Author: Michael Rawdon

Resolved

I don’t often make New Year’s resolutions, but it is a convenient time to try to think of things I can do to make my life better. It’s not so much that it’s a new year, but that I’ve just spent over a week on vacation and hopefully I have a little more energy to effect some changes.

My resolution this year can be summed up as “Eat less and write more.”

Or, as I put it to one fellow, my resolutions are means-based rather than ends-based.

Eat less: It’s not like my doctor didn’t tell me four years ago to eat less, and that trying to lose weight is through exercise is difficult because it’s very easy to stop exercising. My only success at losing weight through exercise is when I was working out a lot (4-5 times a week, for many months), and it comes back pretty easily when you stop. So, it’s time to try the other approach.

Write more: While it’s tempting to try to become a professional blogger like J.D., the fact is that I know I’m mainly writing for myself, and that my journal is just not compelling enough to bring in the sort of traffic that J.D. gets. So what I really mean here is to write more fiction. While I know I’m not at this point up to committing to the sort of regular writing that Deathless Pose [sic] demands, it would be nice to get to the point where I would be up to it.

And having finished writing this non-fictional (I hope) post, it’s time for lunch. How’s that for irony?

Frazz: 99% Perspiration

If there’s a true inheritor of the mantle of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, then I’d say it’s got to be Jef Mallett’s Frazz: Well-drawn (with more than a hint of Bill Watterson’s style), intelligent, and occasionally-off-the-wall, it’s got that tension between childlike fun and cynicism down pat.

The second collection came out last year: 99% Perspiration. The setting is Bryson Elementary School, and our titular hero is the janitor of that fine institution. But Frazz is something of a renaissance man, an avid bicyclist and jogger, he also earns money writing songs. And he’s got a crush on Miss Plainwell, one of the teachers. Bryson is populated by a variety of teachers, from the grouchy Mrs. Olsen to Frazz’ friend Mr. Burke (he and Frazz are just hopeless at basketball, by the way).

Frazz mostly plays goalie for the school’s student population, propping them up when they get run down and giving them perspective when their youthful exuberance and, uh, creativity run away with them. Frazz has a special fondness for Caulfield, a brilliant kid who finds school boring beyond belief, but who loves hanging out with Frazz.

Mallett’s one of the better artists working the comic strip page these days, and some of his gags have a certain wonderful simplicity:

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(Click to view the strip)

Mallett’s sense of humor often takes an intellectual bent; you’ve gotta appreciate a guy who can mix zaniness with intellectual/cultural trivia:

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Lest the comparisons to Calvin and Hobbes get laid on a little too heavily (and there are plenty more at the Wikipedia article), my feeling is that fundamentally Frazz is a funny, creative strip which feels more textured than most strips around today, and Mallett is just a darned good artist. While there are stylistic similarities, I assume they are mainly an homage to Watterson, whose strip I think Mallett admired (as did we all), as he pays homage to a few other people in the strip, too.

It took a while for Frazz to get my attention, but it’s got it now. It’s one of the gems of the comics page. Funny, charming. Check it out.

(You can also buy the first Frazz collection, Live at Bryson Elementary.)

Happy Feet

Review of the film Happy Feet.

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I thought it was borderline criminal for Debbi and me to have a week off and not go see at least one film, so today we went to see Happy Feet, the computer-animated film about singing penguins.

It’s a cute film: Mumble (voice – and apparently the eyes – of Elijah Wood) can’t sing, but he can dance up a storm. But the elders of his tribe of emperor penguins reject this as aberrant, and Mumble leaves his home in searh of, well, himself, as well as a way to win the heart of Gloria (Brittany Murphy). Along the way he makes friends from another group of penguins who don’t care about singing but appreciate his dancing, and he gathers clues to why his tribe’s fish seem to be disappearing.

The animation is quite good, although it looks like the creators decided to punt on rendering humans, since those that appear look like actual filmed humans (either that or animation has gotten even more sophisticated than I’d thought!).

