-zag. Today I lost 0.7 lbs., finally putting myself below 204 lbs. and marking exactly 30lbs. lost since the start. So there’s a happy milestone.

That means I only have 13.7 lbs. to lose to reach my initial 190 goal. I am still well on my way to accomplishing this by mid-March.

Challenge #4: Read more!
Progress: I haven’t made great headway on this front; at least not as much as I would like. But I am getting very antsy to start a new book, so I am doing my best to read when I can, to try and wrap this one up. With the little bit of effort I’ve been able to put in, I am at section 2, chapter 12, 74% of the way through at locations 4401-4407 out of 5906.

I actually heard the other day through the grapevine that one of my favorite directors, Sam Raimi, is possibly taking up filming a new 20,000 Leagues movie. The last major release of it was the 1954 Disney version that I’ve spoken of before. So it’d be really cool to see an update to this by such a creative and successful director. I’ll have to keep my ears open for more news on this.

For today’s product, I had been in search off and on, for a web cam that I could run without having to leave a computer running all day. I eventually stumbled into the world of Network IP cameras which run completely independently with their own address on your wired or wireless home/office network.

For my purposes, I wanted to keep an eye on Gus, my 4 year old pup, who spends his days alone at home. I did a fair bit of research on the subject before finally landing on the Mole. When I discovered it, it hadn’t yet fully released to the market. So here I was once again, an early adopter. But thankfully, my trust was paid off tenfold.

The Mole has been a great addition to the rest of my tech toys. Once I got it, I set it up which took literally a matter of moments to do, and it has been running reliably ever since. It was extremely easy to get it running on its own address in my network and registered with the Yoics site. Yoics by the way, is the web-based service that allows me to view my camera’s feed live from basically anywhere including on the go on my iPhone.

(click to view larger)

As you can see, the iPhone has a nice simple interface, just like its PC counterpart. There’s Gus sleeping right now with his Hedgehog toy. As you can also see, there are a number of buttons surrounding the video stream’s pane. Well that’s because the Mole allows you to remotely pan and tilt where the camera is looking within a range of 270 degrees for the pan and 150 degrees for the tilt. But that’s just the beginning of the cool features this camera has.

It comes with a built in microphone, so it picks up all the audio in the room. It also has an additional jack in the back to plug in a better mic, plus a jack for speakers. That’s right, you can talk from a remote computer through the camera. I don’t currently have this set up because Ang is worried I’ll scare the dog, but I’m going to try it out sooner or later. If for nothing else, just to see Gus’s head cock sideways as he tries to figure out where my voice is coming from. Additionally, it can switch to a night-vision mode for when it gets dark which works very well but makes Gus look like he has crazy devil eyes.

It also has a built in DVR which you can feed memory cards into for one of the camera’s coolest functions. The camera can track motion, and when it senses movement in its field of view it will start recording to the DVR. It can then upload the clips it takes to YouTube, email you an alert or even post a tweet. This function gives it such great practical purposes; like a security camera for a business or home, as a nanny-cam or for monitoring your baby in it’s crib without disturbing their sleep.

This has been great for Gus because he sleeps most of the day, but when he wakes up, I end up with a YouTube page full of clips of his shenanigans. He’s been caught in the act playing, walking along my bed’s backboard and digging up the covers so he can get inside to curl up in the warmth.

This is where the story of the Gus-Cam was born. You can visit the Gus-Cam YouTube page by heading here: http://www.youtube.com/TheGusCam I started the page to organize all of Gus’s videos so friends and family could see, and so I could get the highlights of his craziness from anywhere. So it was much to my surprise when I was contacted by the president and CEO of Yoics, Ryo Koyama, complimenting me on the Gus-Cam and asking if he could use some footage from it for promotion of the Mole. I of course jumped at the chance and Gus now has at least one video with over 1,765 views!

There have been several mentions of Gus in various mailings the company has done, on their product pages and he has even been tweeted about by venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki.

To sum up, I’ve been very happy with the Mole and the results of its video capture. I was just talking with Mr. Koyama again this morning and he mentioned that some even bigger and better updates were on the way. Needless to say I am very excited to see what improvements will be coming down the road. He allowed me in on at least one new tool in development which allows you to view multiple cameras simultaneously, which is very cool.

He also let me in on a deal for friends and family for helping with the Gus cam footage. If you think the Astak Mole is something you’d be interested in using, he has provided me with a coupon code that will get you an instant $100 off the original price and a year of free Yoics Pro service (which isn’t required but allows you greater bandwidths and viewing times while using your camera).

To make use of this offer, head over to their storefront at: http://store.yoics.com and use the coupon code, “friendofgus” when checking out. You can also learn more about the Astak Mole by visiting this link: http://www.molecamera.com/

Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!

