Geek Talk from the Basement: The Strange Phenomenon That is Stranger Things

 

Hey guys! How was everybody's weekend? Mine was pretty good. Friday was probably the weirdest day since Brad dropped by with a bunch of stuff for me, including an Anime series on Blu-ray, the first two seasons of a really cool show on DVD and a few Funko Pop figures. Let's also not forget that the world lost a great man on Friday, when Chadwick Boseman passed away after a four year battle with cancer. He'll be sorely missed not only by Marvel fans, but by people all over the world. I'll be watching Black Panther and writing about it at some point, but right now I wanna talk about Stranger Things. It's the first post in a new column that I thought up called Geek Talk from the Basement where I just talk about geeky things as well as not so geeky things that I'm also interested in. I'll go into more detail in a later post. Right now though, let's talk geek!

So Stranger Things is a show that I had no idea would resonate with people the way it has. I mean it's pretty much Horror and not everybody into it, it's set in the '80s, and it's a Netflix Original Series. One of those things alone would never have garnered the attention this show has gotten, so I definitely didn't think that the combination of all three things together in one show would work at all.Yet, somehow, it did, and it does. It's also a show that I don't even remember how I heard about it. People just started talking about it on Facebook and, like usual I had no idea about what they were talking about any more than I did in 2011 when Game of Thrones first started. 

I'm pretty late to the party when it comes to Stranger Things (and Game of Thrones, but that's another post for another time), Being that it came out as my parents and I were just settling into the house we'd just moved into, and then right after I was dealing with abdominal surgery and then months of being stuck in bed, recovering from said operation and I just never got around to watching it, even though we had Netflix at the time and I was watching Riverdale at the time. Then finally, last year I watched the first season so I could review it on the old blog. Then I never got back to it. I definitely will at some point, maybe after my watch through of Full House and Fuller House.

The thing is is that I'm not a huge Horror guy, so watching the first three seasons back to back wasn't something I was willing to do. I mean it's not the goriest or the scariest show in the Horror genre, but the first season was pretty heavy, especially since I finished it in three or four days, so trying to get into season 2 right away wasn't going to happen right away. Plus I think my other shows were coming back by that point, so I didn't have as much time to binge anything and still go to bed at a decent hour. Like I said, I'll get back to it eventually, I'm just not in a rush to do so.

As I said, I've only seen the first season, but I really enjoyed that first season. There was a lot to love about that season. The characters were great and there really wasn't any that I didn't like. At least none that I wasn't supposed to dislike. Whereas the villains were perfectly unlikeable. Which works for me. And being a geek, the kids resonated with me, since they like some of the same things that I like, even though they're kids in the '80s and I was a kid in the '90s. I've also never been into Dungeons & Dragons like they are, so I don't have that connection. But just as a geek I could appreciate those references even though I'm not familiar with D&D. Joyce and Hopper were also pretty great characters too. The story was also compelling and gripping.

I think what astounded me the most though is how popular the show got. I mean, I think it grew slowly at first, because I don't think I actually heard anything about it until just before the second season aired in 2017 just because I was pretty busy with stuff and none of my friends at the time were into it much. So I probably saw memes about it online, but I didn't find out what it was until just before the second season was released. What's funny is that The Goldbergs had been doing '80s references for three years before Stranger Things started, but Stranger Things made the '80s popular again. 

I think what drew people to this show, because I know it's why I like it so much, is the fact that all of the characters are believable. Even Eleven is a believable character. We can relate to pretty much all of them. And equally too as most of the time with shows like this, we can either identify with the adults or the kids, not both, so that worked pretty well too. And with how compelling the story is, it's enough to keep the audience interested even beyond the '80s references. At least for that first season. I haven't seen the second or third seasons yet, so I can't speak to those yet. So I'll probably talk about Stranger Things again after I've finished the second and third seasons. 

That's it for Geek Talk from the Basement this week. I'll be back tomorrow, with what Geek Talk from the Basement is going to be and then next week I'll write about another topic, be it a comic book, a movie, TV show, video game or book. Later. 

X-Men/Dark Ages Free Comic Book Day #1 (2020) Comic Book Review

 

X-Men/Dark Ages #1 is an issue that confused me. I'll be honest, I haven't kept up with Marvel outside of Spider-Man in a really long time. And so I have no idea what's going on. I was sort of keeping myself informed on what was going on with the X-Men while House of X and Powers of X were going on but I haven't read an X-Men comic since I picked up X-Men Red #3 back in 2018. But otherwise I have no idea what's even going on in the Marvel Universe right now. Which is probably for the best, because I am completely lost here.

When Brad brought this book to me a few weeks ago, I was under the impression, based on the cover alone that it was an X-Men comic put out for Free Comic Book Day and that would be it. Nope, because the X-Men story in it, doesn't include any of the characters on the front cover.  In fact there are no X-Men in the X-Men story. There isn't even much of a story there at all. The other story however is a bit different.

I like the concept of Dark Ages, an upcoming storyline that will apparently affect the entire Marvel Universe, not just Iron Man as it seems to be depicted in this issue. The concept is that something shuts off all the power in New York City, maybe even the world. Not just power, but communications and any kind of technology, including Iron Man's armor, basically sending the world back into the "Dark Ages". This is just a brief introduction with Iron Man and Pepper Potts as the focus. Not usually something you see for the opening of a comic book story. Well, it is Marvel after all so even if they're marketing sucks, they're at least creative when it comes to come up with new situations to put the characters into.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Because this is a Free Comic Book Day comic that is really just a preview for upcoming Marvel events, this isn't going to be a long review. I'm not really sure how to rate it either. There's two stories in it so I guess I could just split the difference. You can skip it if you want since I don't think it's actually going to be necessary for you to read it if you're picking up X of Swords (the X-Men story arc presented here) or Dark Ages. The cover is completely misleading and the X-Men "story" isn't much of a story, so I'm going to give this book 5/10 stars because the Dark Ages preview is pretty cool. I just wish Marvel had used a cover that reflected Dark Ages instead of just a generic X-Men cover. And like I said, I was completely lost with what's happening in the X-Men portion of the issue since I haven't been keeping up with the X-Men since 2018. 

Living With Disabilities: CHEO and OCTC Part 2 - CHEO

 Last time on Living With Disabilities...I sang Disney songs dressed as a Dwarf for a Christmas concert, forgot everything about preschool, listened to the Spice Girls way too much courtesy of a group of girls that I knew, and learned to talk to keep up with a girl who talked all the time. And now...Part 2!

Okay, so this time I'll be talking about the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), my time there, the nurses whose names I can remember, some of my doctors, the special locations I went to inside the hospital and some of the movies and TV shows I got to watch, the books, comics and magazines I got to read, and the toys I got to play with while there.

My first memory of CHEO, and basically my first memory overall was sitting in a little red wagon outside my hospital room when I was 3 years old. That's not my whole memory though. I also remember my dad arriving to see me before I had to go for some sort of operation. I don't remember whether it was just a procedure to open my esophagus, or if it was a more involved operation. I was still on 5 North at the time though. Each floor for the fourth, fifth and sixth floors were split up into units with a designation fitting one of three of the four directions on a compass, with south not existing, because the south end of the floor was where the playrooms were situated. Trust me, I'll get to the playrooms shortly. They were really cool. Because I was in the hospital for surgery more than for any other reason, I spent a lot of time on 5 East. That was my second home and all the nurses knew me in that unit. The other unit I spent a lot of time in, particularly when I got older, was 4 East. I only remember the name of one nurse there though. I remember more from 5 East.

As I said above, 5 East was my second home. During my early years I spent more time there than at my actual home. I had birthdays and Christmases on 5 East, I had a lot of nurses there who looked after me. Even the nurses who weren't assigned to me that day looked after me while I was there. Even when I wasn't admitted to the hospital, if I was there for all day appointments, my mom and I would go up to 5 East and say hi to the nurses there if we had time between appointments. 