The film also takes the interesting approach of putting Mumble in a completely untenable situation which he can only get out of by being, well, just as different as everyone thinks he is. This highlights one of the problems with the abundance of Pixar-style settings in which creatures or entities which aren’t intelligent or have human-like societies are portrayed as being basically human: Either they need to stick to their own world and only have limited impact on humans, ones that people can dismiss as accidents or their own bad memories, or they’re eventually going to do something which is going to cause some fundamental change in the world. Neither approach is really wrong, but until Happy Feet I don’t think anyone’s really committed to taking the latter approach.

Happy Feet is basically supposed to be cute and a bit of a tear-jerker, so if you hate films like that, then you should skip this one. But it’s a nice little uplifting movie otherwise, which can be a nice way to get away from it all for a couple of hours.

The singing and dancing bits ain’t bad, neither.

New Year’s Eve

We’ve had a fun but low-key transition to the new year here. We once again attended Mark and Yvette’s Drunken Scrabble New Year’s Party. There was actually less Scrabble than usual, but no one seemed to mind. Several of us played Kill Doctor Lucky a couple of times, and then we switched around for a bit.

I played Speed Scrabble with a couple of groups, doing well with one group and poorly with another. I also played a game of Scrabble with Mark and Subrata, which wasn’t a recipe for a great outcome since both of them are better Scrabble players than I am. We were actually pretty close for most of the game until Subrata made a triple word play with the Z and pulled ahead, but I did finish ahead of Mark, which was a pleasant surprise.

I drank a surprising amount of champagne (for me), but stopped well before midnight (and we didn’t leave ’til after 1).

Debbi and I rang in the new year with a smooch and with silly New Year’s hats. (I think there’s even photographic evidence of the hats somewhere!)

A good way to wrap up the calendar year and (almost) my week off.

Offseason Roundup: Red Sox

A look at the Boston Red Sox’ off-season moves.

My team, the Boston Red Sox, are entering the third season of what I like to think of as their rebuilding phase. After they won the 2004 World Series, they lost three key players (Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe and Johnny Damon) to free agency, and only retained Jason Varitek by handing him a large 4-year contract.

It’s been a rough couple of years: Two of their big free agent investments – SS Edgar Renteria and SP Matt Clement – have not really panned out. Clement is mired in a cycle of injury and ineffectiveness that leaves me wondering if he’ll ever be useful again. Renteria was shipped out after one season in a pair of trades that resulted in Coco Crisp patrolling center field (which isn’t such a bad thing). Meanwhile, Manny Ramirez and Trot Nixon have continued to age, David Ortiz has continued to be one of the best hitters in baseball, and the Sox brought in Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell from Florida, and while Lowell had a bounceback season, Beckett was very uneven.

The Sox have developed some in-house talent, such as Dustin Pedroia, Jon Papelbon and Jon Lester, and there’s more in the pipeline. Nonetheless, they did have some work to do this year, and here’s the scorecard so far:

Leaving:

  • Trot Nixon, OF (free agent)
  • Mark Loretta, 2B (free agent)
  • Alex Gonzalez, SS (free agent, to the Reds)
  • Keith Foulke, RP (free agent)
  • Gabe Kapler, OF (retired)

Arriving:

  • Daisuke Matsuzaka, SP (Japanese free agent, 6 years, $52M + $52M posting fee)
  • J.D. Drew, OF (free agent, 5 years, $70M, from the Dodgers)
  • Julio Lugo, SS (free agent, 3 years, $36M, from the Dodgers)
  • Runelvys Hernandez, SP (free agent, minor league contract, from the Royals)
  • Brendan Donnelly, RP (acquired in trade from the Angels)
  • J.C. Romero, RP (free agent, 1 year, $1.6M, from the Angels)
  • Hideki Okajima, RP (Japanese free agent, 2 years, $2.5M)

Returning:

  • Tim Wakefield, SP (option picked up)
  • Alex Cora, SS (free agent, 2 years, $4M)
  • Doug Mirabelli, C (free agent, 1 year, $0.75M)

(Full free agent data can be found here, and recent Sox transactions here.)