This year was no different. I spent most of the night watching Law & Order reruns and playing Mass Effect 2. Occasionally we’d tune in to see what was going on and had the impeccable timing of flipping back right before the halftime show featuring, The Who.

Funny thing about The Who… I hate that song, “Who Are You?”.  And for some reason it’s the only song I’ve ever associated with, The Who. Come to find out they have a ton of other epic music. Songs that I love, that I had no idea they sung. Turns out I like The Who. Go fig.

I digress, on to the commercials…

So I didn’t see any commercials in my short times checking back that caught my interest, so I perused them on YouTube today since they usually post all, or at least most of them.

I have to say, I am very disappointed. It seems like all the fun and creative writing this year was gone. Nothing was really inspired, most was just weird old ideas with maybe a slightly different twist. Anyway, here’s the best of the best in my opinion. (Or best of the worst for that matter)

The winners:

Bud Light was my clear winner this year. Out of several commercials they entered came these two with clear references to LOST. While that gives them bonus points, I also love the bait and switch in both. Both start off with a very serious problem, mimicking so many big-budget movies and TV shows these days. But then instead of doing anything about their problem, they just go nuts. I’m not a drinker, but it still cracks me up and serious props for including François Chau a.k.a. LOST’s Pierre Chang in the first one.

My second place award goes to Doritos for their short but zany commcercials. Like Bud Light they had more entries than what I am listing here, but these stood out. Both brought a smile to my face and thats what counts. The first is awesome because a guy gets a Dorito thrown like a ninja star into his neck by another guy who is dressed up in a suit of Dorito samurai armor. That’s almost enough to take the first prize right off the bat. The second is a joke thats been done a ton of times before, but the guy is such a royal d.b. for trying to get that dog to bark that it was exceptionally great when the dog snuck up, garrote wired him with the collar and started barking.

While my third place pick is a trailer and not exactly a commercial, it still gets the bronze because it’s the freaking Griswolds! I haven’t seen the full short movie yet, but I need to make a point to do so, it looks fantastic.

Honorable mentions:

This first one by coke was just a fun commercial. Anything with the simpsons is usually good, but something about it brings a grin to your face.

Its a fiddling Beaver. Come on. Obviously this was getting a nod from me. The best part is he smacks his tail to keep the rhythm instead of his foot. Classic.

This one was just very cute. I know its mushy and sentimental, but I thought it was clever and it made me smile.

I am giving this one my last honorable mention simply because it included internet memes like the Numa Numa Guy and the Dramatic Look Gopher. But this is a trend that has started to become way overdone. The last good use of it was in one of Weezer’s last music videos. Now its just getting ridiculous. This is the last time I want to see it. The effects were pretty cool though, so I have to give it some credit for that as well.

The clear loser:

This commercial was total crap. It starts off really cool with some futuristic looking cars and guys including a crazy little guy wielding a pair of pneumatic wrenches. And yet, ends so dissappointingly with what may have been the dumbest joke in commercial history. See for yourself.

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 206.6
Current BMI: 28.92
Weight loss from start: -27.1 lbs.
Progress: February unfortunately, started with a bump. The day I was dreading finally came around, when I didn’t lose weight or have a 0 change. Nope, On February 1st I gained 0.2 lbs. Of course, I’m overjoyed it was such a small amount that vanished again the next day. But I am all about forward motion and progress these days and that little 0.2 wasn’t welcome.

Anyway, I’m back on track and getting the same results as ever. Since I haven’t posted about the weight loss challenge in any context outside of what happened past January, I’ll post below the last few days in a grid to play catch up.

So as you can see, past that little +0.2 blip, everything has again been downhill since. Which is great.

As a bonus for breaking the 25 lbs. lost mark, my wonderful wife got me tickets to the NY Rangers vs. NJ Devils game this weekend. The Rangers and Devils are my favorite teams, so it was a really great surprise!

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I want to keep this post short today, because I don’t really have a lot to say at the moment anyway. But I wanted to quickly post about a great breakfast recipe I’ve been making for myself the past several days. This is a Phase 2 or 3 recipe, which is to say you shouldn’t have it while on Phase 1 if you are doing the diet.

I got this recipe from a blog that has been a godsend for me during this diet called, Kalyn’s Kitchen (http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com). This blog is amazing, and I suggest checking it out whether you are on the diet or not, because there has not been a meal I have made from it yet that has not been fantastic.