There was Jacques, Gladys, Margo (at the nurse's station), Louise (also at the nurse's station), Jo (I called her JoJo though), Lin (I think she was on 4 East though) and so many more whose names I don't remember, because there were so many. And that's just on 5 East. I had nurses on 4 East, the ICU, the Day Surgery Unit, the MDU (Medical Day Unit, which I talked about in a previous post), the clinic nurses, and the ER. There were so many people who looked after me at the hospital, especially when my mom or dad had to go home and look after my younger siblings who were babies at the time.

While the doctors and nurses took care of my physical health, there was another group of people who also looked after me at CHEO. They were the Childlife Workers. They're volunteers who run the playrooms, the book cart, and the entertainment units (VCRs, TVs, video game consoles etc). Without them being in the hospital for months at a time would've been a lot more boring and I would've been homesick a lot more often. The first one I remember was named Andrea. In fact, Andrea was such an important part of my life at CHEO that when my parents were expecting their second child, and they discovered it would be a girl, I named her Andrea, after the Childlife Worker. There was also Michelle, Norah and dozens of other volunteers who played with the kids in the playrooms, brought us the TV carts into our rooms so we could watch movies on the VCR, and brought us toys from the playroom if we were too sick to go to there. Which, I was quite frequently.

One of my favourite toys to play with when I was stuck in my room was the Fisher Price Castle. This was the original version from the '70s and I used to play with any figures they were able to give me from the bins in the playroom. When I was a little bit older, I would also pretend that it was Rita's Palace from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers since it had the balcony on it and everything. I mean they never made a toy of Rita's Palace so I had to make due with what I had on hand. Especially in the hospital.

My favourite place to go when I was at the hospital was the CHEO gift shop. They had books, toys, and comics as well as smaller things that could be used as either stocking stuffers at Christmas or as loot bag gifts for kids at a birthday party. My favourite thing to get here was The Berenstain Bears books. This was such an awesome series and I got a lot of these books from the hospital gift shop. So, the deal was, if I was good during a test, invasive procedure or bloodwork, my mom would take me down to the gift shop afterward and buy me a book or comic. I think she also got one of my Dinosaur toys from there too. Mainly books and comics. If I wasn't good though, she wouldn't take me and I would forfeit the reward until the next visit. More often than not I'd get the reward though because generally I was pretty good at the hospital. Bloodwork was the most difficult though because most times it would take forever for them to find a decent vein and often times it was quite painful as they poked me trying to find the right spot.

The gift shop was also where I got all of the issues of The Batman Adventures that I read as a kid. Before this I'd only read comics based on Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'd seen Batman on TV, but this was my first time reading Batman in the comics and I loved it, even though it wasn't the main Batman series that I started with. Issue #7 of The Batman Adventures was the first Batman comic I ever got. I had no idea who the guy was that Batman was fighting on the cover (it's Killer Croc), but I loved that Batman was in a comic book. The book's logo was pretty cool too.

The first Batman comic I ever got that was set in the main DC Universe, albeit the DC Universe of the early '90s, was Batman #493. This was at the beginning of the Knightfall saga and Batman was starting to get worn out fighting all the escapees from Arkham Asylum. So that's pretty cool that this was my introduction into the main DC Universe. And, yes, I also got this at the CHEO gift shop. There weren't any issues of The Batman Adventures, no Star Trek comics, and no other comics that my mom deemed suitable for me that day, so she bought me this issue instead. One of the criteria for my mom to buy a Batman comic for me, if it wasn't The Batman Adventures, was whether or not Robin was in the book. Now, at the time I didn't know the difference between Dick Grayson and Tim Drake. I saw the Robin costume, which wasn't the one from the 1966 TV show, but the one that Dick wore in Batman: The Animated Series, which, before 1995 when Batman Forever came out, was the only Robin costume that was on backpacks, lunchboxes, trading cards, toys and stickers, which were everywhere. So that was my Robin costume.

Next door to the gift shop was the Coffee Shop. My mom and I would sit here between appointments so she could get some coffee and maybe a sandwich or a cookie or something quick if she didn't have time to get a larger lunch before my next X-ray, CT scan, appointment with a doctor or some other test or procedure. I loved that coffee shop so much. And when I was admitted to the hospital, sometimes my mom or dad would take me down to the Coffee Shop so we could sit and talk without disturbing my roommate and to give me a change of scenery, if I was there for an extended period of time.

Also on the second floor, along with the clinics, the X-ray department, the Orthopaedic clinic, and the Emergency Department, was the library. This is where the books that would be brought up to the kids on the floors on the book carts came from. From time to time my mom would bring me down here to look at the books. I am not ashamed to admit that the only books I tended to look at are the Disney books. 

When there was a lot of time between appointments and my mom was hungry, we'd go downstairs to the large cafeteria on the first floor, near the passageway to OCTC. This is where all the doctors and nurses went to eat their meals on their breaks, so more often than not I would run into one of my doctors here or any number of nurses from 5 East, 5 North, 4 East, the ICU or the Emergency room. This cafeteria is also where the CHEO Telethon would have their Sunday morning children's entertainment hosted by either J.J. Clarke or Eric Longley from CJOH News or Suzanne Pinel, who played a character on TV named Marie-Soleil, who I watched on TV a lot. I never got to participate in this activity, because I was either too sick or too sore from surgery to go down there or I wasn't in the hospital for it, which is a good thing. 

Right now there are five people who worked at CHEO that were instrumental in my care there. Three are doctors, one worked in the blood lab, and the other worked in Admitting. So that's where I'd like to start. If I was being admitted to the hospital and wasn't going through the ER, which was a very rare event, the person who would take care of everything was Unita. She was such a sweetheart and acted as my reassurance that everything would be alright, which made being admitted to the hospital less scary for me as well. As far as I know, Unita still works at CHEO now, thirty years later, which is awesome.

The three doctors I want to talk about now are my surgeon, his protoge, and the cardiac surgeon I had when I was a kid. Doctor Cornell was the Cardiac Surgeon who did my second open heart surgery when I was only 5 years old. I'd had one at 13 months, when I was paralyzed on my left side from the waist down, but this was sort of the part 2 of it, which they couldn't do until I had grown a bit more, which really meant when I was 5 years old. Lol. If it weren't for Doctor Cornell fixing the problem, my heart condition would've worsened and I would not be here right now writing this for you. However there is one doctor that I have everything to thank for.

That doctor is Doctor Soucie, my surgeon at CHEO. He's the one who formed the nucleus of my medical team and kept things going in terms of communication between the various doctors I was seeing at the time. And he did such a wonderful job too. Also, if he hadn't performed the operation to remove my esophagus, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd had so many operations to keep my esophagus functioning by the time I was 7 years old that if he hadn't removed it I would've died from malnutrition since I wasn't on the feeding pump all the time at that point, as it was more of a supplement rather than my primary source of nutrition and sustenance. Or I would've choked on my food or something because of how narrow the esophagus had gotten. So while Dr. Cornell had fixed my heart, Dr. Soucie is the one who saved my life after that. He was great with us too and I think at one point he had even given my parents his home phone number so they could call him in an emergency as he most often was the one who looked after me when I was rushed to the hospital. I owe him everything.

I remember any time Dr. Soucie would perform surgery on me, he'd come to see me the night before the operation, as I would generally be in the hospital overnight before surgery. And then he'd come see me first thing in the morning as well and we'd talk. He'd reassure me that everything would be alright and I had no reason to be scared, because of course I was. But he always came to see me the morning of the operation before they would come to take me down to the O.R. personally. He never sent a resident up to see me beforehand. He always came himself. And I really appreciated that. He also tried to make sure that he was in the operating room by the time I got there, so that he'd be a familiar face, albeit a face behind a surgical mask, for me to see before they put me to sleep. And then no matter where I was after the operation, either the recovery room or the ICU, I would always wake up to find my mom sitting there at my bedside, waiting for me to come out of the anaesthesia.