I find it very hard to evaluate Red Sox transactions: With the second-largest payroll in baseball, they’re not quite playing the same budget-oriented game as most other teams. Is that Drew contract overpaying for an injury-prone outfielder, or is it a straightforward investment within the Sox’ budget? These last few years, I’ve found it easier on my brain to ignore the dollar signs and just evaluate the talent.

Because budget is only one constraint that baseball teams have to live within: The others are roster constraints (you can only have so many players on your team before you have to start cutting some to make room for others), and positional constraints (“You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls”, but of course most catchers can’t hit). So we can always consider whether the Sox have acquired good players, and look like they’re going to play their best players.

Anyway, with the Red Sox’ payroll and the savvy of their front office, they’re practically guaranteed make plenty of off-season headlines. That makes the winter almost as exciting for Sox fans as finishing below second place for the first time since 1997.

The Sox blew away all the competition in the $52M posting fee for the exclusive rights to negotiate with Matsuzaka (thus ensuring that the posting system will probably be overhauled if not scrapped next year), and then signed him to what I think is a surprisingly reasonable deal. One projection rates Matsuzaka as a very good starting pitcher in the Majors; if true, then he could be the true ace the Sox will need once Curt Schilling retires. If Beckett can work out his problems, then the Sox could have a nice rotation for the next few years.

Although, in 2007 the back end of the rotation is a bit of a concern, with Clement’s status unclear, Jon Lester recovering from cancer, and Wakefield at that age where he might collapse any year (he turned 40 in August, after all). Ace closer Jon Papelbon is slated to move into the rotation, but one wonders whether he might be more valuable in the bullpen, especially if he can’t make the transition smoothly. Still, the Sox are also bringing in several new bullpen arms, so they have options.

On the offensive side, the Sox are working through a bumpy negotiation process over J.D. Drew, who is a very good hitter with a length history of injury problems, and who’s had trouble passing his physical to finalize the deal. Whether Drew continues to be an offensive force through age 35 is a good question; it’s hard to say whether I’d be sad whether he finally gets signed or not. He’d probably be an upgrade over Trot Nixon in right field overall, though, and he supposedly can play center, too.

The Sox also brought in Julio Lugo, who is a pretty good shortstop. That’s a lot of money for a guy who looks to me like he might start a sharp decline at any time. But I think the Sox have soured on Pedroia at shortstop, which leaves them with few options for starter (and Alex Cora shouldn’t be one of them), so it might be their best option. Besides, if Lugo doesn’t completely go into the tank, then the trade market for fair-to-middling shortstops should be as strong as it has been in the last few years and the Sox could flip him for something useful.

It sounds like Pedroia might slot as the starter at second base, while some sort of Lowell/Ortiz/Kevin Youkilis tandem (plus whatever other spare hitters they can scrounge up) ought to be able to cover 3B, 1B and DH perfectly well.

In their third place finish in 2006, the Sox were outscored on the season, and finished 86-76. The Yankees might regress somewhat next year, but the Sox still need to improve to win their division. Matsuzaka, Drew and Lugo will help (assuming everyone’s healthy and performs up to their expected levels), so they’ll probably be a better team overall. But I think the Yankees will need to regress substantially for the Sox to make it a horse race. The Blue Jays are a pretty good team, too, but I suspect they’re going to regress a bit in 2007 as well.

All of which adds up to more of what we’ve seen lately: A Sox team which hasn’t quite gelled, but which feels like it’s on the cusp of being an AL powerhouse again. This is a team which could surprise in 2007, but after the World championship, I’d figured a 3-year rebuilding period was in order, so look for the Sox to work through a few more bumps and emerge in 2008.

