Do y’all watch “The Flash” on the CW network?
You should.
They’ve jumped into the multiverse with both feet this season, throwing around terms like Earth Two and introducing characters like the Jay Garrick Flash.
They even replicated, more or less, the classic cover above in this past week’s episode.
Geek love.
A month or so with a broken hand gives you some perspective about the challenges of a disability.
I’m blessed compared to all those people with permanent disabilities and even those with longer-lasting but still temporary disadvantages.
But aside from ultra-personal issues like not being able to tie my own shoes, I’ve noticed many public obstacles for the disabled. And I’m only noting hand-related challenges here. Entire blogs and books – and laws – have been written about the challenges to mobility that a simple bad sidewalk can pose.
The paper towel dispenser above, in a public restroom, is one. It’s nearly impossible to use with one hand.
How about door handles? The Americans with Disabilities Act has addressed that quandary in many public buildings, but not all.
How about the simple PC keyboard, requiring the control-alt-delete combination to start or unlock? It’s only one reason I love my Mac.
Anything that requires two hands – or even one hand and a finger of the other hand – is harder.
I would strongly recommend against breaking a hand. But I would recommend that the next time you try a simple two-handed task, try it with one hand. It’s an eye-opening experience.
I’ve struggled with feeding this blog with new entries in recent months, posting less frequently than I’d like.
I felt like I’d been somewhat back on track recently, however. And I was on the verge of a new element for the blog.
Then … Well, see above.
I tripped and broke a metatarsal in my left hand, which has made it nearly impossible to type normally the past couple of weeks.
I’m using a dictation app – and most of my patience and energy – for my real job, so this blog has suffered.
But hang in there with me. I’ll still try to do short entries here. And I’ll be getting back to normal soon. I hope.
We’ll miss you.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog (thank you and bless you) you know it’s been pretty quiet of late.
I can’t blame anyone but myself for that, but I will say that my job, as rewarding as it is, has been exceedingly busy in recent months. That hasn’t changed, really, but I’m going to try to post more here even though I’m still writing a lot for my actual work.
Also: I’ll try to post the occasional iPhone photo here, but I’m pretty active on Instagram, where you can find me as, strangely enough, Keith Roysdon. Maybe all run together into one word. Hard to tell.
So I’m going to try to post more here, I’ll probably promo my work more through my pop culture Twitter account @Pop_Roysdon and hopefully we’ll all enjoy it.
Or, if you see that nothing has changed here, you know this post was just overly-optimistic bull.
So here goes nothing! (Maybe literally.)
Not to sound like 1990s era Jerry Seinfeld, but what is the deal with travel?
If you wondered what happened to the author of this blog for more than a week: I was traveling on a family vacation that took me to the Grand Tetons National Park. More on that in a future iPhoneography entry.
After five airports in as many states in about as many days, I’ve been negligent in blogging. But I have been keeping track of some observations. So this morning, happily at my kitchen counter, I’m recalling the most memorable travel moments of the past week.
The Jackson Hole airport in Wyoming is pretty small but, like a true western chic airport, has more hydration stations for refilling water bottles than it has gates.
For an airport that sprawls over several buildings and has a tram, the Detroit airport is short on people-friendly space. There are not enough seats, leading to many instances of people sitting on the floor. And Fuddruckers in Concourse C, feel free to stop pretending you’re a real restaurant. You’re a counter where patrons can order by touchscreen and then struggle, loaded down with their luggage, to get their orders and get out.
Also, much has been made of Detroit’s oddball tunnel, with multi-colored lighted walls surrounding people-movers. It’s kind of disorienting. But hey, it has its own Facebook page: That Creepy Tunnel at the Detroit Airport.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul airport looks like a mall. Really. There are entire stretches of the airport that are recognizable as an airport only because of the occasional screen updating the status of arrivals and departures.
Here’s a good reason (although not the real reason) I didn’t update my blog in the past week: Airport wi-fi is usually slower than 3G cell coverage, which makes the free wi-fi offered in most airports a nice but mostly useless attraction.
There are so, so many reasons to honor Muhammad Ali.
Here’s a man who, as a child, pulled himself up out of the rough streets of Louisville, became an athlete, then became an Olympic athlete, became a professional athlete at a time of desegregation and prejudice against African-Americans, became a living symbol of how the government can try to crush people whose beliefs are considered unacceptable by some officials, fought his way back to the top of his profession and, even while facing a crippling illness, continued to live his life as an example to others.
Ali is a true hero.
The Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, is a really very good repository and collection of the many highlights of his life. Medals and personal mementoes abound and – most compelling to me, in a way – film of some of his fights plays non-stop on monitors in the building.
The Ali center has a lot of weight but isn’t boring. The color and drama of Ali’s life is recreated.
Above is my iPhone snapshot of one of artist LeRoy Neiman’s paintings of Ali, of course. The original is on display in the center.
