Birthday time:

To schala4:



Have a wonderful day
a wonderful year
happy reading
happy watching
and new discoveries.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you....

For thdancingferret:




May your creativity never falter! May you never be bored!

Have a year of good health, good ideas, and good friends.

Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii....

This is a Canadian farce by Alan Stratton.

I saw it once when it was new, probably about twenty years ago. Everyone seemed to like it. I didn't. It's a farce, and I usually like farce, but this time - I just didn't laugh. Maybe it was a poor production, I told myself. (No one else seemed to think so at the time.)

I saw it again last night. The director is a good one. This time I laughed - but not much - I still didn't like it as much as everyone else seemes to. Maybe I only like British farce. Maybe I identify too much with sex-crazed romance novelist Vivien Bliss.

Planetary Batman: Night on Earth

By Warren Ellis, the clever bad boy of comic book writing. I like Warren Ellis' writing much more on Marvel and DC characters than his own creations, but this comic made me want to read "Planetary".

Beautifully set up, this story brings us through a series of alternate-world versions of Batman, most of them familiar to us, with subtle changes in costume and big variations in character. Amazingly enough (for a story of this type) the plot makes perfect sense. Batman is tough but compassionate - how I love that!

Nice art, too, by John Cassaday. In a story of this type (or any type) that makes so much difference. And I see he's going to be drawing Astonishing X-Men which Joss Whedon is writing - ooh. It's already on my subscription list. I confess to being excited already.

I loved the beginning on this story, where the Planetary characters are looking with distaste at grotty, dangerous Gotham, but my favourite bit of dialogue comes at the end:

Jakita: I totally beat you up, you know.
Batman: If that's what you want to believe. [Disappears.]
Jakita: I totally kicked his ass.
Snow: You like him, don't you? He's your special bat-friend.
Jakita: Get away from me.