The Jawbone of an Asp

All I did tonight as far as writing was type up and refine my notes on The Solution from the other day. Got home late after stopping off at Target to get some toiletries and a birthday gift for Trevor's friend Jake. I almost bought the Spongebob Squarepants movie for myself but it really wasn't that great--I'd rather spend a little over twice that much to get the Season One box set--much better value. But later. Spent way too much time in the Toy section and got Jake G.I. Joe Ninja Battles, a very cool playset that's this little battle arena with five figures, including Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, plus two other Cobra ninjas and Snake Eyes' apprentice, Petey. No, his name isn't Petey; I forget. Gimlet Eyes, maybe. It comes with a dvd as well, not a bad value for $14.99. Then I get caught up in this 40something Star Wars collector treating a mother and her maybe 8 year old son to his reviews and current valuations for various Lego Star Wars sets. Poor woman only has the trilogy on VHS, so he was really wasting his time blathering on about how the Jango Fett Slave I ship was going for $500 now or whatever, but I guess it wasn't a waste of time to him--he had an audience. The $100 Lego Millennium Falcon is really cool, though, as is the new yellow Jedi ship, and I guess I got carried away. I bought the $20 Darth Vader Tie Fighter, and built it tonight after dinner, while watching some Seinfeld episodes. It seems to be missing one piece, too, but it's not very noticeable. I had fun with it. Trevor is getting very good at building Legos now, so next time I'll do one with him, as we did a couple weeks ago with some birthday present Legos he received. I did get him a G.I. Joe Storm Shadow figure on a motorcycle for some other time, and for he and Ainsley, a set of silver Magnetix. They should both be able to build them.

Read The Best of Nickelodeon Magazine All-Comics Issue, based on a blogger's recommendation today--sorry if I forgot who. I would never have known about this, but it was pretty good, with good work from Craig(ory) Thompson, Sam Henderson (who has been in every issue, I think), Michael Kupperman, Scott (Patty Cake) Roberts and others. Steven Weisman has one gag, Johnny Ryan about three cute gags, and there's a running strip from James Kochalka that's just too dumb to really get into. Scott McCloud does a nice two pager encouraging kids to start making their own comics, and good for him. Oh, and Ellen Forney and some others I'm forgetting are also in it, including a one panel gag from a "KD" that looks like it must be Kieron Dwyer. As opposed to Bizarro World, I felt like these cartoonists were having more fun with the material. It's not like there isn't good stuff in Bizarro World, or that the cartoonists there weren't trying hard; in fact, maybe some of them tried too hard, whereas in the Nickelodeon stuff it just feels more relaxed and joyful.

Kill Bill 1 & 2 just came from Netflix, so I'll finally watch them. Never saw in the theater and I was holding out for some kind of special box set of both with tons of extras, but I haven't heard anything yet. It seems inevitable, but maybe Tarantino has been working on them, who knows?