The Burrito & Boo

I haven't actually written about the Burrito, or Boo, too much here, but a few weeks back they both moved to San Antonio, and here I am...without them.

Burrito is my niece.  I wasn't there when she was born, but three months into her life I entered it in a big way.  I agreed to watch her during the day, for two months, while my sister attended leadership school.  It was a wild crash course in babysitting for a guy who had never really babysat before.  My one experience was with a brood of young children that somewhat almost completely spiraled out of control, until they finally, finally went to bed, and the only real disaster was my inability to figure out where exactly the milk went in the fridge, which ended up in a milk jug that fell out of the fridge, and...Well, I never babysat again, until Burrito.

And even though it was occasionally frustrating (she wouldn't stop crying sometimes, until I took her for stroller rides, or carrying walks), it was also completely magical.  I had no idea I loved babies, and then I fell in love with Burrito.

And I stuck around for nearly another year, in a supporting capacity, and then my sister asked me to watch her again...for a year.  She was headed out for a tour in a delightful Asian land, and once again needed someone to look after Burrito.  Burrito and I headed off to Maine, and my dad's house (the one I had lived in while my mom took on her last few years battling cancer), and...my dad was not especially inclined to spend too much time helping out directly, so...I went into another crash course in babysitting. 

This was life as an uncle raising a toddler: Wow.  I mean, wow.  It was beautiful.  Taxing, certainly, trying to do it all day every day with occasional breaks (and learning to yearn for that illusory hope of a three hour nap, a three hour nap).  But beautiful.

Some will say that the man who emerged on the other side spent too much time merely being Burrito's friend, and that my subsequent, previously unfathomable career as a program assistant in a child development center is flawed for that same reason.  But I've taken to the idea that being a child's, especially a young child's, chief advocate is perhaps the best thing you can be if you find yourself in positions like this.  Constant encouragement.  Endless fun.  And always, always worrying when things don't seem to be working right.

All I can say is, if you look at small children and your first thought is how much of a nuisance they are, you are not among my first choices for shining examples of humanity.  Maybe you have good reasons to think that, but for me, small children especially are my favorite people.  They're the only ones who get to truly just enjoy being people. 

Now, my experiences are with babies and kids just up to the age of five.  My nephews in Maine are my closest working experiences outside of that range.  Funny enough, but at the moment I have two babies with their exact names.  Let's call them Bert and Ernie.  Bert is the older one, Ernie the younger.  The baby version of them is actually the reverse (Ernie's older).  Bert was my best friend in those years while my mom was dying.  I got to spend additional time with him during the Burrito year in Maine.  Ernie is probably more like me when I was a kid, which has been difficult to appreciate practically, since Bert always tries to monopolize my time.  I haven't gotten to spend time with either of them since I followed Burrito to Florida in the fall of 2017.

And now Burrito is gone.  My sister has a new family in San Antonio now, and so the makeshift one that was in place for the past near-four years has come to an end.  I struggled a great deal with this initially.  I wanted to remain an active part of Burrito's life.  But eventually, it seemed more rational to let the new family exist on its own terms.  A reboot.

Yeah, reboot.  Boo is my sister's cat.  I've had her in and out of my life since December 2004.  For whatever reason, she warmed to me immediately.  My happiest memories with her are from the 2005-2007 period where my sister and I shared an apartment in Massachusetts, and every day I returned home from work Boo would warmly swash back and forth across my legs in greeting.  That's where she became a botanist, "pruning" plants meant to decorate the dinner table.  That's where she stole Lando's blaster, to defend her food from ants.  That's where she was exposed as a gravy vampire.  That's where she became obsessed with the common laundry room across the hall, dashing out of the apartment at every opportunity to sneak her way in, if she didn't sabotage herself by liberally helping her claws to the stiff carpeting along the way...

Recently she'd taken to relaxing next to me, spent most of her time in my room, and joined me at night.  And I find myself missing her, actively, in these recent memories, most of all.  I keep expecting to see her amble into view. 

And I miss Burrito's penchant for constant possibilities, her endless inventiveness, her restless repackaging of reality, and yes, even the goofy winter hat and mittens right in the middle of sunny Florida...