The next doctor I want to talk about is the surgeon who replaced Dr. Soucie after he retired. That doctor was Dr. Bass. He was a resident under the tutelage of Dr. Soucie when I was a baby and by the time I was a teenager and had graduated to the adult medical system, he was the head of General Surgery at CHEO. Either Dr. Bass or Dr. Soucie would be the one to change my feeding tube every so often and when they did they would always have me say "1, 2, 3...OUCH!" when they were putting the fresh tube in. Dr. Bass did far more than that though. When I was 16 years old I was starting to feel trapped because of my feeding tube. I missed a lot of time in class because I would either have to deal with my feeding tube or my esophagostomy pouch where my esophagus had been. So I went to see Dr. Bass to look at options for how to proceed. With the way I was, there was no way I could go to college, move away from home (I didn't know at the time that I wouldn't be able to do that anyway) or even start dating as long as I had the feeding tube and couldn't eat properly. He knew he couldn't do the operation himself, so he referred me to a surgeon at the Ottawa Hospital, General Campus who could and everything fell into place from there. So in that way he freed me from the prison of my own body and enabled me to do things like stay at Kelly's for a weekend, take a day trip to Kingston to visit Jonathan with Brad, go to Michelle's wedding with Katie, and of course go to Ottawa Comiccon and other fun geeky events around Ottawa. 

The final person I'd like to talk about is a man named Julian. He was the head technician at the blood test lab, which was almost as scary a place as the operating room was for me, because it involved needles, which my veins didn't like. Julian did all the bloodwork himself. He was also a wizard with needles too. Now my veins are really bad from overuse and scar tissue from said overuse and when I was a kid trying to do bloodwork or start an IV on me was a long and arduous task. Julian was the only one who could do it in one try. If he was there and wasn't busy, and another technician was trying to draw blood, and my veins were not cooperating, they'd call Julian over and he did it no problem. And if I was admitted to the hospital, and they were trying to start an IV on me outside of the operating room, but they were unsuccessful, they'd call Julian up and that IV would be started in five minutes or less, no problem. In fact I think I remember a time where they were trying to start an IV on me in the middle of the night and nothing they tried was working. Five different nurses and at least one doctor tried, and they all failed. So what did they do? They called Julian as he was on call that night or was working the night shift, and he came up and got the IV started. And that was after everyone had been trying for four hours. 

Now, I'm going to talk about a few of the movies that I saw while I was in the hospital growing up that I didn't get to see at home.

The first one that I saw, that I actually remember watching was Batman Returns. This was a huge mistake because it scared me to death. The Penguin was super creepy in this movie and being a young child I had nightmares for weeks after seeing this movie. I mean how could you not? He bites the nose of a guy named Josh. I actually think that's what freaked me out the most, that the dude's name was Josh, just like me. I didn't see that movie again until I was in high school and got it on DVD in the The Batman Legacy box set of all four Burton/Schumacher films, even though my parents had it on VHS along with Batman (1989). That's how bad it freaked me out.

The next movie I remember watching at CHEO was Super Mario Bros. (1993). It was in one of the waiting lounges in the MDU while I was waiting for a bone marrow procedure, not sure if it was a transplant or just a removal, but this was one of those all day trips to the hospital and they put this movie on for me while I waited to be called into the procedure room. I didn't get to see very much of it. Maybe the first fifteen or twenty minutes before they called me in. I just remember watching it on VHS in the waiting lounge behind the MDU nurse's station.

Shifting to the more child friendly entertainment options one roommate I had was into Barney like I was, so we watched the seventh tape in the Barney & The Backyard Gang series, Barney in Concert together one afternoon. Right after we watched Batman Returns if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah, weird how it was the same kid I watched both things with eh? Lol. Now I'd seen this video before, as my parents had taped off the TV the one time they aired it on PBS right after an episode of Barney & Friends. I just didn't have either of the official VHS releases of the video, and this one was the first one and only one I saw. It was the 1992 release so it was the one that would be in stores at this point in time.

Going back towards more family-friendly but less child specific entertainment, CHEO was also the place where I saw The Fox and the Hound for the first time. It was the last release to come out under the Walt Disney Classics banner, as such I think it came out on VHS the same month as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which is why I hadn't seen it before. I watched it either when I was in for a sinus infection, pneumonia, which I was highly susceptible to, an asthma attack or the Chicken Pox. The earliest I would've seen it was in May or June 1994 which is when I had the Chicken Pox and I think that was the last time I was admitted to the hospital for something other than Day Surgery until the sinus infection when I was in grade 4 or 5. I watched so many other movies and TV shows at CHEO but these are the ones that stood out to me and were memorable, aside from Robin Hood, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, and Barney's Campfire Sing-Along which were mentioned in my segment on the doctor's appointments and spending days at CHEO for those. 

That comes to the end of my CHEO and OCTC memories. At least the ones I wanted to share with you. I have many many others, both good and bad, but I think I'll share those at a later date. Right now I'd like to thank all of you for reading these extremely long posts. I was expecting to talk about a few things and that would be it. You know, just enough to fit into one post. But fortunately, or unfortunately, that was not to be. I'll be back tomorrow for some Free Comic Book Day comic book fun. So until then have a great night. Later. 

Living With Disabilities: CHEO and OCTC Part 1 - OCTC

 Hey guys! How are you all doing today? I'm pretty good. The humidity is still insane, but that could go away tomorrow, or stay with us until mid-October, depending on what the weather feels like doing this year. Today I'm here to talk about two places that were huge parts of my life when I was growing up. The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and the Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre (OCTC). Not only were both places instrumental in keeping me healthy when I was a child, but CHEO saved my life and OCTC is where I spent the first five years that I was in school. I'll also be talking about some of the books, comics, TV shows and movies that I experienced in those places as well since this is a geeky blog after all. I wanna start with OCTC because that's where I made my first friends and had my very first best friend.

So OCTC is a place that is now part of CHEO, but when I was a kid, the building was on the same campus as CHEO and there was a passageway between the two facilities, and there were also medical clinics at OCTC as well. This is where the Physical and Occupational Therapists had their offices. So even when I wasn't at school, or had moved on to Greely Elementary School, I spent a lot of time at OCTC. And as I may have mentioned there was also a school there that went from preschool until the first grade. The school was actually two classrooms in a hallway, and then a playroom with a lunch room and three classrooms that were along the wall. There was also a Toy Library next to the lunch room, but I had lots of toys at home and so I never got to borrow toys from the Toy Library. 

I started at OCTC in the fall of 1989 when I went into preschool. I don't remember anything from preschool, except what the classroom looked like and even that's pretty vague. What I do remember is the driver I had who took me to school every day and brought me home again. His name was Vince and he was my driver for that whole year. Vince drove a van. Anyway, later in my life, Vince became a security guard at CHEO and my mom and I would go down to the security office which was beside the entrance to the passageway between CHEO and OCTC on the first floor of the hospital (basically the basement). Also, whenever I was in the hospital and Vince knew I was there, he would come up to whichever floor I was on and see me on one of his breaks. Which occasionally meant a late night visit if he was on the night shift.

There are two custodians as OCTC that I'd like to talk about, their names were Ron and Gord and they always said hi to me when I was out in the play area at school. Ron was still there when I went back to OCTC for group meetings in the late '90s, which I'll be talking about a little later. Gord had moved on by then though. I remember one time Gord set up the play mats that were always in the corner near the bookshelves, as the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation, using a picture in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Journal, which I brought to school to show him. Which was really cool.

