My younger brother was home early enough last evening that I felt obliged to test his level of inebriation and put our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to use ─ I decided to tune in the 2017 movie Transformers: The Last Knight.
Commercial-free as it was, it still ran well over two hours in duration.
I have only just now found out that the actress (Laura Haddock) portraying an attractive and very learned English scholar, had a small role in 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ─ she played Chris Pratt's character's mother, who apparently died early in his life.
I was struck by how darned fetching supporting actress Isabela Moner was, portraying a rather 'well-developed' Hispanic 14-year-old. Of course, the actress was really a year or two older than her character.
Even so.
The movie was great at keeping my brother from passing out, I must say. And for what it was ─ a comic book action feature ─ it was interesting and exciting enough.
The movie ran long enough that my brother and I only had time enough thereafter to watch an episode of just one of the T.V. series we follow, and that took us well into the midnight hour ─ bedtime.
My wife had come home during the movie following her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant. By then, I think that her eldest son had already gone to bed, so she kept to herself until finally going to bed herself. (Her youngest son is on a Thailand holiday.)
For the movie, I had poured myself some vodka in the darkened living room, but due to the gloom I mis-gauged how much I was pouring. The spout has one of those plastic inserts, so I couldn't pour any of the booze back.
I had at least four ounces!
And I later opened up a can of one of the strong (8% alcohol) beer that I try to keep in stock.
After I got to bed, I struggled with the considerable discomfort of vertigo for quite some time. There is no question that overnight, the alcohol adversely affected my wellbeing and my sleep.
It was something like 7:15 a.m. when I decided to get up ─ I had been lying in bed just suffering since first checking the time at 6:00 a.m. My hangover had kicked in and I was unable to find the ease with which to sleep any further.
So I rose intending to get to work on the post I want to get published very soon at one of my six hosted websites.
Fat chance!
The Internet was down. All I could do to amuse myself was play Microsoft Freecell.
Anon my brother rose to watch T.V.; and much later than usual, my wife rose. Even then, she got busy and did some cooking, and I began to wonder if she was not going to be going in to work until into the latter afternoon ─ I was rather in need of a nap.
However, late into the forenoon she finally left us.
The Internet remained down all morning, and was still down when I sought a nap around the noon hour. I was back up and feeling quite restored around 1:30 p.m. (by which time my brother was shut up in his bedroom seeking some bed rest).
Finding the Internet still down, I went to work to see if I could jolt it back to life. I disconnected the cable from the wall, and I also unplugged the router and disconnected a modem to which another type of cable attaches.
I waited a time, and then reconnected everything ─ and all was well. But I had gone without Internet access for around seven hours, and much work never got done.
In yesterday's blog post, I told of how I had been contacted through LinkedIn by John, a fellow who had recently purchased an old Captain America comic ─ issue #155 from back in 1972.
Back during the first half of the 1970s, I was such a huge fan that I wrote quite a few fan letters, and some even got published. Well, apparently that issue had one of those letters, and John felt inspired to see if there was any trace of me today.
I was in my early 20s during the early 1970s. The comic book issue in question, however, was one that John had loved when he was a boy. So when he found me in LinkedIn, he was somewhat excited, I suppose.
Well, he had some news for me when I checked LinkedIn early this afternoon ─ he had sent this at 6:31 a.m.:
Here's a series of unlikely coincidences:
Yesterday, my wife and I were in Colorado Springs and I suggested stopping at my favorite comic store (Kapow! Comics and Coffee). We got there twenty minutes before closing. I wanted to say "hi" to the co-owner, Martin, and see how he's been doing after some health issues. His sister, the other owner, was there instead and we talked to her almost until closing. So I was left with 5 minutes to make some quick decisions. I found 3 Captain America issues from the mid-70s. Then at the checkout, I saw an Iron Man from 1973 in the glass case for $16. That was a very last second decision and it was the only Iron Man in that case. I had not time to check any of them out.
That night I skimmed through the issues. After putting them down, I picked the Iron Man back up and flipped to the letters page and just looked at the senders of the letters without reading anything, who was in it? One of the guys you'd mentioned, Lester Boutillier. No, I was not reading #67 that you'd mentioned!
I remembered you'd mentioned you had a public blog so I did a web search on your name and one search result ws someone's blog post from 2013:
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/iron_man_59.shtml
It is about Iron Man #59, I didn't read the post, I just skipped to the mention of your name and it says:
'In the panels depicting Firebrand's escape from his seeming death in his last appearance, a footnote says, "Our hat's tipped to G***** B****** -- see letters page for details." But there's nothing on this issue's letters page. '
In the comments section for that blog post, I see you'd responded to it not remembering... But 3 years after your response, someone posts:
'In "Sock it to Shell-head" of Iron-Man #63 it's explained that G***** had suggested how Firebrand managed to escape from the cops in a previous LP, and that Marvel followed the tip.
