So, when I took down my Santa Claus decoration for Christmas, I left two anchoring poles embedded in the front yard. Rather than let me pull them out, Mother insisted that I create more decorations for other holidays.

Turns out, I've got nothing else to do.

Introducing my Easter Bunny:

Here's another beside the front door for better scale.

I'm already working on the next piece. (I had to brave a trip to Michael's, where only 10 customers are allowed inside at a time, to pick up some blue paint.) I'll show it off when I get closer to July.

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An editorial cartoon in the newspaper got me to thinking about how Superman would handle something like the COVID-19 outbreak. In the cartoon, he was staying home to prevent the further spread of the disease. That's cute, but it's frankly a waste of Superman's power. No one who can hold his breath indefinitely as he flies through the Sun to disinfect himself needs to worry about a shortage of Purell.

Ironically enough, a plague was among the problems that Superman 2020 had to deal with in the far flung future of... 2021.

Remember Superman 2020, aka Superman III? He's Superman's grandson, the son of the son of Superman. We last discussed his adventures, written at the dawn of the 1980s, in January. (You know, way back when the threat to the world was white supremacy. Damn. What's it going to be by July? My bet is on Godzilla.)

Anyway, at the end of his first year in action, Superman was confronted with an uncomfortably familiar danger when the doors of the closed city of New Metropolis were opened on New Year's Day 2021, and everyone in the city was found dead.

I did mention this was written in 1982, right? Legionnaires Disease was discovered in an outbreak in 1976 which killed 15% of the original cases. Thirteen thousand cases are diagnosed per year in the US, and modern techniques have squeezed that fatality rate down to about 10%. (For comparison, COVID-19 is still killing under 2% by most reckoning, though it has infected over 26,900 Americans in the past three months alone.)

Maldavia did indeed have a 21st-century outbreak of flu that shut down the country and killed 6% of those infected, though that was in 2017, not 2014. Still, I'd say that's close enough that Nostradamus would have gotten credit for the prediction.

Remember those white supremacists I was speaking of earlier? Superman made about as much progress defeating them as Spike Lee did. When the hero arrives to help the panicked population, those dicks were quick to rush to social media to throw blame. (Life imitating art, or the other way 'round?)

Hey, if he were really at fault, I'm sure the authorities would have called it the "Superman Virus" in public addresses instead of referring to it by its scientific name. Because authorities have a responsibility not to mislead the public. Or so I've heard.

It turns out that Superman isn't the cause of the virus but the solution. Using his aforementioned super-breath, he distributes the cure throughout Metropolis' atmosphere, causing it to literally rain medicine.

It only took Superman eight pages to thwart a plague and save the world, proving that you can save everyone without a single test kit so long as you have one Man of Steel. My hero.

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Batman Day was this past Saturday. It should not be confused with Batman's birthday. According to the 1976 DC Comics Calendar, Bruce Wayne was born on February 19. Or April 7, depending on whether we're talking about the Earth-1 or Earth-2 version. (Don't even get me started on Earth-3.)

If you missed the date, don't blame yourself. Batman Day crawls blindly around the calendar like its namesake. In the past five years since it was created, it has never been held on the same date twice: July 23 (2014), September 15 (2018), September 17 (2016), September 23 (2017), September 26 (2015). If you can find a pattern in those dates, congratulations! You can be the super villain who crashes Batman Day 2020. You can call yourself "The Sequencer" and wear a costume covered in brilliantly colored, shiny sequins. Trust me; that's how comic book villains work.

In celebration of the "holiday," 10 cities across the globe gave promoters permission to shine the Bat-signal on their skylines despite it not being a Bat-emergency. Fans in Barcelona, Berlin, Johannesburg, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo. That's a lot of cities for one hero to visit in a day. Batman's a billionaire, not Santa Claus.

The event advertised participation in 13 cities, but Los Angeles denied permits and Paris had an infestation of anti-government rioters (a situation that sounds more like a job for Superman). Meanwhile, Montreal's celebration was interrupted by a nutcase with a megaphone, which if you ask me, is about as Batman as it gets.

Hrm. He needs more sequins.

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It can't be September! I haven't finished listing movies I watched in July yet.

132. (1571.) Ice Follies of 1939 (1939)
Jimmy Stewart and Joan Crawford on ice! Well, only briefly. I mean, there are a lot of skating scenes, but the stars aren't the ones in skates. Fells a little bait-and-switchy. (The studio must have thought so too, judging from Joan Crawfords final lines.)

133. (1572.) Final Exam (1981)
A pretty typical college-coed slasher flick in the vein of Halloween. The highlight is the ridiculous number of times she stabs him with the knife in the end. It's a lot.

134. (1573.) Night School (1981)
Another slasher! (Thank you TCM Underground!) It has the atmosphere of a procedural crime film, but the killer is painfully obvious from very early on, limiting the "mystery" and my interest. The scene with the pot of stew was notably hard to stomach (har, har).