Junior Kindergarten, which I was in from 1990 until 1991, was when my whole life changed. It's the school year where I began talking. Prior to this I had used Sign Language and sounds to communicate to my parents and preschool teacher. But this year I started talking and it was all because of a girl. That's right, I started talking because of a girl. Her name was Sara, and she talked to me constantly. And of course, because I didn't start talking until after I met her, I couldn't talk back to her. Sadly, I don't remember Sara being at the OCTC school in the remaining three years, so it's possible she moved away after Junior Kindergarten. I really don't remember. 

I met other kids there. Some of whom I got back in touch with for a brief time. Lee, Kyle, Krystianne, AnaLori, Caitlin, Moe, and Anna are the ones that I remember. Kyle and I reunited in the late '90s at OCTC for a summer day camp known as Teens First Summer Camp, and then somehow we ended up in the same program at Algonquin College for two years. Which is wild. Krystianne, AnaLori and I also reunited at Teens First Summer Camp. Oh and Krystianne and I also hung out for a while as adults too. Lee and I didn't meet again until college when we found each other on Facebook and I would also see him around campus. Sadly, Lee passed away a year ago, but among those of us who have had health complications since birth, we're lucky that we've lived as long as we have. I miss him, but he's in my memories for sure.

However, my best friend at the OCTC school was a boy named Joshua. Same as me. We both liked Star Trek and Power Rangers and played together all the time. We were in the same class one year and so the teacher started calling him Joshua, and I was Josh, and that stuck. Oh and Joshua also went to Los Angeles to visit the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation at Paramount Studios the week after I did. Literally, he left just after I got home. I was jealous, because even though I had gotten to go first, he got to meet Michael Dorn, who played Worf, and I didn't, because he just happened to not be filming scenes the day I was there, so he wasn't on set that day. Joshua was also the one who taught me the names of the Power Rangers too. Which was kinda cool. I remember he came to visit me in the hospital one time and he brought a toy phaser and communicator from the original Star Trek series to show me. I had the tricorder from TNG though, so I wasn't too jealous of him for having the TOS phaser and communicator (yes I was). Unfortunately I lost track of Joshua over the years because we didn't keep in touch when we left OCTC and went to different regular public schools and I've never found him on Facebook. We got along great though. Would've been cool to see what he's like as a teenager or an adult, if he's even still alive. Like I said, many of us were really sick and I know at least one of them who passed away after we'd left OCTC, but while we were still kids.

I had some pretty neat teachers too. Like I said, I don't remember the one I had for preschool, but for Kindergarten, both Junior and Senior, I had Corinne and then I had Joan in the first grade. There were also other Teacher's Aids and attendants at the school as well that helped to deal with our medical stuff like my feeding pump, going to the bathroom and other things like that. One of them, his name was Steven, used to tell really bad Star Trek knock knock jokes to make me laugh during lunch. Yes, there were Star Trek knock knock jokes. I don't remember any of them now, but at the time I thought they were hilarious.

There was this one time, that I alluded to in my review of the first tape in the Disney Sing-Along Songs series, where my school did a Christmas concert, where we sang Disney songs and dressed up as various Disney characters. I Cosplayed before Cosplay was a thing. Anyway I got to be one of the Dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There's even a picture of me, in full Dwarf gear, hidden here, where no one will ever see it. And I'm dressed as Grumpy. So imagine me, as a five or six year old, trying to look angry, while smiling at the audience. Both of my grandmothers were in the audience, as were my sister (my brother as well too if I remember correctly) and my mom. We sang all of the classic Disney songs, including "Mickey Mouse March", "Never Smile at a Crocodile", "It's A Small World", "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo", "Following the Leader", "When You Wish Upon a Star", and "Heigh-Ho". Beauty and the Beast wasn't out yet, and we also didn't sing anything from The Little Mermaid either.  

Before I get to talking about CHEO, there's something else that I'd like to mention about OCTC. And that is Disability Awareness and Teens First, two social discussion groups that I was part of that were actually pretty fun. Disability Awareness was a group that met in the lunch room in the school area of OCTC and it was a weekly thing. A lot of the kids that I'd gone to school with in preschool, Kindergarten and first grade were in this group, as well as a few that I'd never met before. Which was cool because while we got to see people we'd known our whole lives up to that point, we also met new people, which wasn't something that happened very often out where I lived at the time. I went to Disability Awareness in 1997.

Teens First was different, because it was more of a social group than Disability Awareness was. While Disability Awareness was meant to not only help us understand our own disabilities, but to also help us learn about the disabilities that the other kids in the group had, as well as helping us learn to cope with people who don't have disabilities and their questions etc. Teens First was about us growing up as people with disabilities and becoming teenagers. We had a movie night, where we went to see Titanic. Yes, as my eleven year old self, I went to see Titanic in theatres with a group of my peers. A group where there were a lot of girls in it I might add. I don't think any of us guys would've willingly chosen to go see it if the girls hadn't wanted to see it, or hadn't been there. Oh well. 

One of the weirdest things that happened to me that winter (Teens First and Disability Awareness happened in the wintertime) is there was this one day, where I was heading into a Teens First meeting and in the lobby of OCTC I passed a girl and her mother, coming from another group similar to both Teens First and Disability Awareness. The girl was only 8 years old, and I didn't pay much attention to them because I was trying to get to my meeting and I just put it out of my mind. Well, I found out a month ago that that 8 year old girl ended up becoming one my best friends and one of my absolute favourite people in the world, because that girl turned out to be Katie. We were sitting in the backyard back in July and I happened to mention OCTC to her and the groups I was part of in my early teens between 1997 and 2000, and then she told me about the group she was part of, run by the same person who organized my groups, and that's when we realized that we were there at the same time.

Teens First had a summer day camp that I went to for a week in both 1998 and 2000. I have pictures from the week I went in 1998 and we did a lot of stuff. Karaoke, Laser Quest, a Martial Arts/Defense lesson, and a walk around the CHEO/OCTC/Ottawa Hospital, General Campus campus. There were older teenagers who joined us as volunteers and I made friends with a few of them. Ryan C. and Matt were two of them, as well as Ahmed, who became my mentor briefly in 1999. Oh and did I mention that I listened to a lot of Spice Girls that week? No? Well let me tell you that story.

There were a group of girls at the camp who loved the Spice Girls and being teenage girls they put on those albums every day. I even have a picture of them posing as the girl band. Well, trying to anyway. Stephanie, from the winter program, was in that group, as were AnaLori and Krystianne. So that was cool. I think I had a crush on Robin, who was Stephanie's best friend at the camp and they were always together.

I think I'm going to leave it off here for now as I talked way too long about my time at OCTC, and didn't even cover everything that I remember from those days. There were swimming lessons, movie days, field trips, visiting each other when one of us was in the hospital (CHEO was right there) and so much more. For now I'll end things here. Come back shortly though and I'll have the CHEO part up before I go to bed tonight. Later. 

My Thoughts on This Weekend's Announcements From DC Comics and Warner Bros.

 Hey guys! How were your weekends? Mine was decent. I went with my parents to visit my grandmother yesterday afternoon, but otherwise I didn't do a whole lot just because it was super hot out again this weekend and I'm technically not supposed to be out in that kind of heat. I do it anyway in certain circumstances though. Anyway this weekend was DC Comics's virtual event, the DC FanDome, where announcements and updates were made for upcoming movies, video games and TV shows. I didn't follow everything going on during this event, but I did watch a few of the trailers and read a couple of the announcements. So I wanted to just give you my thoughts on the three trailers that I watched as well as on some of the announcements.