(What does LP mean?)'
Holy cats! #63 is the issue I bought today! I go back to the letters page and sure enough it has your name in it. How weird is that?
But then it gets a little weirder. I decided to lookup what #59's cover looks like. Turns out, it is the second Iron Man I ever bought, and it was my _favorite_ Iron Man as a kid. I really loved that cover and flipped through it many times. Who knew your name was there?
At the end of that blog's comment, the last one says:
"I wonder if G***** will ever come back to see the explanation."
How interesting is that? You mention Lester, without knowing I pick up a comment that has a letter of his the next day. Then find a blog with a reference to you in an earlier Iron Man, where a commenter says the omission made in #59 was cleared up in #63... which is the issue I _just_ bought, and the one where moments earlier I'd looked at the letters just long enough to see Lester's name (not knowing yours was there too). Then I find out your name is in that letters page. And lastly I find that blog post was about my favorite as a kid and probably saw your name many times.
John had then followed up that message with this at 8:14 a.m.:
One more coincidence... When I went to tell my wife the story, before I started, right after I said "You know that Iron Man book we got last night?". She told me this... My wife--who is not a comic person--was looking for books for my son. Initially for Spider-Man as she knows he's his favorite. Then she thought to look for that guy with the circle-thing on his chest "what was his name?" she thought. When were were checking out, her eye was drawn to the Iron Man book, and was thinking "Iron Man, that's who I was thinking of" and she thought about getting that book but then re-considered because it was $16 and she really does not know about comic books. How interesting of all the books and characters that we both gravitated to that one. Then this morning I started to tell a younger co-worker about the story and I preceded it with "You'll have to focus". I told him about your letters to Iron Man 67. And then told him about the Iron Man I saw in the case. And he said "Iron Man 63? The one the guy wrote about?". I was momentarily dumbfounded because I'm absolutely certain I said Iron Man 67. So I said "he wrote into 67" and my co-worker was like "yeah, that's right". Again, how weird that 63 jumped to his mind? I then told him 63 was the one in the case that I bought.
I guess that was two more coincidences :)
So I responded as follows at 3:35 p.m.:
Holy crap ─ you're blowing me away, John!
Is this even within the realm of the possible, and Fate has nothing to do with it?
I remember my comment to that SuperMegaMonkey discussion, even though it was over six years ago when I made it. I guess I owe it to the website to make a follow-up response.
Incidentally, last evening I happened across a website talking about Sub-Mariner #51 ─ apparently I had a letter published in there. Or maybe it was issue #55? I'm a little confused because this statement in parentheses prefaces the republished letters: "(from the letter column of Sub-Mariner #55)".
At least I actually got to read my old letter ─ and nothing about it is familiar. If not for my name attached to it, I would never have suspected that it originated with me.
Here's the webpage:
https://newwarriors.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/spotlight-on-sub-mariner-51/
And speaking of Iron Man, evidently Firebrand was quite a big deal. I found another letter of mine mentioning the character (and why I thought he could have escaped police custody) that was apparently published in issue #53 ─ that must have been the letter in which I made the suggestion. But when they acknowledged the suggestion in issue #59, they referred to the much older letters page as if it was a recent thing.
After all, there was a three- or four-month spread between the month a comic book was published and put on the market, and the month that was listed on the cover. The month on the cover was always well into the future, probably (or at least partly) to make comics look less stale in the marketplace.
Anyway, here's the Iron Man #53 discussion:
https://cmro.travis-starnes.com/detail.php?idvalue=1279
Lord, your coincidences are still blowing me away ─ I can't quit rehearsing them.
Thanks so much for keeping this theme going ─ I would have responded earlier today, but I got up early this morning to find that our Internet was down. I never got it back until something like 2:00 p.m.
I'll send you an E-mail later concerning my blog ─ I have to do a few things right now, so I want to get this message sent off and not just keep it sitting to continue working on later.
─G*****
I have to admit that this is all quite exciting to me!
My evening is well underway, so I want to get this post published before my brother shows up from the bar.
First, however, I have a couple of photos to present.
I saw notification today that Google Photos created a two-image collage in commemoration of this day back in 2012 ─ that was the day that I filed the two photos into an old Google Photos album that Google Photos used for the collage.
Here is the collage:
Here is the collage:
I am in both of the photos with my brother's daughter, Rene (Irene) ─ my brother is at the right in the first photo, as is a wonderful little budgie that we simply called Birdie.
Here are the two original images:
Neither photo was taken in 2012, just eight years ago. I don't know the exact date the photos were taken, but my niece today is 26 years old ─ how old is she in the photos, maybe eight?
Okay, that's it for today!
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