Anyway, Kalyn borrowed this recipe from who she calls a “fellow food blogger”, Alanna Kellogg. It is called, “Alanna’s Peanut Butter Oatmeal”, and it is amazing. I am not a huge fan of plain oatmeal. I tend to find it too soupy or bland when it is plain, and no amount of mixing in traces of brown sugar or cinnamon in the past has ever helped me to like it any more. Part of this diet is that you are not allowed to have instant oatmeal, which I do like very much. I don’t know the exact reasons, but I guess the more processed ingredients in it don’t fit within the diet’s recommendations. However, plain natural oatmeal is allowed. So it was that I found this recipe and have been seriously enjoying it almost daily ever since. I’m going to post verbatim her instructions, because I can’t do it any better justice in my own words:

1/4 to 1/2 cup oatmeal (see note about types of oatmeal)
water to cover oatmeal
sprinkle of salt (to taste, but do not leave out)
1 T peanut butter (for South Beach be sure to get peanut
butter without added sugar, check the label)
ground cinnamon (optional)

Put desired amount of oatmeal in bowl and sprinkle with salt. Cover with warm water, about 1/2 inch above oatmeal. (This will depend on how thick you like your finished oatmeal. I like my oatmeal rather runny, so decrease the water if you want a thicker oatmeal.)

Microwave for one minute on high, remove bowl and stir. Microwave 30 seconds, stir again. Continue to microwave in 15 second intervals, stirring after each 15 seconds, until oatmeal reaches the desired consistency. I cooked mine about two minutes for regular oatmeal. Be careful that it doesn’t boil over when you get to the end of the cooking time. Remove oatmeal and stir in 1 tablespoon peanut butter. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon if desired. Serve hot.

(for more info see: http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2006/10/great-breakfast-on-south-beach-diet.html)

I am unfortunately running fairly far behind in my comics. As you may have read in previous posts, I was trying all of January to re-watch LOST seasons 1 through 5 before the premiere episode last night. This took up a huge chunk of time and has forced me to be quite backlogged in the comics world. In fact I still haven’t gotten around to reading the books I picked up last week. Rest assured, this is all something I am seeking to remedy as soon as possible.

Another holdup that actually ties in to one of today’s titles is the recent release of the video game, Mass Effect 2. I won’t go into length about it here, but I never completely finished off Mass Effect 1, so I have also been putting some time into trying to wrap that up before starting the new one.

While two of the three titles I’m picking up today are directly a part of the Blackest Night story line, the third, Mass Effect Redemption, follows the story of one of the characters from the first game. This makes the second series I am trying to read through that is part of the extra tie-in material to a game. (The first is the ongoing, Modern Warfare 2: Ghost series). I really think its a cool way to market the games and expand their story’s universes in the comic medium.

A lot of games these days have tie-in novels and sometimes even TV shows or movies. The comic medium I think is among the best though, as they offer short but sweet insights into the characters or worlds of the games. Some games like Batman: Arkham Asylum have even actually come packaged with mini-comics, which is great and ties the two mediums together perfectly.

Anyway, thats all for today. Happy reading!

My pull list for February 3, 2010

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Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3 (of 3)

Mass Effect: Redemption #2 (of 4)

The Question #37

Challenge #1: Watch all of LOST seasons 1-5 before the final season premieres on February 2nd, 2010.
Progress: Complete!

As you might have seen in my last post, I finished this challenge right on time. Watching all of LOST again was an amazing experience. It was so great to catch all the little ins and outs the writers stuck in there from the beginning and see where it has all led up to. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts on lost, check out that post here, or click on the LOST category on the right side bar.

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Progress: Fantastic progress was made in January. I got through Phase 1, even with my added extra week for a total of three. Phase 2 has been fine and the weight loss has continued at a pretty steady pace. I started on January 1st at 233.7. I am proud to say on January 31st I was down to 208.6, a total loss of 25.1 lbs.

I am eating better, clothes are fitting looser and I feel great about myself from all the compliments I receive. This challenge, despite being numbered “2″ is definitely the most important right now, and it is also going the best.

Here is a chart from an iPhone app I’ve been using, called “WeightBot”. I will post these charts on the monthly wrap-ups so you can get a visual sense of how its going. The gray dotted line is my actual loss throughout the month, and the blue line is a trend-line showing expected time to reach my goal of 190lbs. It currently forecasts about mid-March.

(click for larger)

Challenge #3: Start photography career
Progress: While I haven’t talked much about this one, I have made some headway. I have started work on an online storefront in which I’ll sell some of my photography, and am looking into some craft show type venues to display at as well. More to come.

Challenge #4: Read more!
Progress: If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you’ll know that I’ve been reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I haven’t made any progress to speak of as of late, but I am a majority of the way through the book and am sure I can probably finish it off by the end of February. My LOST challenge has obviously taken up a lot of free time in the evenings, so there should be more space now that it’s over for things like this.