The first trailer I watched was the first full trailer for Wonder Woman 1984, the sequel to the 2017 blockbuster, Wonder Woman. I loved the first movie, but I've been keeping my expectations low for this sequel, because I know that I'm not going to have the same experience with this movie that I did with the first one. This way I won't be too disappointed if this movie ends up not being as good as the first one. I'm sure it's going to be a really good movie from the trailer, because that trailer was awesome, but I'm just trying to keep from being too disappointed if it isn't quite as good as the first one. I'm not a fan of Wonder Woman in the comics, so this is my first real experience with the movie's villain, Cheetah, aside from a quick appearance in an issue of Green Arrow from The New 52 that I have in my collection. I know from talking to people who know Wonder Woman's world way better than I do that Cheetah is basically for Wonder Woman what the Joker and Lex Luthor are to Batman and Superman. That's all I know. So I'm interested to learn a little bit about the character through this movie. 

The only thing I didn't like in this trailer is the amount of CGI used for characters who don't need to be CGI. Like Cheetah in her full feline form. Though I suppose after the whole Cats fiasco back in December, I guess I shouldn't complain too much that they're using CGI for Cheetah in this movie. Still though, it's still fairly rough CG work at the moment, so I wouldn't be surprised if they cleaned it up a bit before the movie comes out in October. So far there aren't any plans to put this movie out on Video On Demand platforms, just a theatrical release. If that's going to be the case then I'll have to wait until it comes out on Netflix and DVD to see it because I'm not going to the movie theatre this year.

The next trailer I watched was the teaser for The Batman, which doesn't come out until next year. The teaser looked really good and Robert Pattinson looks great in the Batsuit. However I'm kinda sick of the dark, gritty Batman story where his family was secretly involved in some criminal conspiracy and Bruce has to come to terms with it. So many things have done this in the past fifteen years. The Dark Knight Trilogy, Gotham, Batman: The Telltale Series, Batman: Earth One, Scott Snyder's run on Batman for the New 52, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch of others too. Just once I'd like a Batman movie where he's solving a case, and his parents are only mentioned as his motivation and that's it. Like it was in the '90s with Batman: The Animated Series, and the Burton/Schumacher movies. I also don't like that they cast Colin Farrell as the Penguin, just because he's one of those actors that actually creeps me out, probably because he was in a bunch of heavy, unsettling, movies in the 2000s and I just never liked him that much. Hopefully he does a really good job as the Penguin and doesn't try to make him more creepy than Danny DeVito was as the character in Batman Returns.

The last trailer I watched, because I have no interest in The Suicide Squad, and the other movies aren't far enough along in production to have a teaser ready, let alone a full trailer, is Zack Snyder's Justice League. I honestly don't see the point in even doing the Snyder cut of this movie. I mean it's still the same script, same story, and same cast and Whedon couldn't've done that many reshoots, so I don't understand why fans were clamouring for this version of the movie when it really doesn't seem to be that different from the version that was released in theatres in 2017. It just seems like the only difference is that it's going to be longer than the original movie, with some extra scenes included. At least with Superman II I can tell the difference between the original theatrical version and the Donner Cut that came out in 2006. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that fans will have the opportunity to see Justice League the way that Snyder had intended it to be, but I don't see the point in releasing it on HBO Max when not everyone has access to that platform. Especially when there really doesn't seem to be a huge difference between versions like there is for Superman II or Watchmen, which was directed by Zack Snyder as well.

The last couple of things that I want to talk about are Black Adam and The Flash. These are two movies that don't have trailers yet, but there were some stuff concerning them that came out this weekend. The Flash is a movie I haven't been looking forward to at all. I don't like Ezra Miller's version of Barry Allen/the Flash and he's not an actor that I enjoy watching on screen. However, this is actually going to be more of a DC Universe movie than a Flash movie since it's taking elements from the 2011 mini-series, Flashpoint that started The New 52 reboot. It was also confirmed this weekend that not only is Michael Keaton returning to reprise his role as Batman from the Tim Burton movies, but that Ben Affleck is returning to reprise his role as Batman from Batman v Superman and Justice League. I don't know how true this rumour is, but I was watching Near Mint Condition's DC FanDome Overview video and Omar and Maddie mentioned there was this rumour going around that Grant Gustin, who plays Barry on The CW/DC Comics Television series, The Flash, could make an appearance in the movie. Comic Book Cast also did a video on it. Unlike many other rumours going around about these movies, I think this one is more likely to happen. I'll explain why.

Back in part 4 of the CW crossover, Crisis On Infinite Earths, which aired as the eighth episode of season 8 of Arrow, Ezra Miller made a cameo as the DCEU version of Barry Allen, meeting the TV show version inside the Speed Force and they had a brief conversation. So it's possible that if Grant were to show up in the movie it could be footage filmed for that episode, but taken from a different angle and that's all it's going to be. However, given that Keaton is returning as Batman and it looks like he's going to have a significant role in the movie, depending on the logistics of having Grant go to wherever the movie is being filmed from where the TV show films in Canada, he could also have more than just a brief cameo in the movie. So even if this movie is a total flop, the fact that Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck are both going to play Batman, and Grant Gustin could show up as well, is the sort of thing that I, as a fan of DC Comics, can, and should, get really excited about. I guess we'll see in 2022 what happens.

Black Adam is the other movie that I want to talk about briefly because outside of conversations with my buddy Aaron, I haven't talked about this movie at all. To be perfectly honest, I'm not excited for this movie at all. I like Dwayne Johnson as an actor, but I'm kind of sick of these villain turned anti-hero movies about characters that were meant to be villains and that's it. As much as I have no interest in watching Venom, that character is the only one who makes sense to do that with since they started doing that in the comics way back in the '90s, around the time that Carnage first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #361 and that's been his journey since the beginning pretty much. Other characters like Black Adam, the Joker, Deadshot, Harley Quinn and pretty much every other villain in the DC Universe are either not interesting enough to have their own movies or they were meant to be the bad guys and that's it. Though one exception is Two-Face. That's a movie I actually wouldn't mind seeing Warner Bros. make. 

I wouldn't mind seeing Black Adam in the sequel to Shazam!, but I have no interest in a movie that he's in as the main character/protagonist. Even if the Justice Society of America is going to be in it. There's just something wrong with having a villain as the protagonist of a movie and the superheroes being the antagonists. Not every villain can be Darth Vader or Two-Face. But I think that speaks more to where my headspace is versus the state of the world these days than anything else. Not saying that Black Adam is going to be a bad movie by any means. It's just not something that I'm interested in seeing.

The final thing I want to talk about is comic book related. There wasn't a whole lot coming out of the comic book realm for this part of DC FanDome. In fact they were extremely light on comic book announcements this time around. However DC did announce they were relaunching the Milestone line of comics. Milestone was an imprint of DC comics by African-American writers and artists that had minority characters as the focus. Primarily Black people. The character of Static is the only one I'm familiar with as he had his own animated series on the Kids' WB programming on The WB, which is now The CW, from 2000 until 2004. I never watched the show itself, but I did see him in Justice League Unlimited so I know him from there. They've attempted to revive these characters in the past and failed, so I hope they succeed this time, but comic book sales aren't what they used to be these days either, so I guess only time will tell if DC is successful with this relaunch. 

Apparently there was a panel for the Flash TV show, but with Season 6 having been abbreviated due to the pandemic, there wasn't anything new in this panel that the fans didn't already know, like who the villain is for Season 7, and that the remaining episodes from Season 6 would air as the first episodes of Season 7. I actually stopped watching The Flash only a few episodes after Crisis On Infinite Earths because the crossover was actually the best part of the season. The first part was okay, but I kinda felt like the writers didn't know where to go with the characters now that the crossover was done since that was supposed to be the crossover that ended the Arrowverse in 2024 but was moved up because Stephen Amell was ready to leave and they were cancelling Arrow. And because the season wasn't great post-Crisis, I dropped it. The show is on Netflix here in Canada so I could just watch the whole season before Season 7 starts, but I don't care about newer villains from The New 52, DC Rebirth and DC Universe like Bloodwork and Godspeed so I'm not interested in finishing Season 6 or in watching Season 7 when that starts in January.

