I noticed a few birthdays worthy of note, and since this is a long weekend for Canadian purposes to celebrate our founding monarch's official birthday...

Shoutouts to pulsejenc, dduane, and Steve Lieber and a couple of belated shouts to thothmeister and Sandy Carruthers as well!

Off to buy yet another replacement umbrella before the haircut of the month...

Given the recent success of Iron Man at the theatres, and Marvel's announced future plans, I got to thinking over the last day or so about the admittedly distant prospect of an Alpha Flight movie.

For those of you wondering who the Hell I'm talking about at this late date, Alpha Flight was for over twenty years Marvel's standard-bearer team of Canadian-based super-heroes. In the last year or so, they have not been treated kindly by the powers that be at Marvel for reasons that may not surpass understanding, but do surpass your not-humble commentator's patience with the vagaries of the industry.

Looking at that footage from the Hulk trailers of Yonge Street standing in for Harlem in particular got me thinking about the idea. So, without much thought at all...here's what I've been able to figure out so far as to who should be playing which roles.

First off, if you're going to do a movie on Canadian super-heroes, film it here. Cut a deal with a homegrown company to get the job done. I recommend Whizbang Films as the subcontractor of choice. Main reason?

Paul Gross. For both experience as lead actor and showrunner. He resembles James "Guardian" Hudson closely enough that it's almost spooky, and he's not exactly unfamiliar with the superhero genre thanks to Due South. He's got showrunner experience with several TV and motion picture projects over the last decade. He knows Alberta - the backdrop of the beginning of the Flight's origins - like the back of his hand.

For the rest of the cast...

Heather Hudson: Either Julie Stewart (of Cold Squad fame) or Kari Matchett(from Power Play, Men With Brooms, etc.), based on experience and resemblance.

Northstar/Jean-Paul Beaubier: Patrick Huard (Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Les Boys, etc.)

Sasquatch/Walt Langkowski: Someone in conversation suggesed Bruce Campbell. Not sure what I make of it yet. I'll be interested in alternative suggestions.

Anyone else want to chime in with suggestions for characters I've not covered yet?

I went to see Iron Man yesterday, as noted. It was worth the nine loons and two hours' viewing time.

Some quick notes

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I might just take in that new Hulk movie...

Oh, one more thing: that NCF Mail server issue I mentioned last entry? Solved. My normal e-mail address is up and running again.

If you've been trying to reach me via my regular e-mail at National Capital Freenet at any point from yesterday afternoon into at least today, you'll have run into some problems.

Per NCF reports, their mail servers are down and they're working to fix the situation ASAP. They're usually pretty good at fixing up such messes, when they happen at all. If you absolutely have to e-mail me before they succeed in fixing their troubles(or want to regardless of need), you can reach me at:

Go read this.

Please.

I went to the ByMUG meeting today, saw demos for Delicious Library, Default Folder, Automator(which I still don't quite understand yet), and iGlasses(which might come in handy at some point). But the real highlight of the day was seeing the commemorative ceremony for the Battle of the Atlantic today at the War Memorial. I'd almost completely forgotten that today was a 60th anniversary in connection with that part of World War II.

Shameful on my part.

Went to the Comic Book Shoppe's Clyde Avenue store today, as J was in town for the FCBD signing, and I wanted to say "hi". So the Jane's Walk plans are postponed to next year. Not that big a problem, as I'm regularly exploring something or other across the city every weekend on my own anyway.

I took photos of the Tunney's Pasture/Scott/Holland Avenue neighbourhood, the intersection of Wellington and Holland - the buildings there presently housing World of Maps and the Great Canadian Theatre Company provided plenty of visual entertainment excuses - and the Clyde/Merivale intersection for future reference and immediate amusement. I hope to post an explanation of the second instance on my Flickr account later on.

Nice to see the weather got the worst of itself out of the way this morning...at least so far. Tonight may be a different story.

Birthday shout-out to sfpro_studio: Hoping it's been a good one for you and yours, Wendi!

Shopping shout-out to ruckawriter: I finally got that Queen and Country Scriptbook today! Worth the money for the footnotes alone!

a. Link to the person who tagged you. fajrdrako
b. Post the rules on your blog. Posted
c. Write six random things about yourself.


I just caught the tail end of today's instalment of Politics With Don Newman on CBC Newsworld. I was rather annoyed to see a certain fifteen-year-old(?) excuse for a movie exhumed and used to "remind" people why they shouldn't oppose Harper on the "McVety Clause" of C-10.


I just got my camera back from the repair shop today, and hope to use for urban exploration tomorrow if the weather holds. I've been hearing of something called Jane's Walks today, and it's piqued my curiosity.


The first three pop fiction characters I ever had an interest in were Charlie Brown, Popeye and Spider-Man. I was age four at the time.

I remember reading fajrdrako's letters to assorted comics editors when I was a lot younger than I'd prefer to admit and two provinces away.

I tried to take pictures of a raccoon in the back yard yesterday morning with my old film camera. I have no idea if the pictures will develop or if the raccoon's been blinded by the flash bulb.

There are three conventions I'd like to visit in Toronto this summer: the Paradise Comics Comicon, RCW 139 and FanExpo Toronto 2008. No idea if I'll be able to attend any of them.

d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

Like fajrdrako unto myself, I pray in turn for forgiveness from these poor souls:

arcana_j, bunsen_h, gumprich, jelliottcoleman, paulpogue and realtegan.


e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

To seanhtaylor: I hope you and yours had a good one today, Sean.

Here's to surviving and enjoying many more to come!

Apologies to Patrick Henry's ghost, but it seems the right paraphrase for the situation the Senate Banking Committee faced from the Government side of the House yesterday.