Challenge #5: Blog all this crap!
Progress: I posted a total of 18 new blogs throughout the month of January. Not half bad considering that this post you are now reading is actually my 50th posted blog. That means that this January alone, I posted more than a third of my total posts. And with 31 days in the month, I posted a little more than half a blog per day, or basically, one every other day. Readership from my web statistics has been surprisingly positive, but I aim to get more people reading in the near future!

Thanks so much if you are one of the kind people to stop by and read my occasional rants, or fan me on Facebook. It means a lot to know your friends, family or even total strangers care about what you have to say.

Challenge #1: Watch all of LOST seasons 1-5 before the final season premieres on February 2nd, 2010.

Progress: COMPLETE!

I mentioned in my last post that I had made significant progress; clearly very significant. I am all done. The truth is I finished most of season 4 and 5 last weekend and the 2 hour finale episode of season 5 this past Saturday morning. What a pair of seasons they were!

Season 4 brought some serious changes to the direction of the show. When the “Freighties” (people from the freighter ship) start showing up on a mission to capture Ben Linus, all hell breaks loose on the island. Lines are drawn in the sand with Jack and Locke taking opposing stances on what everyone should do, splitting the camp in half. The season really flips how LOST has worked so far by using the “Flash Forward”, something that was introduced in the final episode of season 3. Instead of telling what happened in the character’s pasts, it instead tells about what happens in their future. Specifically this focuses a lot on the “Oceanic 6″, the group that gets off the island. It still uses flashbacks as well, and some other odd story telling tactics.

We are introduced to many more mysterious concepts, like the odd time dilation that occurs around the island, time travel of a person’s consciousness and the importance of having a “constant”. Additionally, startling questions are raised like who spent the time and resources to sink a plane full of corpses into the ocean to trick the world into believing they found Oceanic Flight 815.

Overall, great season and a very welcome and interesting addition to the mythology that came before it. It was great watching this one again, and the lessened number of episodes meant that each one was much more action packed and info-filled than in previous seasons. It introduced a bunch of new characters that were all interesting and you either loved or hated, like the quirky Daniel Faraday or the detestable Martin Keamy.

Season 5 was also fantastic. At the end of season 4, Ben sacrifices his life on the island to literally move the island. While he succeeds, he accidentally leaves everyone left on the island in a terrible mess. The survivors are flashing throughout time and soon realize that if this trend keeps up they may all die from the trauma it is inflicting to their minds. Locke and crew set out to make things right while just barely running into past versions of themselves, catching glimpses of whats to come, and weaving a tangled web throughout time especially during frequent run-ins with Richard Alpert and the others. They finally succeed in stopping time from shifting, only to end up as part of the Dharma Initiative back in the 70′s.

Meanwhile, the people who got off the island are dealing with their own issues. We see a lot of the back story of what exactly has happened to them in the three years since they got back home. They all soon realize that they might actually have been better off staying on the island. Jack and Ben lead the charge to get everyone together to go back to the island. This even includes a dead John Locke; who was killed by Ben, after he fixed time on the island, was teleported to the Tunisian desert, and was helped by Charles Widmore and Matthew Abaddon to go try and collect everyone to go back to the island under the name Jeremy Bentham. Yikes what a mess!

Finally everyone gets back to the island, including a seemingly resurrected Locke and even a new shadowy faction who knows about the island arrives as well. However, while some land in the present, others end up back in Dharma time where they find the survivors have been living amongst the D.I. for the past 3 years. And everything comes to a shocking conclusion when the people in the past are charged with setting off a hydrogen bomb at the site of the Swan station, adverting or possibly causing the famous “incident”, while Locke leads Ben, Richard and the others on a quest to find Jacob, only to kill him.

Speaking of which, a huge reveal in the finale of season 5 is we finally meet the man behind the curtain. Jacob has seemingly been pulling the strings of what goes on on not only on the island, but in people’s lives off the island, for centuries. We also meet his counterpart, a man in black, whom we’ve not particularly heard of before. During a conversation between the two at the beginning of the episode they argue the semantics of bringing people to the island. Then this mysterious other being mentions how badly he wants to kill Jacob and that one day he’ll find the “loophole” needed to do so. What can all this mean!? And what is the source of these beings seemingly deity-like powers? We’ll soon see I guess.

A lot of people I talk to either loved this season or hated it with a passion. Many people claimed it was really confusing and didn’t make sense because of the time travel element and other odd things that happen during its course. I personally never had an issue with any of it. Of course, I guess it’s because I pay a lot of attention to each episode, whereas maybe your average ‘sometimes’ viewer could easily get in over their head if they miss any episodes.

I loved this season. It really changed the game yet again, and delved even deeper into mysteries that have plagued the island’s inhabitants for longer than anyone can imagine. It was a ton of fun keeping up with the characters and the events surrounding them. The season surely wasn’t without its twists and turns, some of which were very strange, that no one could have seen coming. And of course, you had the added challenge of figuring out what time they were in, in addition to place. Though I do think it felt like the natural culmination of everything thats been building up since season one.