That's all I wanted to talk about today. I'll put a link at the end of this post so you can read about the other announcements that I didn't talk about in this post as they're for things I have no interest in like the two video games that we got trailers for and shows like Titans. I've got lots of posts coming your way this week, including a Living with Disabilities post tomorrow and a comic book review on Wednesday. Later.

Link:  https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2020/08/22/dc-fandome-hall-of-heroes-all-the-news-and-highlights

Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew (2020) #3 Comic Book Review

 

Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #3 feels like the midway point in the series, with things starting to shift around for the three protagonists. It's also the issue where the concept of the series is starting to break down a little bit. At least for me. 

I've only read a few books in the The Hardy Boys Casefiles series when I was growing up and never read the Nancy Drew Files books either. So my experience with these characters comes from the original books. Which means it takes me a little bit to get used to anything that deviates from that original tone and style. I've enjoyed the previous two issues in this series, but it's still weird for me to read the Hardys and Nancy in this kind of situation. Oh sure, the bad guys tried to kill these characters in their respective books back in the day, but it was never so bloody in those books even though the danger was quite real. It's a good series so far, but it's called The Death of Nancy Drew, and with the way issue #1 ended the title is probably the wrong one for this series.

There isn't much character development for any of the three main characters. Frank and Joe are Frank and Joe and Nancy is Nancy. There really isn't any difference between the way they are in the novels and the way they are here in the comics. Which is fine, you know, I'm glad Del Col isn't trying to change the characters except to make them 2020 characters rather than characters from the '20s, '30s or '50s. But at the same time, because these characters have been around for almost 100 years and have been in movies, comic books, TV shows and novels, it's really difficult to do anything with them without completely changing their personalities, which no fan of either book series would want to do unless absolutely necessary. So the fact that Del Col didn't do that and managed to keep things interesting is pretty cool.

The one thing I probably could do without is the romantic undertones of the issue. I know that Frank and Nancy have sort of been a thing since the Super Sleuths series that was published from the late '80s until the late '90s, but this isn't that series, and Del Col isn't actually doing anything with it, beyond Frank mentioning his crush on Nancy and then the classic trope of someone telling their crush that they love them, while hopped up on drugs after surgery or because of an injury or whatever the case is. You know the typical romantic drama stuff that's been going on since the advent of the soap opera. It should be cute, but it takes away from the severity of the situation the three detectives find themselves in. I dunno, maybe it's because the DC/CW superhero shows have really soured me on romance in comic book based TV shows, that that dislike for it has now bled into comics themselves. 

The other thing that I have a problem with, is a problem that I have with this series as a whole, not with this particular issue. There was another mini-series that came before this and as the series goes on I see more and more connection between the two. I haven't read the previous series, so I have no idea what it was about, aside from the brief recap at the start of the first issue of this series, which makes it harder to get into because you feel like you came in in the middle of the movie or the second season of a TV show that relies on the viewer to have seen the first season and know what's going on. This series does a better job of trying to be a standalone story, but that connection is still there and every once in a while the writer reminds the reader of that connection and it does make me want to go back and read the previous series. So I guess it's not really a problem so much as it is an annoyance that comic books have in general these days.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Death of Nancy Drew #3 is a good issue with a pretty great reveal at the ending that ties the Bobbsey Twins into everything going on with the Hardys and Nancy Drew, which is still REALLY weird to say. The romance element is unnecessary but it isn't super intrusive. Yet. I'm giving Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #3 7/10 stars. The story is still interesting, but there isn't much world building or character development at this point in the story.

Blog Update (August 20th, 2020)

 Hey guys! How's your week going? Honestly, mine has been pretty good. So as you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything this week. I did that on purpose. I decided to take the week off, except for this post, and relax. Which got me thinking about the blog and it's direction. So that's actually why I'm doing this Blog Update right now. 

So originally I was going to do a whole series of reviews on seasons of Television, going through however many seasons of a show I had access to, including the complete series for several that are on Netflix, Disney+ and in my personal collection, starting with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. But three days ago I started watching Full House on Netflix, with no intention to review it and I found myself actually relaxing with the show before bed, instead of paying attention to it so I could review it when I was finished. Just randomly too. Like I hadn't even planned on watching Full House from the very beginning, until the minute I turned Netflix on on Monday night. I honestly had to keep myself from laughing too loud because my parents had gone to bed.

So, in the spirit of the fun of watching TV as relaxation before going to bed, I'm not going to do movie and TV show reviews the way I've been doing them. Instead I'm going to just write about a show at some point while I'm watching it and post that as a discussion type post. Same with movies. After I finish watching a movie, I'll just talk about it a little bit. That just takes off the pressure of watching a show to review in a certain amount of time. All of my reviews and discussions will continue to be spoiler free, but I think it'll be easier because then I can just watch the show as slow or fast as I want to and not worry about getting it finished in a timely fashion, even though I have all the time in the world to get this stuff done in.

As for my book and comic reviews, I'm gonna be continuing doing them the way I've been doing them in terms of layout and style. However I'm gonna stick to doing single issue comic book reviews as I can do those quickly and easily. Book reviews aren't going to change, though I am going to be doing them a lot more often than I have been doing them. I'll be alternating between the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels and other books just so I'm not burning myself out with Star Wars books, which can happen, because there are a lot of them. So stay tuned for that.

That's it for me today. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of the 3rd issue of Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew, which I just got a week ago. So I will talk to you all later. 

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Movie Review

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not unique among movies made from multi-part episodes of a TV series. However it is a rare one that got a theatrical release rather than a TV airing or a direct-to-video release. Which is actually my problem with this movie. It doesn't feel like a movie. It just feels like a 98 minute episode of the animated series that followed it. 

George Lucas loves Animation. Since before he made the original Star Wars movie in 1977, he'd wanted to be in the Animation department of a studio. In fact, if memory serves me right he had actually applied for the Animation department at Warner Bros. before that got shut down. Which explains why he was so heavily involved in the production of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, both the movie and the TV show. Naturally, George would want to make a Star Wars animated movie to promote the upcoming series. Which is basically what this movie is. A promotion for the TV show that debuted two months after the movie came out in theatres. 

Story wise, this movie is actually a better pilot for a TV show than it is as a movie. That's not a bad thing considering this movie was an afterthought that George had after he saw footage from the show on the big screen at Skywalker Ranch. However, it was a strange decision to put it in theatres since it didn't do very well at the box office. But I don't think it was going to do very well because The Dark Knight and Iron Man were big that year and I don't think any movie could really stand up to them. Not to mention it doesn't stand up against the first six live action Star Wars movies either. 

Personally, I enjoyed this movie. But I enjoyed it as a feature length pilot episode rather than a TV series. I actually went to see this movie in theatres. It was the summer of 2008 and I was still on summer holidays from college. Brad and I went a week or so after it came out and we had fun. I don't remember seeing any commercials for it on TV or on YouTube at the time (very early YouTube) but I knew that the movie was coming out because of Star Wars Insider, the official Star Wars magazine, which is still in publication today. I think Brad and I had also seen the movie poster in the lobby of the theatre when we went to see The Dark Knight. I also knew that the TV show was coming out and that it would be airing on CTV so I remember being super excited. I'll get more into that when I do my season 1 review.