Which is not to say that I’d be sad if they emerge a year earlier than I expect!

A Poor Review

Trying to become a better reviewer is hard, and I certainly didn’t expect it to happen in just a few months, even with paying some attention to it. As a critic (even an amateur one), it’s useful to look at other peoples’ reviews, as reviews are as worthy of criticism as other products.

So here’s a startlingly poorly-written review of the film Pan’s Labyrinth by film critic Kenneth Turan on NPR’s Morning Edition. A say it’s “startling” because I usually find that Turan is a pretty solid reviewer.

What I don’t like about this review is that it’s all pretty writing (Turan is quite a good writer) and applase for director Guillermo del Toro’s ability to make his fantasy setting seem realistic, even when juxtaposed against the (presumably) uncompromising view of life in 1944 Spain. But it doesn’t really tell us anything about the film’s story, which for a film of any depth really ought to be the first (or at least the second) thing a review addresses. Who is the girl who’s the presumed protagonist? What’s he background? What challenges does she have in her life and what does she encounter in the fantasy world, and how does the movie handle her story? From Turan’s review, I really have no idea.

(In the interest of full disclosure – and to pad this entry with a few more links – Tim Lynch – my old sparring partner from my days on the rec.arts.startrek USENET newsgroup – and I had a brief go-round about film reviews on Peter David’s blog a year and a half ago. He invoked Kenneth Turan’s name there in response to my general satisfaction with reviews in the San Jose Mercury News. I like Turan’s reviews well enough, but I don’t find them markedly better than the Merc’s.)

This won’t dissuade me from going to see Pan’s Labyrinth (I’ve been rather intrigued by it, actually), but if I was on the fence about it, I don’t think Turan’s review would have pushed me over the edge. I actually might have ended up thinking, “Well gee, it sounds like a rather depressing special effects extravaganda.”

Turan’s review in the LA Times (registration required) fills in some of the gaps, but I think he excised the wrong content when he condensed it for his NPR review. (To be fair, I don’t know how the NPR reviews are produced; maybe he reads his whole print review and then someone else edits it for time. But the end result is the same either way.)

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 28 December 2006.

Apparently there was some mishap with a shipment of comics to Diamond Comics Distributors‘ LA site, so many stores in the west didn’t receive several comics slated to come out this week. Fortunately (?) DC’s weekly series 52 wasn’t among them, since that would be, well, silly. But it also meant a light week for me.

This week sees the collection of Captain Gravity and the Power of the Vril, which collects the 6-issue mini-series and contains 30 extra pages of story (no doubt to the annoyance of those who bought the mini-series but didn’t plan to buy the trade). PFP is an interesting little publisher, and I’ve enjoyed many things they’ve published, although I wouldn’t rate it all as top-notch. Captain Gravity, though, is quite an enjoyable series: Part superhero, part adventure, and part period piece, its hero is at first a fictional character in a series of movies, until Joshua Jones, a young man working on the film crew, acquires the power to control gravity and becomes the hero himself. Joshua is black, which is something of an issue as the stories occur in the 1930s, so it’s fortunate that the Captain’s costume covers his whole body.

Written by Joshua Dysart with pencils by Sal Velluto, The Power of the Vril concerns the source of the Captain’s powers, and it involves Nazis, aliens, and a chase around the world. It’s fun stuff, although the series felt a little padded to me, but it’s still worth a look. The only real downsides are that it has a somewhat pointless framing sequence set in the 60s, and the collection’s reproduction washes out the black ink on some pages, which gives the book an odd look, but not an intended one, I suspect.

(To be honest, I did like the original series better.)

By the way, fans of Athena Voltaire (Ape Entertainment) might enjoy Captain Gravity, and vice-versa. AV dispenses with the superpowers, but otherwise the two have enough in common to warrant the mutual recommendation.