The “incident”, for example,  is what supposedly led to having to build the Swan and the computer therein, which had a button that needed to be pressed every 108 minutes to disperse the islands immensely powerful electromagnetic energy. When Desmond failed to press it 30 years in the future, it brought down Oceanic Flight 815 setting all these events into action over again, creating something of a time loop.

This is perfect LOST story telling. Everything on LOST comes full circle. Characters pay for their past mistakes only to repeat them again and so on. Even Jacob and the man in black, who many fans speculate is Esau of the biblical Jacob and Esau, argue about the pointlessness of bringing people to the island because they just repeat the same mistakes over again. Here’s an except:

Esau: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
Jacob: You are wrong.
Esau: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

It seems to me that Jacob is insisting that it only takes one time or action to make the outcome different. Could the actions of our heroes have finally altered time and changed what was supposed to happen? In Jacob’s death, did he prove his counterpart wrong?

We will see. And best of all, we will see tomorrow! Tuesday February 2nd, 2010 marks the return of LOST for its final season. I feel great because my challenge is complete and it will totally be payed off when so many of the questions that have plagued me evening after evening, week after week for the last five seasons will finally be answered. I really cannot wait. I am hopelessly excited. LOST has definitely been the greatest show I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching and I have nothing but high hopes for its final act.

To end this post, here is a glimpse at things to come. This is the newest and greatest promo from ABC for the final season. Check it out, and tell me what you think is going to happen in the comments section. Even though my challenge is over, I’ll be back talking about LOST after the premiere. Enjoy!

Since I am blogging a lot more this year as part of my 2010 Challenges, I thought a fun little thing to drop in here every Wednesday would be my new comics pull list. For those unfamiliar, every Wednesday is new comics day. Just like every Tuesday usually brings all the new DVD, music and Video Game releases, and Fridays the new theatrical releases.

A few years back I attended the New York Comic Con (NYCC) and found a booth for comiXology, an online comics resource whose motto is, “Is it Wednesday yet?” I even got a little fridge magnet from them! Anyway, I have been using their site ever since to see what new comics are coming up and manage my pull list (list of new comics I’ll be buying when they release).

comiXology is great for this, as their site is very well built and they also offer a very handy iPhone app that displays your list, other shipping items and lots more. Available for the low price of $1.99 (which is well worth it) on the app store here. They also offer the ability to embed your weekly pull list on your website/blog. So here’s my first.

I will try to talk a little about the new books, or perhaps the books from the week before when I can. For today I just have one to discuss from those listed below; Green Lantern #50.

This special anniversary issue (50 issues since the series rebooted) is right smack in the middle of Blackest Night. I haven’t read it yet, but I am looking forward to doing so. I actually bought this one in its regular edition, and as my very first variant as well. A variant is when the cover art is done by a separate artist, or perhaps as a sketch version of the same art by the same author. In this case, the variant is a special cover done by the amazingly talented Jim Lee. I saw Mr. Lee at NYCC but wasn’t able to get his autograph because I sadly found out I needed advanced tickets to meet him since he’s so popular. This year, I will be making the point to do so and try to get him to sign this. I first saw the cover a few weeks back and loved it. So I could not pass this one up.

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more in the future. For now, here’s my pull list:

My pull list for January 27, 2010

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The Atom and Hawkman #46

Blackest Night: JSA #2 (of 3)

Green Lantern #50
 

Green Lantern #50 Variant Edition

Justice League: Cry For Justice #6 (of 7)

Superman: Secret Origin #4 (of 6)

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 211.0
Current BMI: 29.54
Weight loss from start: -22.7 lbs.
Progress: This has been one of the better weeks of the diet so far. I am feeling good, I can clearly see a difference in my body both inside and out and I am well on my way towards my initial goal. You’ll notice I’ve added “Current BMI” to my numbers above. I talked about how important it was last time, so why not toss that up there too since I’m tracking it.

Something I’d like to talk about today that I haven’t is why this diet is working so well for me. A lot of people have been surprised by the amount of weight I’m losing. Let me first rest your fears, I am not sticking my fingers down my throat, starving myself or needling a happy heroin “H” into my arm. I am just eating a lot healthier than I used to. I am doing this in two ways:

1. I am eating smaller portions at my major meals and sensible sized snacks
2. I am eating better foods; watching to avoid bad carbs, sugars or foods too high in fat or sodium.

I think my biggest problem before this diet was directly tied to number 1; portion control. I think it’s a lot of people’s problem. For example, before my diet at a regular dinner, I would often fill my regular sized dinner plate with a helping of each of whatever we were having. After I finished it all, I might even sometimes have seconds of some things. On occasion if Angie didn’t finish something, lets say a hamburger, I might eat the small bit that was left.