My favourite thing about this movie is the dynamic between Anakin and his new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano. They play off each other in a way that the authors of the books chronicling the adventures of Obi-Wan and Anakin between Episode I and Episode II didn't get quite right. I laughed at their back and forth banter and I loved how Ahsoka integrated herself into the Clone Trooper company that Anakin commands. Most of the awkwardness comes from the fact that Anakin doesn't think he's prepared to take on a Padawan of his own, despite both Yoda and Obi-Wan assuring him that he is. Which is a far cry from where Anakin is in the Prequel Trilogy, especially in Revenge of the Sith. I think it works though because there are only a handful of novels and comics that came out prior to this movie and show which showed us the Clone Wars since the prequels only showed us the beginning and the end of it, with nothing in between being shown. And with those novels and comics being considered Legends now, all we have are this movie and the show that it started.

Dooku's plot is kind of dumb. Well okay, maybe dumb isn't the right word for it, but it felt kind of pointless since Palpatine was planning to discredit the Jedi on a larger scale once the Clone Wars were over, so to discredit and villify them on such a smaller scale, especially when Sidious expected it to fail is kind of a waste. Especially since the Jedi figured the plan out fairly quickly. The plan made tactical sense, since the Separatists need to control the movement of ships through Jabba's territory in order to defeat the Republic, it's just their execution was poor.

I think the worst part of this movie is that they introduced Jabba's uncle, Ziro the Hutt, way too late in the film and that was pretty unnecessary. I get needing someone on the inside, but Dooku or Ventress could just as easily have bribed a member of Jabba's court to get Jabba's son out of the palace on Tatooine. Also, I know this movie and it's resulting TV series are canon, but back in 2008 there was no way they knew that Disney was going to be buying Lucasfilm and Star Wars, and ending the original Expanded Universe, but where's Jabba's uncle, Jiliac the Hutt from the Han Solo Trilogy? In Legends, particularly in the pre-Prequel era novels, and possibly comics, Jabba is still fairly young for a Hutt when Han and Chewie start working for him. As a result Jiliac was the one in charge of the Hutt Family, with Jabba assisting him. I looked Jiliac up on Wookieepedia and he/she only appeared in the Han Solo Trilogy and was mentioned in the Legends novel, Shadow Games, which I have not read as it came out in 2011 and I don't remember reading about it in Star Wars Insider. I guess George Lucas and Dave Filoni chose not to incorporate Jiliac into the movie or the series and Jiliac will forever be in Legends. 

Anyway, like I said, I think they introduced Ziro way too late in the movie. I checked while watching the movie last night, and there was ten minutes left in the movie when Ziro was introduced. It would've worked fine if this had been a TV episode rather than a movie, because Ziro does appear later on in the series, but for the movie, it feels shoehorned in. 

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I really enjoyed Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It's a great introduction into the world of the TV show, but as a movie it's lacking in comparison to the live action Star Wars movies. If I'm being honest though, you could actually skip this movie and go right into watching the show. I remember when the first episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired back in 2008, I'd seen the movie two months earlier, and even though I'd seen it, I didn't feel watching the movie was necessary to enjoy the show. Especially because the first episode focuses on Yoda and a group of Clone Troopers and none of the other characters appear in the episode (Editor's Note: I'm going to feel pretty stupid if I watch the episode and discover that Ahsoka and Anakin show up, but I haven't seen the episode in 12 years so I don't remember it all that well). I'm giving Star Wars: The Clone Wars 7/10 stars. The story and animation are pretty good, but throwing Ziro in at the last minute and Dooku's plan in general feels pointless.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

Batman: The Adventures Continue (2020) #1 Comic Book Review

 

Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 reminds me a lot of the old Batman Adventures comics that DC put out in the '90s and early 2000s based on Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. And that's because it's exactly like those books and those shows. Set in the time of the fourth season (known as The New Batman Adventures), this comic captures the tone and feel of both the show and the comics that were based on it. While I wasn't able to watch the show on a regular basis, I loved the comics and they were kind of my gateway into Batman as a comic book character, having already seen the 1966 live action series in reruns from an early age. 

The story is your classic episode of Batman: The Animated Series. After fighting Bane, Batman ends up taking on a giant robot, with Lex Luthor in control, because there's no such thing as just a Batman comic anymore. Especially if it's based on a TV series, where it couldn't be just a Batman show during this particular period of the show's history. Batman has to figure out why Luthor is in Gotham City and figure out how to stop him, without the aid of Superman, who's gone missing. 

Alan Burnett and Paul Dini are the writers of this book, and they are the best people to write this book outside of the original writers of The Batman Adventures, because they were writers on the original TV show back in the '90s. Burnett was also a producer on the show as well. So to have these two come in and write this comic is pretty awesome, even if they're working with their fanboy brains and throwing in as much DC stuff as possible into the book without putting EVERYTHING in. I mean, the book opens with a fight between Batman and Bane, and in true Batman: The Animated Series style, they included the classic shot from Batman #497 where Bane is holding Batman above his head, screaming "I WILL BREAK YOU!", which they also did on the show. Twice. Yeah, there's a reason companies tend not to want to let fans work on the shows and movies they produce. 

What I love about this book is the artwork. The reason I love the artwork is that Ty Templeton, who was the original artist on The Batman Adventures, is the artist on it. Which is pretty spectacular. I got to meet Ty at Ottawa Comiccon two years ago and I really enjoyed talking to him. He even signed my copy of The Batman Adventures #1. Even though they decided to go with the designs for The New Batman Adventures rather than Batman: The Animated Series, Templeton's work is spot on with the look of the later version of the show, just as it was with the art style for the original comic in the '90s. 

My favourite scene is where Bruce is at a party, talking to Veronica Vreeland, who showed up on the show in seven episodes in total, five in the original series, and then two in the continuation. It's a classic scene where Veronica is trying to persuade Bruce to settle down and start a family, with her specifically, but Bruce, ever the bachelor due to him being Batman, gets out of it somehow. In this case, Lex comes over and gets Bruce out of his predicament, which is oddly unlike Lex. Yes, I've seen a variation of that scene a number of times on the show and in the movie, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, but reading it in comic book form is pretty great.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 is pretty good for a comic that's a digital first series and for a comic serving as a continuation of a 28 year old beloved animated TV show. It's not the best, but I had fun reading it. It was cool seeing a return to the DC Animated Universe in comic book form after 17 years. I'm giving Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 7/10 stars for having good artwork but once again using the overdone Bane "breaking" Batman shot that isn't shocking anymore like it was 27 years ago when Jim Aparo drew it for Batman #497.

Quick Announcements

 Hey guys! Just some quick announcements before I get to work on my comic book review for this week. I've made some decisions concerning the blog and I think you're really going to enjoy what I have in store for you guys on the blog in the coming months. 

I've decided to work on some season reviews for some TV shows. The first three that I have in line for you are The Goldbergs, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And then the season 1 review of Star Trek: Lower Decks will be squeezed in there when that wraps up in a couple of months. I love reviewing movies, but, I also had a blast reviewing all six seasons of Community and talking about The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin when I did the Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews. There's just something about TV shows that movies lack. And that's longevity. While you're only with a movie for a maximum of three hours, you could be with a TV show for years. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning movie reviews altogether, but they won't be prevalent like they used to be. 

I'm also taking the blog back to it's geeky roots. As in everything I review will be part of geek culture, but not necessarily pop culture. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Power Rangers, DC Comics, Marvel Comics (but mostly DC), Lord of the Rings, The Big Bang Theory, Disney, non-aligned Sci-Fi shows, A Song of Ice and Fire, and a ton of other movies, books, TV shows, comic books and video games that are on the geek spectrum. My Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS reviews? Geeky! Manga and Anime? Geeky, but not super prevalent in this blog. James Bond? Definitely geeky! Hannah Montana? Big fat nope! I mean, I guess it could be, but it's not something I watched when I was the age that is appropriate to watch it, so it's not being included on this blog. Even though I technically could get away with reviewing it under the Disney division of Geekdom (yes, I just made that up, there isn't actually a Disney division of Geekdom, or is there?). Same with the Home Alone series. It's fun, it's nostalgic, but it's not geeky. 

