Not sure if this is considered good medical advice anymore.


Only online a few minutes today, but I am getting better and watching old Vincent Price movies. I will be back tomorrow.

So, for two days I thought I had a cold, coughing and moping around. The third day, I couldn't summon the determination to do the dishes and, when I coughed up lovely dark phlegm, I decided to go to the ER while I could still drive. I'm there getting a breathing treatment and a saline IV and the doctor comes in with the X-rays and cheerfully says, "I suppose you know you're growing a pneumonia in there." So, it was antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and by the second day, I was sitting up and going, "Oh. The world is still there." Tomorrow I should start posting again.

Lajka helped out by answering the phone and having Murky stay over "for security and moral support" and to make sure the food in the refrigerator didn't go bad and have to be thrown out. "Give me a couple hundred and we will go to Hannaford and restock everything. You never have strawberry rhubarb pie or reindeer pickled sausage and we need to start buying Mountain Dew the Green Death in ten-liter bottles." She's an angel.

Sorry for the blank blog. I should be back tomorrow.

Just naturally gravitates to that keyboard, eh?

Speaking of the Black Canary, here she is, putting on the pathos with a trowel. I half expect her to go *sniff" in her dialogue balloon. Ease up a bit, Dinah.

I mean, there had to be some hard feelings. Black Canary first appeared as a masked crook in one of Johnny's stories in FLASH COMICS# 86 August 1947. She returned a few times and explained she was a crimefighter who posed as a criminal (like the Green Hornet). Within five issues, she got her own strip that replaced Johnny's. (He had appeared every issue since FLASH COMICS# 1 in 1940.)

Was Johnny bitter? Maybe not, he was obviously so smitten with the Canary that little hearts circled his head when she was around. Johnny was not the sharpest super-hero of the Golden Age, he was --what's the word? stupid. He was a comedy relief character, a Jerry Lewis-type clown who had control of a powerful genie-like being called the Thunderbolt. At firat, Johnny didn't realize he could summon the Thunderbolt by pronouncing the mystic Bahdnisian words "Cei-U" (which remarkably were identical in sound to the English phrase "Say you.") After he figured this out, Johnny's whacky outlook and short attention span made him barely survive his adventures, even with a magical being protecting him.

As if usurping his monthly strip wasn't enough, the Black Canary muscled in on Johnny's membership in the Justice Society. Again, Johnny had been a founding member of the group in ALL-STAR COMICS# 3, in 1940. Black Canary turned up to offer her help to the group at Johnny's invitation. Look how suspicious the members are. Maybe they still thought she was a crook as first reports of her activities said. Now, the JSA at this time had (for whatever reason) a limited roster of seven active members and Black Canary appeared as only a guest. That is, until ALL-STAR COMICS# 40, May 1948, where Johnny Thunder was gone without explanation and the Canary was a full member. One can only wonder what sort of scene went on. Did the JSA inform Johnny Thunder that his services would no longer be needed? Did he offer to step down at Black Canary's urging? Did he choke back a tear as he shook hands for the last time with the other members, heading out the door unnoticed as the Justice Society welcomed the Black Canary with her swearing-in? We may never know.

There's a sentence I never typed before.



From some holiday made-for-TV movie, I think. Actors are wise to star in these, no matter how poor the product turns out, because it means a check every year when networks run these these things into the ground.

From the 1960s, it may not look QUITE the same today (the clothing in particular).

And the answer is ( Blimey!Collapse )

Good Cover. Probably my favorite Bowie cover. So atmospheric and moody. I never cared for that stuff where he was some sort of naked dogboy or whatever that was supposed to be.




Bad Cover. Speaks for itself. This is the sort of guy that makes me lock my car doors if I see him heading over in a parking lot. "Hey, bro, listen, can I talk to you for a second..?"





Made Me Laugh Evidently WISH YOU WERE HERE ON ABBEY ROAD?

From a 1972 Japanese TV series, KAMEN RIDER.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfR-LL_7EEM

Every now and then, it's interesting to check out the originals of songs which became famous through recent covers. Doing my usual perfunctory half-hearted research on these songs, I find that many people are unreasonably smug because they realize the song was not written in 1964 for the Animals. This puts them a notch above the unwashed masses, in their opinion. Feh. Also, it may be heresy but I also question the general belief that the older a version is, the better it must be. Not always. Sometimes covers and remakes hit the mark slightly better. (After all, THE MALTESE FALCON had been filmed before as SATAN MET A LADY with indifferent results.)