I was just looking back at old blog posts to see if I had a "garage door" category. I don't. But what I noticed while looking was that many of my posts referencing the garage also reference Star Wars. I knew I referenced Star Wars frequently, but I hadn't consciously connected Star Wars with garages. Funny the things you notice when you actually go looking.

The motivation for this latest round of navel gazing was that I spent too many hours on Friday replacing the other automatic door opener in the garage. I replaced the north bay opener ten years ago — I checked receipts — but the south opener survived until this week. Technically, it still worked, but its speed had become increasingly variable; sometimes it took a half minute to open. Mom had had enough and finally gave orders that it should be replaced.

Of course, Genie no longer makes the exact model I installed in 2016, so I had to get a newer model (with accompanying cost increase), but it was pretty much the same thing. I read the instructions. Twice. They made it sound like a job so easy, any idiot could have done it. Unfortunately, the idiot was me.

Despite the pictures, I still screwed up assembling the track. The new drive head was narrower than the previous, so I had to make an additional trip to Home Depot for extra hanging hardware. Then I dropped the spool of wire off the top of the ladder and had to spend the next forty-five minutes untangling. And just when I thought I had it all working, I found that the signal from the new safety sensors conflicted with the sensors on the other door and had to be rewired. So easy.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the heat index wasn't in the mid-nineties. I also need to learn to give myself more room to work. The place is so full of tools, recyclables, and painted cutouts, it's amazing we can still get any cars in there. Between the heat and the clutter, the place is starting to remind me of a Jawa sandcrawler. Utinni!

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The latest Supergirl movie opens today, and while I wish it nothing but the best of luck,* I don't plan on seeing it.

True, I'm in the 1% of people on this planet who didn't care for last summer's Superman, and you're probably right to call me a grumpy old man with no sense of humor. But I just can't get past the fact that James Gunn gave Superboy's dog, Krypto, to Supergirl when she already has her own perfectly close-up ready pet, the adorable Streaky the Super-Cat.

cover blurb and interior art from Action Comics #261, February 1960

They say a lot of things to warn you away from comic books, boys and girls, and some of them are actually true. But they don't tell you that one day your head will be so full of familiar adventures that you'll get actively angry when new storytellers come along and screw up the classics by randomly giving Pegasus to Hercules.

Bah, I say. Bah.

*I do, in fact, want more movies set in the DC Universe. If they make enough, sooner or later, they'll make one I actually like, even if only by accident.

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Last night I was lying in bed reading The Tick Omnibus comic book. Not to brag, but it's the 1990 limited edition first printing, numbered 1446 of 3000, hand signed by Tick creator Ben Edlund, art director/letterer Robert Polio, and editor George Suarez. You know the one. Anyway, the point is that I was reading Tick comics in bed, and what should start crawling up my leg?

It could have been worse. I could have been reading issues of Poison Ivy. Or Hellboy.

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Superman/Batman Secret Files #1, 2003

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55/2625. Fackham Hall (2025)
Finally, a movie that answers the question "What if the makers of Airplane! made a film of Downton Abbey?" As a big fan of both Airplane! and Downton Abbey, I'm very happy to report that I found their marriage very amusing.

56/2626. Shoot Out (1971)
Have you ever wondered what True Grit would have been like it if starred Gregory Peck? Wonder no longer! A little less action, a little more conversation... It's fine.

57/2627. Blondie Johnson (1933)
What if Scarface was a woman? Or perhaps more generally, what if any James Cagney gangster film had starred Joan Blondell instead? Blondell, as usual, is great, but all the beats are familiar enough to belie just how formulaic these Warner Bros. gangster films of the 30s could be.

58/2628. Mirage (1965)
What if Gregory Peck had starred in Charade? In fact, both films were written by Peter Stone and both feature Walter Matthau in key roles. Charade came first, and if you're familiar with that performance, it'll make Matthau's role even better here. Still topical and very enjoyable.

59/2629. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)
More TCM Star of the Month Gregory Peck in a film that asks "What if Gregory Peck played a philanderer in a version of The Best Years of Our Lives with one-third of the cast and story but the full two-and-a-half hour runtime?" Answer: it's boring. Not every elevator pitch needs to be made into a movie.

More to come.

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