Why would I do this? Well I think like many people I’ve been programmed to “clean my plate” or “finish my meal” and not leave behind. Its something every parent tells every child. For children it’s important as they need the food’s nutrients to grow big and strong and healthy. But once that amazing childhood metabolism and endless days of summer running around in the woods comes to an end with the start of your adult years, a lot of us don’t stop taking that advice. In fact we get worse. Once we start venturing out on our own with friends or boy/girlfriends in our teenage years we take this new lease on freedom to eat junk food that our parents didn’t allow or allowed only in moderation. Trips to the local 7-11 or pizza place start us on a new trend that follows us right into…

College. The first time many young adults find themselves completely free of their home for the past 2 decades of their life and able to do pretty much whatever they want. Many of you are probably familiar with the “Freshman 15″. The idea that most students put on 15 lbs. their first year in school. Its because during this time they are experiencing their new found freedom to the fullest. They are making their own grocery trips now and are bringing home soda, Cheeze-its, Oreos and candy. And of course there is beer. Who is there in college dorms to enforce the legal drinking age? With parties in most places every weekend and in some schools, the middle of the week, there is lots of time to chug your way to a wider waist.

I haven’t been a skinny kid since I was just that; a kid. But college brought me to the heaviest weights I’ve ever been in my life. Funny enough, I had no issue with weight gain for a large portion of that year. I was probably at my skinniest of my college years for that first semester. I didn’t have a car so I had to walk 2 miles to the grocery store and carry all my food and such back. We had a big open campus with the dorms on one side and the classes on the other that crossing a few times daily gave you a workout too. However, the day before my first spring break, while filming for one of my classes, I stepped down off a chair bad and broke my ankle. From there it was all down hill. The injury allowed me only to walk on crutches for a long span of time and meant limiting my walking when possible. Because of the injury, I was allowed to bring a car to school to get around. I was never without one at college again. Gone were my long walks to get my essentials.

I am probably now approaching what I weighed back in that first semester. I’d guess around 200-210. So it feels good getting myself back to that area. But because of all this previous time that I’ve mentioned, I have had both a physical and mental limit to what I ate that was not healthy. Remember where I was going with this before my diatribe? (I barely did) Portions and Healthy food.

So now that I have forced myself into this diet, I have adapted a new way of thinking and acting when it comes to eating. Lets take a look at what types of things I would have been eating in a typical day before my diet:

• Breakfast:

1. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, 3/4 of the bowl filled
2. Strawberry Pop-tarts
3. Bacon Egg and Cheese Sandwich on a bagel with Salt Pepper and Ketchup. Sometimes I would also grab a crumb-cake from the diner I got this at
4. 2 Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins

• Lunch:

1. Chicken Cutlet Sub with American Cheese and Mayo
2. Italian Meatball sub
3. Halal Chicken over rice
4. Pad Thai (various)
5. Grilled Chicken Fajita Panini

• Afternoon snack

1. Bag of Cheetos/Doritos/Pretzels
2. Cookies
3. Brownie

• Dinner:

1. Various home-made meals but would fill a normal sized plate and sometimes have seconds
2. 2-4 Slices of a Large Pizza
3. Barbecue Combo Platter
4. Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken

Now conversely, take a look at the sort of foods I would have on my diet:

• Breakfast (protein and good carbs):

1. 2 Scrambled eggs with a bit of LF (lowfat) cheese and a piece of Canadian or Turkey Bacon
2. Peanut Butter Protein Bar (140 calories, 30 grams protein)
3. 1/3 cup of Oatmeal
4. Whole wheat toast

• Lunch (lean meats and cheese):

1. 2 slices of LF Ham, 2 slices of low-salt Turkey, part skim LF string cheese stick or 3 LF mozzarella balls
2. Small spinach or arugula salad with any of: grilled chicken, LF cheese, egg and light dressing
3. There are more but this is mostly what I’ve stuck to so far

• Afternoon Snack:

1. Small handful (20 or so) roasted unsalted peanuts
2. Other nuts or seeds
3. Part skim LF string cheese stick (if I didn’t have at lunch)

• Dinner (Lean meats, non-starchy vegetables, good carbs):

1. Asian flounder with Soy Sauce
2. Whole Wheat Pizza Slice
3. Chicken Piccata w/fried capers
4. Vegetable sides include Broccoli, Cauliflower

And this is just a small portion of some things I’ve had so far. I am a very picky eater, so I have had to skip some of the vegetables or other dishes, but there is a ton out there and it is all surprisingly, very delicious.