But they're a part of some other narrative.  Maybe mine will find a family, one day.  We'll see.

2018 Box Office Top Ten

This is something I've been blogging about for years.  This year (rather late) I decided to movie it here, just to give readers some insight into what interests me.  I used to make ridiculously extensive lists, but I'm going to limit it this time, as the title indicates, to just the top ten, and then again, because I figured it'd be interesting to do it for the US and international box office results.  All numbers are derived from Box Office Mojo, as of today (7/14/19).

US 2018 Box Office Top Ten

1. Black Panther ($700 million) This was a surprise phenomenon that sort of caught on with cultural developments, went well beyond merely the typical MCU response. 
2. Avengers: Infinity War ($678 million) Having now seen Endgame, I think I prefer the setup, with Captain America's dramatic return being the highlight.
3. Incredibles 2 ($608 million) I'm the rare movie fan who doesn't obsess over every Pixar movie, and who didn't get swept up in the hoopla for the first one (which everyone claimed "was what the Fantastic Four ought to look like in the movies").  I still haven't gotten around to seeing this one.
4. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($417 million) I actually haven't seen any of the films in this franchise past the first one.  I did read the Michael Crichton books back in the day, however.  Crichton is a rare common factor between me and my dad, and I remain a big fan.
5. Aquaman ($335 million) I adored Justice League and thought Jason Momoa's performance in it was the highlight, so I was eager to catch this one.  It was amusing, but there's room for improvement.
6. Deadpool 2 ($318 million) I wasn't wild about the first one, but this one (and I loved how there was a "family friendly version," called Once Upon a Deadpool, released later) I really got behind.  Highlights include Domino (best superpower ever!) and the Brad Pitt cameo.
7. Dr. Seuss' The Grinch ($270 million) I'm a huge fan of Jim Carrey, so I admit partisanship with the live action version, but the vocal performance from Benedict Cumberbatch was an intriguing hook for me.
8. Mission: Impossible - Fallout ($220 million) Henry Cavill steals this one, even if he ultimately can't beat Tom Cruise.  But that's kind of to be expected, right?
9. Ant-Man and the Wasp ($216 million) I think the Ant-Man films are going to age incredibly well, possibly better than most of the rest of the MCU.  Wait for the Luis recap!
10. Bohemian Rhapsody ($216 million) I still haven't seen it, but it's still funny to me that the Rami Malek performance that was the consistent source of buzz for this one kind of got lost in the shuffle of everyone complaining that the movie wasn't faithful enough to Queen history. 

International Box Office Top Ten

1. Avengers: Infinity War ($2,048 billion)
2. Black Panther ($1,346 billion)
3. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (1,309 billion)
4. Incredibles 2 ($1,242 billion)
5. Aquaman ($1,148 billion)
6. Bohemian Rhapsody ($903 million)
7. Venom ($856 million) Tom Hardy is another of my favorite actors, and I'm happy he got this successful spotlight.
8. Mission: Impossible - Fallout ($791 million)
9. Deadpool 2 ($778 million)
10. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ($653 million) Made more than 75% of its international haul outside of the States, which is a fairly common figure when movies are bigger hits this way.  I keep saying this is one of my favorite Harry Potter franchise films, and I absolutely mean it.  Johnny Depp's Grindelwald is a perfect representation of the poisonous kind of politics we're currently enduring, with a chilling finale matched only by Ralph Fiennes's debut as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which remains my favorite of the film franchise.

Updates, June 2019

I'm getting closer to writing again, I swear.

Actually, I really am.  I'm moving into an apartment and will have a lot more spare time on my hands, and I intend to use it writing.  So I will tackle George & Gracie, and maybe getting BOLO! lettered (the pages I have, with entirely revised captioning and possibly no dialogue) and hopefully set free into the world.

And submitting again. 

And maybe other stuff related to writing.  I loved the energy, fast receding into the past, of working on Crisis Weekly, which was something that because it was tied up with DC properties, will have to remain tied to DC properties unless I do stuff like disentangling original concepts from it like I did for the A-to-Z Challenge poems.

And I hope to begin blogging regularly again.