135. (1574.) The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
Uh, so war is hell but we do it anyway because.... they tell us to? I think the message here is a little muddied, but you do get Grace Kelly skinny-dipping. That's not nothing.

136. (1575.) Life After Flash (2017)
Someone made a documentary for the Flash Gordon movie. It's ostensibly about the f'd-up life of the lead actor, Sam Jones, but there's also many great movie anecdotes and Brian May of Queen. Probably a more enjoyable watch than the movie it celebrates.

137. (1576.) I Confess (1953)
Shallower than the usual Hitchcock thriller, but I liked it. I think it made good use of Montgomery Clift's usual stoicism.

138. (1577.) The Boss Baby (2017)
Great animation. Very imaginative. Very enjoyable. Another case of Alec Baldwin's voice making a movie better.

More to come.

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I saw 23 films in July, but I still haven't finished reporting for June. So let's take care of that now.

111. (1550.) Legally Blonde (2001)
I've never been a big Reese Witherspoon fan, but I do understand now why so many people like this film. It's dumb and fluffy, but sometimes that's all you want in a comedy.

112. (1551.) Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)
Uh-oh. Dumber and less inspired than the first. Not a good mix. Easy to see why there hasn't been a third.

113. (1552.) Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
To be perfectly clear, this isn't a bad movie. It's well made and the actors appear to be trying very hard, often too hard. But, and this is a big but, it feels soulless, like a ghost wearing the skin of someone you loved in order to lure you into its clutches.

114. (1553.) On Dangerous Ground (1951)
The worst part of this crime noir is the ending with its totally unearned "happy" outcome for the disillusioned hero and the embittered object of his desire. I can't recommend it.

115. (1554.) Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012)
By the time this was made, I don't think the audience it was meant to serve existed anymore. Who needs softcore porn in the Internet era? It's a weird sort of nostalgia indeed.

116. (1555.) The Monster Squad (1987)
The Goonies remade with the Universal Monsters. It has it's moments, but they are few and far between. For the record, I feel the same way about The Goonies.

More to come.

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Since I started seriously tracking the movies I watched in 2012, the actor I've seen the most is William Powell (33 times). That isn't an accident.

Powell is one of those "actors" who always turned the characters he played into some variation of himself. We usually call that class of actor — which includes the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise — "movie stars."

Powell's cool, confident, and sarcastic persona was perfect for playing con men, attorneys, and especially gumshoes. He's most famous as Nick Charles, the detective who caught the Thin Man in seven movies (the best of which is the first), but you may recognize him as Philo Vance who he played in five other films (beginning with the silent-turned-talky The Canary Murder Case).

I mention this because tomorrow, July 29, would be Mr. Powell's 107th birthday. TCM is celebrating with seven films between 6AM and 6PM. Manhattan Melodrama is in the middle (11:15AM). That's the movie that Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger was walking out of when he was gunned down by G-Men. It's also the first film to pair Powell with his on-screen soul mate Myrna Loy, the future Nora Charles (and not-coincidentally, the actress I've seen the most, 35 times). Oh, and Cary Grant is in it, too (14 times).

Happy Birthday, Mr. Powell.

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Forest Lawn Memorial Park is just around the corner from my Dad's new house. It's been there since 1956, which means it was there when I was in high school. I must have passed it hundreds of times, but I'd never been in. Not until this week when the beautiful weather made a side trip necessary.

I've never liked it. Oak Hill is the older cemetery closer to town. As previous posts on this blog prove, I like it fine. Forest Lawn, on the other hand, has always seemed to me more like a small, sterile golf course than a cemetery. Now that I've been in, I'll second my own first impression.

I've never been a believer that cemeteries should remain solemn and unused plots of ground. If you can't celebrate the lives of the dead, why remember them at all? Besides, a tiny metal plate with a stack of fake flowers is hardly how I'd want anyone to remember me.

The rules are posted by the entrance. The first one is no kids (living ones, I assume). The second is no recreational equipment (read: no fun). The third is no pets ("Leashed Or Unleashed": even fish are out). That sounds awfully exclusionary, but read to the bottom and you'll see that "Properly Attired Walkers And Joggers Are Welcome Except During Funeral Services." Thanks for that offer, but I think we'll keep on passing by.

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What? I skipped a post again? Dammit.

In my defense, I've been busy these past few days. As you know, I've been supervising Dad's medications and dog-sitting Rambo and Scarlett (and trying to make July not jealous). Also, there have been issues with our commercial rental property, including an AC failure and an (unrelated) fallen tree that damaged the roof and destroyed the gutter over the back door that has a bad tendency to flood. Add to those that I have an end-of-July deadline on a coding project. And I helped one friend build some shelves and another fix her cable system. And my own ISP was down for most of Friday and Saturday. And I've been trying to find time to write more. And and and and.

But that's all just excuses.

On the up side, I did just recently discover that my phone takes great panoramic photos, a feature which I have been using exclusively to take photos of clouds.

So that's good. And that's enough.

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