For dinner, as one of the most important times I have to change my old habits, I have switched to a system of serving my food on small plates. I will only allow myself to take what can fit in the inner circle (not the lip) of that plate. In this way it gives me a good visual of where to limit myself, as well as still being a nice-sized, healthy portion so as not to be starving myself either.

So in these ways I am still having great-tasting, fulfilling meals but limiting my intake of it. By consistently doing this for the past several weeks I have been changing my stomach and body’s ability to take in too much food. I am also mentally changing my old habits to the point where I actually do want less food instead of more. And last but not least, I am changing my body’s chemistry to use all these good foods to keep me healthy and full of nutrients, while vastly decreasing the level of insulin resistance in my body, allowing excess fat to burn. And that’s they key to how much weight I’ve lost.

According to the book, the South Beach diet’s whole point is to reduce a person’s insulin resistance so as to prevent storage of excess fat. This fat storing is something humanity evolved way back in time to help deal with times when food would not be readily available, not much unlike how bears or squirrels store fat for their winter hibernation. However these days, full meals are usually only a few blocks and a couple dollars away, no scrounging around in a forrest. The book describes insulin resistance as, “… an impairment of the hormone insulin’s ability to properly process fuel, or fats and sugars”.  As my insulin resistance decreases, my excess pounds are shedding off and bringing me back to a natural place where I am supposed to be.

If you’d like to read the book and get on the diet yourself, it’s called: The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss by Arthur Agatston, M.D. Its available at most book stores and online at sites like Amazon. In fact, I downloaded my copy to my Kindle. Here’s a link: South Beach Diet on Amazon.com

The best part is you can choose to view it in this mobile format or the regular format just by clicking on the “Mobile Theme – On/Off” toggle at the bottom of the page. If you end up on the regular version of the site, you can just as easily jump back to the mobile theme by using the same toggle, again at the bottom of the page.

How to use:

As you can see in the screengrab below, it turns articles into a shortened list arranged by date. You can expand the article using the little down arrows to the right of each to read a brief blurb, or you can click directly on the article to go to a mobile version of that article.

At the top right there is a menu drop-down arrow. It contains several tabs which have useful links such as a Home button, RSS Feed, and an email button that will automatically populate an email for you to send the article using your mobile device (email feature currently not working, will attempt to fix). There are also tabs for Tags and Categories to aid in searching for relevant articles and a Login/My Account tab that allows you to sign in and modify your account profile.

There is also a search bar located just below the top bar that does exactly what it sounds like. If an article has any comments, they are shown to have a red circle with the number of comments logged, as you can see in the image below. And finally, if you scroll down past the initial 5 displayed articles, there is an option to “Load more entries…” which will do exactly that.

Enjoy!

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 213.6
Weight loss from start: -20.1 lbs.
Progress: I’ve happily crossed some major lines as of this morning. First, if you’ve been keeping up on my progress during the past few posts you are aware that I have had this odd trend occurring. Well it has happened again, 0.0 loss, 0.2 loss, and today: -1.8 lbs! That puts me at 213.6 lbs, which means I have broken my 215 milestone mark that I so desperately wanted to do, and only a day late. And it also means I have lost over 20 lbs. since I started just 23 days ago.

If that wasn’t enough, my BMI (see Body Mass Index on Wikipedia) has officially dropped below the 30 mark to 29.91. BMI isn’t something I have talked a lot about so far in my posts, but its equally important and parallel to the weight loss. For those who don’t know, BMI is basically your weight in relation to your height. This is important because it is used as a scale by health professionals to categorize a person into body types. The scale goes from underweight, to normal, to overweight, to obese. The higher your BMI, the less healthy obviously. Getting back, the reason I am so happy to have hit 29.91 is because now that I am below 30, I am no longer considered obese. (see Obesity on Wikipedia) I now fit into the range of 25-29.99 which is considered in the overweight category. While I still have a long way to go, the feeling of accomplishment for taking myself firmly out of the obese range makes me very happy.

I want to leave this post off with a little something extra. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll save them for a later time. A few days ago on the 19th I went to a Rangers hockey game. I had also gone to another for my birthday back on December 6th before I started my diet. While I’m wearing a big Rangers jersey in both which prevents you from getting any real sense of my body size, take a look at the difference in my face.

(click for larger)

Challenge #1: Watch all of LOST seasons 1-5 before the final season premieres on February 2nd, 2010.
Progress: Third season down, and started the fourth but this challenge end date is really sneaking up on me! It is now just over 11 days until LOST airs the first episode of its final 6th season, and I have just finished the first episode of the 4th season. That means I have 30 episodes to watch in 11 days! Yikes! But don’t worry, the weekend is upon us and I will hopefully knock out a large majority of it now.