The big one first: I am now a contributor to the publicbroadcasting.ca house blog. Justin Beach had a standing invite out to me for some time, and now seemed like a good point at which to finally jump aboard.

The rest? Minor stuff for the most part. Cleaning out the goldfish's residential barrel, taking the first long walk down to the Place d'Orléans in months on foot, minor updates to my home web site(which has been in progress for a while already).

More to come. Back to you!

Okay...it's been a busy week. Day-job's been requiring some serious overtime duty of me, but I can survive that. Allergy season's back as well, but as with the overtime, the survivability rule applies. Same for federal paperwork required at this time of year, about which I am saying nothing else.

I am not happy with my lack of attention to illustration duties thanks to the above factors, however. Can't be helped, but so what?

Hope remains that next month will be better on all fronts. I'll be attending the ByMUG meeting next weekend, of course, and catching Iron Man at the movie theatre's another goal. I'm not likely to be at tomorrow's OSFS meeting, but I do recommend it to anyone in town with an interest in science fiction. Clarke's Law Governing the Equivalence of Advanced Technology to Magic is the topic of the month. If you go, I want to hear about it.

More later tonight...

This thing's been on the side of one of the buildings at the University of Ottawa for as long as I've lived here. Longer, in fact. I'm sure someone's explained its origins to me on occasion, but my memory's glitched again...

Of the consequences of this invitation, specifically?

It seems to have been a day for political thought of one sort or another. Certainly, my travels downtown this morning and afternoon are evidence enough of this trend.

( Some additional detail and opinionation follow... )

Not sure if you've been watching the DWIN Blog lately, but here's something you might like to watch.

Figured you'd want to see that # 2 was still moving along...

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Take a look over here, instead...

Yes, again, this time for clockworkboho. Hoping you're having a good one...?

To black13!

Hoping yours has been a good one and that you enjoy surviving many, many more!

I watched the second half of The Trojan Horse tonight. Heck of a number Gross pulled off, I think. Not sure that there's much room for a sequel unless Paul Gross and Martha Burns think that Mrs. Burns can carry a mini-series on her own.

And as of tonight, I'm curious to find out.

This is going to ramble for a bit.

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Hoping the weekend's been good to all of you, whatever name you're honouring it by...and it's come to my attention that there's a number of different names and traditions in play. Especially given the proximity to the actual Start of Spring this Gregorian-calendar year. So I hope you're all having a good time of it.

As for me, I'm bouncing between entertaining assorted relatives, reworking my home website, and drawing pages for Local Hero. It's busy enough to suit me, which is good.

Oh yes! I watched Justice League: the New Frontier this morning during a quiet stretch. Worth the money, beyond any doubt of mine.

Open thread time...and here's the "microphone"...

We have a new addition to the roster of DCU cities: Platinum Flats. Complete with its own pro hockey team, the Hard Drives.

Does anyone know how much of a hockey fan Sean McKeever is? And if I'm right in guessing that Platinum Flats is being added to the California map?

Call this an infrastructure rant.

I had a look at the system map of GO Transit this morning.

I got curious, partly because of these facts: I use OC Transpo here in Ottawa every day to get from point to point for whatever reasons matter most at a given moment, and most of my intercity travelling - what little there is of it right now - is done through VIA Rail. I've therefore become a public transit supporter and a bit of a railfan as well.

So I'm starting to wonder why, given the extent of real estate served by GO Transit these days, as well as the fact that it's being once again funded by the provincial government of Ontario...why not extend the network to cover the whole province, and thereby provide true intercity bus and rail transit to cities in Ontario not currently served by VIA Rail?

I don't see why we should settle for GO Transit confining itself to the area bounded by Oshawa, Barrie, Guelph and Hamilton.

There's a book I'm giving serious thought to reading as soon as I've gotten The Shock Doctrine out of the way: John A.: The Man Who Made Us, by Richard Gwyn. Mostly, my thinking is based on hearing the author speak in Ottawa at WritersFest last fall and on CBC Radio One in recent weeks in the course of his winning the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction.

I'm wondering if any of you have read Gwyn's book yourselves yet...?

I noticed today's the big day for steve_roby! Congrats on surviving another year, Steve!

Some stuff from my Flickr gallery by way of explanation:

( Hidden to save bandwidth... )

The Newsarama Blog posts a comment on non-USAer superheroes and their depiction in US-published comic books. Worthy of more than a little attention, and perhaps some laughter as well. Season laughter with bitterness for taste as you deem necessary.

CBC dropped the hammer on Chris Haddock's Intelligence this week. I am disappointed with the decision, but not yet prepared to give up all hope on the series' future. You should check with the Intelligence fan groups on either Facebook - there's at least two of those of a fairly good size - or at Yahoo!Groups for further details on possible revival/preservation strategies and how you can help.

I am not happy with the weather forecast today as of this morning. I may be less so tonight.

Something weird going on in Parliament right now, that TV-watchers may want to concern themselves with, per the Toronto Star...

alasdair recently pointed up something that's of concern to me as an artist: what looks like a campaign by the Metropolitan Police of London to persuade the public to view photography as...suspicious. CBC's Q has done some coverage of their own on the subject. By way of explaining the relevance: I do some photography myself in various parts of Ottawa and elsewhere, partly for fun and partly to build my reference files for my comics work. (Swiping from myself is fair game if nothing else is, right?) So I'm hopeful that no one on this side of the Atlantic, particularly where I live, gets the impression that this is a truly useful idea. The odds of "false positives" do not please me.

A small shock...or maybe not so small: Shelagh Rogers is calling it quits with Sounds Like Canada. Granted, it looks as if she's going to be doing something else for CBC Radio One soon enough afterwards. Still, I've been listening to her on the radio in the AM since she hosted This Morning.

Comments?