Fun Facts About Tony! Favorite Yogurt

Hey, so here's something different:

My favorite indulgence at the moment (I kind of overdid it, I think, with peanut butter in recent years, forgetting, perhaps, that "indulgence" shouldn't mean overindulging) is Oui yogurt from Yoplait. 

I call it "French Heritage Yogurt," because, well, of my French heritage.  You can see that on the labeling itself it's "French Style Yogurt."  I have no idea if that's just a marketing gimmick.  I really don't care.  What I know is that it's absolutely delicious.

You may recall or be enduring it right now, the Greek-style fad that took over yogurt a few years back.  I tried it back at the start, and was fooled into thinking it was a good thing.  I remember telling a coworker, "Yeah, I liked it, but then I went with the safe bet, the vanilla flavor."  (Approximate dialogue.)  Vanilla is a can't-miss flavor.  I've actually called it my favorite ice cream in the past.  It's just hard to screw up.  But it can also mask deficiencies.  I ended up not liking Greek yogurt, thank you.

I've had all the available varieties of Oui and have enjoyed all of them.  I suppose I really ought to confirm that I can find it other than where I've been getting it, since that avenue will be closing off soon. 

Part of the charm and I admit it's a silly one, is that it comes in little glass jars.  I'm not usually someone who insists on "classy," but as yogurt containers go, it just seems classy.  Or glassy.  Anyway.  I like to keep souvenirs of this sort of thing (such as cans and/or bottles left over from the equally delightful Cheerwine cherry soda that's regionally available but hard to find even in-region, unless Publix is stocking it in their novelty soda selection, or I find myself at Cracker Barrel), so naturally I've got an empty one socked away.

Anyway, if you're looking for yogurt recommendations, there you go.

Updates, end of March 2019

A quick check-in:

• Doing the A-to-Z Challenge again this year, again at Sigild V.  This year will be poetry, riffing on a character from Crisis Weekly.  This has the effects of the proverbial birds with a stone, as I've been wanting to do some poetry again anyway, and I figured I owed the A-to-Z folks thanks for the recent book tour thing.
• Pretty sure I've nailed how I'm going to be writing George & Gracie, after transcribing what I'd written in a notebook at the end of the year and not initially knowing how to proceed from there.
• Submitted a story.  It's the Montague in the Leviathan proof-of-concept I wrote last year, where I finally buckled down and attempted some straight literary fiction, which I still hope can become a book later, if I can do the necessary research.
• It suddenly occurred to me that I can turn that Exemplar comic book script into something if I look into getting someone to draw it.  So that's something I'll be strongly considering.
• It's nice to have a number of prospects in the air.

Crisis Weekly, twenty-first and finale

Crisis Weekly #21.

And...we're done.  Two hundred comic book pages (roughly the equivalent of nine standard comic book issues), nearly thirty thousand words across the whole script, a hundred and thirty-six pages in the file.  It's the first time I've written a complete, extended comic book story. 

Thank you, Pat, for reading along.

Writing this for half a year (!), more or less once a week every week, it was a valuable experience.  I look forward to moving on to new projects (or perhaps even returning to old ones, like maybe even getting on to writing out BOLO (the project for which I had eight pages of art waiting to be used).  I expect George & Gracie, a project I haven't even mentioned here (it's laughable, everything I want to work on, sometimes, even from looking back at stuff I have mentioned here), to be the likely candidate, a children's story, something I haven't really tried in long form.

Either way, one of the perks of Crisis Weekly was sharing regular thoughts here again, and that's certainly something I'd like to continue.

Crisis Weekly twenty, Sapo Saga

Sapo Saga helped round out the A-to-Z Challenge Book Tour over at J Lenni Dorner's blog.  Dorner gave it the second review of the tour, and somehow an even better one, which was very nice to read.  You can read it here.  Thanks, Lenni!

Meanwhile, Crisis Weekly #20.

This is the big climax of the story, the final confrontation between Bloodwynd, that obscure superhero I plucked from the '90s, and Doomsday.  Hopefully everything I've done in the previous nineteen installments has justified this one, and that it does justice to them.

One installment to go!