To follow up on my previous “season wrap-ups”, the third season was the last of the long seasons. It stretched 23 episodes and brought in a whole new slew of questions. All out war with the others and the history of the mysterious Dharma Initiative revealed makes for a season of thickening plot. A lot of people complained about the third season. Mostly people say that the show was on some unsteady ground and was trying to find its way. Seems to be a trend with LOST. But even to me, many parts of this season just felt like filler.

It was interesting to revisit this season all at once. See I didn’t start out watching LOST from the beginning. I think I rented the DVD’s somewhere between the 2nd and third season. So I saw all of 1 and 2 very fast, then 3 at a natural weekly pace. The third also suffered a break in the middle of the season and went on hiatus from November until February. So it’s the first time in my LOST experience that it seemed like the show was taking a while. Well, now watching it all back as fast as I have, the third season was a lot shorter than I remembered. It seemed the first time around like Jack, Kate and Sawyer were on the others island for a very long time, and seemingly just as long, was Locke’s transition into being one of the Others. Watching everything in a row, these events happened very fast. It’s hard to describe, but the season just seemed to blur by. And while there was some major events and revelations to be had, it just felt weak compared to the other 2 this second time around.

It will be interesting to see how I feel about season 4 and 5 since they are in fact, significantly shorter than the others (only 14 and 17 episodes a piece, respectively).

Challenge #2: Lose weight on the South Beach Diet.
Current weight: 215.4
Weight loss from start: -18.3 lbs.
Progress: It’s been an odd week in my weight loss challenge. I have managed to continue to lose weight, as you can see from the numbers. But there have now been several days that repeated what occurred in my last post.

To be more precise, on the 19th (the date of my last challenge posting) I had lost no weight at all. Then the next day ( the 20th) I shockingly lost a whole 1.1 lbs which seemed odd to me after a day of -0.2 loss and another of 0 loss. So I shrugged those two days off as a little glitch in the progress. But then much to my chagrin, the very next day (the 21st), I lost no weight and this morning, -0.2 again. So I am not sure what is up with my body at the minute. There seems to be a bit of back and forth on whether it wants to lose the weight or not.

Today is a milestone date. Yesterday marked the end of my third week on the diet, and today is my first day of the fourth. That means I am officially now in Phase 2 of the diet. I was hoping as I’ve mentioned, to get down to 215 by now. Since I’m at 215.4, I am not entirely annoyed, but I wish I could have broken the number. I’m sure I will in the coming days as long as this “0 change” doesn’t keep up. I should say I am also very happy that I am at least having 0 change days instead of it going back up.

Outside of my WiiFit chart, I created an excel sheet and chart that I am using to keep track of my weight and BMI progress. I will copy all of my measurements taken so far below. It gives you a sense of just how well this is going when you can look at the numbers all at once.

When you’re done, please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom or email me (contact info is in the contact section to the right). Please feel free to suggest topics or ideas for future blogs/podcasts or any improvements you’d like to see made to the site.

Thanks in advance!

(You must be registered to be able to vote)

You can now register and sign in to the PeteCast site by linking with your accounts from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google, Yahoo or AOL.

This will make registering and signing in so ridiculously easy for you, its not even funny. It works by taking your name and email from whichever of those 6 accounts you choose and using that to sign you up automatically here. Once you have linked the accounts you can still edit your profile, choose an avatar of your liking and more.

If you prefer, you can still sign up the old fashioned way. On the login page, below the buttons you will see an option, “Or, sign in with a password” which will guide you through the regular way of logging in.

In lieu of this change and how easy it is to sign up, I have changed comments to only be available to those who have registered by one of these means.

Try it now it takes mere seconds! Click “Log in” at the top right of the page under the “Register/Login” header, or click the image of the 6 options above.

Enjoy!

Just wanted to drop a quick note about a small site update I’ve made. When commenting on a post you will notice that once your comment is posted there is a place for a user avatar inside your comment box. For most of you, it will look like this:

That is a default supplied by a site called Gravatar which works with WordPress. You can create an account there and upload an avatar but to make it much more simple, I have added the ability for you to upload your own avatar right to this site.

Here’s the catch though. You need to be a registered member of the PeteCast. But thats also great because I would love to have you as a registered member! It only takes a moment to sign up, so go for it now. You can sign up using the link at the top right side of this page called, “Login” under the “Register/Login” heading (obvious, huh?)

Or, you can click this link:

Register for the PeteCast

Registering allows you to fill out a user profile (if you so choose), add an avatar and will allow you to comment on all posts with your information always remembered. That way you don’t have to type it all back in each time you come by. It’ll also allow me to better be in contact with you down the road and give me a sense of who and how many people are reading/listening. So please do sign up, and perhaps one lucky registrant will get a cookie.

Thanks!