Inside the center, besides the display of Ali artifacts, are demonstrations of Ali’s reach on young people, including these tiles painted by children.
And outside the beautiful building is a sunny plaza overseen by images of The Greatest himself.
The Ali Center is worth a visit.
New developments for the next “X-Men” movie just keep coming, it seems.
First we learned that the follow-up to the quite successful – in many senses of the word – “X-Men: First Class” would be “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and would be based on a popular 1981 storyline from the comics that found the mutant superheroes living in – and trying to prevent – an apocalyptic future in which mutants are held in concentration camps guarded by robotic Sentinels.
Then we learned that director Matthew Vaughn would not be returning, but director Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two “X-Men” movies in the 2000s, would instead.
And in the past few days we learned that in addition to returning “First Class” cast members like Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, the actors who played longtime antagonists Magneto and Xavier in the original trilogy, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, would return.
And we learned that Hugh Jackman, who had a fun, two-word cameo in “First Class,” might be returning after filming his solo film “The Wolverine.”
Of course, with a story featuring time travel and alternate realities, it’s not impossible to imagine multiple actors playing the same characters and it’s not impossible to imagine characters from widely divergent “X-Men” eras clashing and teaming up.
So with a couple of years to go until we see the movie, what do we want to see from “X-Men: Days of Future Past?” A few thoughts:
Colorful costumes. This seems silly, almost, in the wake of the true-to-the-comics costumes in “First Class” and “The Avengers.” But remember that the last time Singer directed these characters, the conventional wisdom at the time was that moviegoers would only accept the X-Men in black leather with yellow accents. We know better now. Bring on the blue and yellow spandex!
Beefy roles for various generations of X-Men. I want to see the Fassbender version of Magneto go on the equivalent of the Nazi hunt he conducted in First Class, maybe abetted this time by Jackman as Wolverine. Who wouldn’t pay to see those two in unstoppable pursuit of some villain?
A “Spock meets Spock” moment. Or several of them. We want to see the two versions of Magneto and Xavier meet each other and we want to be able to relish it, like we did when Spock met Spock Prime in “Star Trek.”
Sentinels. Sentinels. Sentinels. We’ve only been teased with the giant robots so far. Hollywood special effects are more than ready to give us these menacing figures now.
Wolverine, yes, but more than that. Who doesn’t love Wolverine and his on-screen personification, Hugh Jackman? But even if Jackman does appear in “Days of Future Past,” he shouldn’t be the focus. He’s best when he’s the wild card, going on a berserker rampage and scaring the hell out of every bad guy in sight.
Above all else, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. It’ll be cool to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, the heart and sole of the original “X-Men” movies, together again. But Fassbender and McAvoy made the roles of Magneto and Xavier their own in “First Class.” They energized the roles. I wish the finale of the movie hadn’t so thoroughly put Xavier in a wheelchair and set him and Magneto at odds. It was the least subtle element of the movie. But there’s a lot more to told about these two characters early in their conflict and I hope that’s what drives the movie.
I haven’t yet seen “The Dark Knight Rises” and I won’t even see it when it opens Friday because of a prior commitment. So almost everyone reading this will know before I do if there’s any truth to the spoilers circulating in the last couple of days.
In other words, keep in mind I have no idea if these spoilers are true. But based on what I’m reading, at least some of them are pretty accurate.
Oh yeah – SPOILERS!
The movie’s ending indicates more adventures of the Dark Knight are going to happen. We already know Warner Bros. wants to reboot the character after Christopher Nolan finishes his trilogy. The studio would love to build to a billion-dollar Justice League movie.
So after months of speculation that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would inherit the Batmantle in this movie … early indications sure make it sound like that happens, at least in some respects. Some reviews have outright said the ending sets up an “offshoot” movie, which certainly makes it sound like a continuation that isn’t another movie about Bruce Wayne.
A villain returns … but not the one you might think. Although the Joker survived “The Dark Knight,” Heath Ledger’s untimely death made it impossible for him to make even a small appearance in the movie. Rumors persisted that Nolan would include Ledger nonetheless, perhaps through unused footage or CGI.
Nolan is saying this week that Ledger is not in the new movie in any form. But early indications are that Cillian Murphy returns as the Scarecrow for at least one scene.
Batman bites the dust? Considering that in the comics Bane breaks Batman’s back and puts him out of commission for a while, everybody expected something dire to happen in this movie.
But I’m thinking David Letterman was kidding when, in a recent interview with Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle in the movie), he says that Batman gets killed. Anyone who watches Letterman – who, during his days as a weatherman in Indianapolis forecast “hail the size of canned hams” – knows that’s typical of his humor.
I do believe that “The Dark Knight Rises” brings Bruce Wayne’s story to an end. I just don’t think the movie kills him off.
We’ll see this Friday. Well, at least some of us will.
keithroysdon 