Now, you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute! The Goldbergs isn't geeky!" and my response would be "Uh yeah it is!". Yes, I am reviewing The Goldbergs because it was created by a geek and is about him, growing up in the '80s, with his family. So yeah, The Goldbergs is the geekiest show you're ever going to get without it being Science Fiction, Fantasy or based on a comic book. Lol. 

I'm also going to be bringing back the Star Wars book reviews. I wanted to take a break from them so I could read and review the Odd Thomas series. And I've got three more books in that series, but I won't be reviewing them here on the blog. I'll be enjoying the last three books in the series on my own time. 

Alright guys, that's going to be it for today. I'll be back shortly with a comic book review. Not Power Rangers though. Instead, I'm going to be doing a single issue review this time. I'll be reviewing Batman: The Adventures Continue #1. Later! 

Odd Thomas #4: Odd Hours (2008) Book Review

Odd Hours is probably my least favourite book that I've read in the Odd Thomas series so far. It feels almost like a reboot of the series, because while Odd is there, none of his original supporting cast appears at all in the book. They're mentioned, but not shown and at this point Odd's state of mind is getting as tiresome as Oliver Queen's constant amnesia when it comes to learning the same lesson over and over again on Arrow. And yes, I will forever reference that show when talking about Odd Thomas because in a way they are similar characters. Except Odd is much more engaging than Ollie is. Anyway, my point is that we're now four books into the series and we should see some sort of progression for Odd's character. Not necessarily in terms of Odd still mourning Stormy's death from the first book, after all it's only been like eight and a half to nine months after the first book, and that kind of loss takes a long time to deal with. But he's also not becoming a darker or lighter character. He's just the same as he was two books ago in Forever Odd, before Danny was kidnapped because he knew Odd and his secret. 

The book itself is very much like the plot of the first book, except larger in scale, and the bad guys are slightly more competent this time around than they were in Odd Thomas. Though they were still stupid enough to think that Odd was actually a federal agent, whereas he's just a dude who can see dead people and fights crime with that ability. But hey, if they were smart they wouldn't be criminals right? Of course Odd uses their assumptions to his advantage, because he's smart and knows he needs every edge he can get over the bad guys.

Most of the new characters introduced in this book are one offs that we're never going to see again. The only character that sticks around, Annamaria, was hardly in this book. Apparently she's important in the next book, Odd Apocalypse, but she's got no role in this book at all, other than to make Odd aware of the problems that the town he's in, Magic Beach, is having. So why introduce her in this book? Why not wait until the book that she's important in to introduce her? You know, like the way Danny wasn't introduced in the first book because he wasn't important until the second book. 

The one thing I did like about this book is how Odd got Frank Sinatra's spirit riled up enough to go into Poltergeist mode so that Odd could escape the corrupt police chief and his henchmen. I mean, yeah, it's just recycling that scene from book 2 where Datura riles up one of the remaining spirits in the casino and Odd uses that to escape from the bad guys, but, at least here it's a little more imaginative because Odd does it himself instead of urging the bad guys to do it. Also it taught me the lesson that you should never say that Rod Stewart is better than Frank Sinatra, in front of Frank Sinatra's ghost. He'll mess your stuff up real bad if you do.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Odd Hours isn't as good as the first three Odd Thomas books. It's not badly written by any means, but four books in and Koontz was already starting to recycle plot threads from the previous books, which isn't great when you got three books left to finish your story in. I still like this series as a series and I love Odd Thomas as a character, it's just this book wasn't great. It's not unreadable by any means, it just could've been a lot better. I'm giving Odd Hours 5/10 stars.

Links: https://www.deankoontz.com/book/odd-hours/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Hours 

Living with Disabilities: Doctors and Appointments

 Hey guys! I'm back with another installment of my living with disabilities series. Today is just going to be a quick one. I wanted to talk about doctors and appointments and how my entire life has consisted of going to said appointments and tests and procedures over the years. Like I said, just a quick post today.

When I was a kid, my mom tried her best to schedule all of my appointments for a single day so that I would only have to miss a single day of school rather than multiple days in a row or one day every week. This was a bit tricky because we didn't know whether a doctor would want me to go for bloodwork or x-rays or whatever other scans and then go back to see him (or her) within the same day. Which meant additional waiting times. But we'd try and factor that into the equation when booking the appointments so that none overlapped. Oftentimes, especially in my later childhood/early teen years, there would be a huge chunk of time where my mom and I would end up walking around the hospital for a few hours between appointments. And because we lived a good thirty to forty minutes from the hospital, there was never any point in going all the way home and then going all the way back between appointments.

One appointment I had that was never booked on the same day was seeing the Hematologist at the Medical Day Unit on the sixth floor of the hospital. That was generally an all day affair as it would involve bloodwork, talking to the doctor and even having an IV started for a blood transfusion because my blood cells were low and needed to be replenished. Those were the days I was grateful that MDU had a playroom on the floor where my mom and I could go while I was being transfused. I could play with toys, read books, play the Super Nintendo they had there though that was pretty difficult with an IV in my hand, and play board games while I waited for the blood transfusion to be finished. More often than not I was usually the last kid to be on the unit. At least, I was the last one in the playroom. There were other kids who were in beds because they'd just had some sort of procedure done.

Another appointment that took most of the day was Cardiology. This is because I had to see the doctor, have an Echo done and an ECG done, and even though all of it was done in the clinic on the third floor of the hospital, this was back in the '90s and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today, so we actually had to wait for the doctor to get the results. I did get to watch a lot of movies and videotapes in that clinic. 

The movie that was usually playing when I was in the Cardiology clinic's waiting room was the 1973 animated Disney movie, Robin Hood. Inevitably though I would never get to see the whole movie because they would either call me into an examination room or into the Echo room for that test. And it was always at the same point in the movie that they'd call me in too. It was always at the part where Robin Hood is in disguise and is about to be exposed at the Archery Tournament, and I never got to see the end of the movie. I'll be telling that story more in depth at another time.

Now, while I was in the room getting the Echo done, the technician would put on one of two VHS tapes for me to watch while she did the scan.

One of the tapes that the technician put on for me is Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. I had this movie on VHS at home, but I liked it a lot, so I would request this one quite often. I would probably only get as far as the part where Shadow, Sassy and Chance started heading for home, near the beginning of the movie, but, like I said, I had the tape at home so it didn't matter that much if I didn't see the rest of the movie.

The other tape that the technician would put on for me was short enough that I got to watch the whole thing every time it was put on for me. That was the 1992 VHS release of Barney's Campfire Sing-Along, the fifth tape in the Barney and the Backyard Gang series. I'll be talking more about this when I get to reviewing it on the VHS reviews. Having an Echo done is where I remember watching this tape for the first time.

So there it is. What doctor's appointments were like for me growing up. These days I still have appointments. They're just spread out across the year and I only have to go see most of them once a year. The only appointment I have more than that is the dentist to keep my teeth clean. Otherwise I have a lot fewer appointments than I did when I was a kid. And the ones I went to when I was a kid, weren't all gloomy or anything like that. I had fun looking at/reading the books, playing with the toys, playing the video games and board games, and watching the movies, even if I didn't always get to watch the whole movie. Sure, some of the appointments were unpleasant because I had to have bloodwork done, an X-ray done, or have an IV put in for a blood transfusion, but all that unpleasantness was done to keep me healthy and I am very grateful for that.

I'll be back tomorrow for my first VHS review of a Disney Sing-Along Songs tape. I'll be starting with the first tape in the series to ever be released, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. So stay tuned for that. Until then have a great rest of your Sunday. Later.