KGB Report

Condo owners in Surfside building were facing assessments for $15 million worth of repairs. Payments were set to begin a week after the building's deadly fall.

Gas stations are running out of gas ahead of the holiday weekend. It's the shortage of tank truck drivers coupled with rising demand that is causing supply chain bottlenecks and shortages. Experts say a growing number of stations are reporting that they are simply not able to get gas delivered- at any price.

Hotter than the human body can handle: Pakistan city broils in world’s highest temperatures (126°F) (Video)

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From Crazytown:

Blame Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices. (Video)

Out-of-practice Trump forgets to strand rally crowd in parking lot. (Andy Borowitz)

What underlies the G.O.P. commitment to ignorance? Closed-mindedness and ignorance have become core conservative values, and those who reject these values are the enemy, no matter what they may have done to serve the country.

Trump Organization sues New York City for closing golf course after January 6 riots. That could be a big mistake.

Tucker Carlson says 'Biden administration is spying' on him. The television personality offered no additional evidence to support his claim, which drew scrutiny from several users on social media.

Giuliani son gets no votes from Republican leaders in bid for New York governor. Andrew Giuliani, who has traded off his surname, embarrassed by poll that indicates Lee Zeldin will challenge Andrew Cuomo.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

• International Asteroid Day
• National Meteor Day
• National OOTD Day
• National Organization for Women Day
• National Parchment Day
• World Social Media Day

On this date:

• 1892 – Actions culminating in the Homestead Strike began
• 1905 – Albert Einstein sent the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduced special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik
• 1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, results in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia. (Video)
• 1938 - Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics series issue #1
• 1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. (Video)
• 1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, was founded.

Birthdays

• 1901 - Willie Sutton, American bank robber (d.1980)
• 1917 – Susan Hayward, American actress (d. 1975)
• 1917 – Lena Horne, American actress, singer, and activist (d. 2010) (Video)
• 1930 - Thomas Sowell, American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
• 1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician and author (d. 1997) (Video)
• 1942 - Robert Ballard, American professor explorer and discoverer (wrecks of the Titanic, Bismarck, and USS Yorktown)
• 1943 – Florence Ballard, American pop/soul singer (The Supremes)(d. 1976)
• 1956 – David Alan Grier, American actor, singer, and comedian
• 1959 – Vincent D'Onofrio, American actor (Video)
• 1966 – Mike Tyson, American boxer and actor (Video)
• 1985 – Michael Phelps, American swimmer

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Miscellany

A record-breaking hailstone fell near San Antonio. A bigger one went into margaritas.

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KGB Merch

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Categories: Climate change, Covid-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Environment, Fox News, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Shortages, Superman, Surfside collapse, The Big Lie, Tucker Carlson

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I think I'm done with Facebook. Just got suspended for a week for a post that violates "community standards." Problem is, the item their moronic AI finds offensive was posted six years ago.

I'm still a bit away from updating the software here on the website, but I'm going to post something here daily to stay in practice.

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Granddaughter Leanna turns 18 on Friday. She's graduating from Taylor Allderdice High School next month and heading off to Edinboro University in the fall, probably majoring in math and computer science. Here she's taking a break from homeschooling with her beagle/basset rescue, Pepper.

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My mother is upset because her home appliances are failing. She bought them when she bought the house, back in the mid-1960s before consumer goods became mostly disposable. She's not upset that she has to purchase replacements; it's just that she'll be 95 this year, and she says she hates buying stuff that will last longer than she will. I'm not so sure... the day after Christmas she went shopping for the half-off Christmas cards she plans on sending next year.

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Speaking of the sixties, I went through all this social upheaval back then. I really don't need to experience it again. At least in the sixties we had good music.

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I tried to get into this, but I just end up fast-forwarding to see the special effects. I don't find the concept of Superman being unable to deal with his moody teenage twins particularly engaging.

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Florida sheriff tells people moving to state not to "Vote the stupid way you did up north."

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Republicans blame Biden for making millions of Americans' arms hurt.

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Categories: Andy Borowitz, Florida, Joe Biden, KGB Blog News, KGB Family, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sixties, Superman

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This is from 1949, five years before I was born. Why is this still an issue?

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Categories: Racism, Superman, Tolerance

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Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) displaying pretty much
the way I feel about how they've mucked around
with recent cinema and tv iterations of Superman and his universe.

When I was a kid, Superman was always super. He didn't discharge like a two-year old cell phone with a non-removable battery if he wasn't in direct sunlight. Starting with the Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman television series in the 90s, this requirement for exposure to sunlight to restore his powers has regularly resurfaced. This isn't Superman, it's Birdman.

Also irksome is the invulnerability business. The Superman of the 50s, 60s, and 70s had just two weaknesses- kryptonite and magic, whatever the hell the latter is. That version of Superman could survive a nuclear explosion or fly into the center of the sun without being injured. He did get short-term amnesia in the classic Adventures of Superman episode "Panic in the Sky¹" (season 2, episode 12, first aired in 1953) when he collided with an asteroid, but we never saw Supe bruised or bleeding.

In recent films, Superman has been almost mortally wounded when stabbed with weapons composed of kryptonite. While kryptonite indeed weakens him, it isn't capable of puncturing his skin. In the classic "Defeat of Superman" (season 2, episode 6, aired in 1953), he was shot with a kryptonite bullet. While it caused him discomfort ("Just a bee sting, Jimmy") it still bounced off.

Then there's Superman killing Zod by breaking his neck in Man of Steel. Nope. Invulnerable means invulnerable. Regardless of the amount of force applied, the villain's neck should not have been able to be injured regardless of its source- not even by another super-powered Kryptonian.

And the new CBS Supergirl series is a hot, steaming mess full of stuff like this. Sun drainage issues, lots of sharp kryptonite injuries and, frankly, too damned many Kryptonians. I won't burden you with the details, but Supergirl and her cousin are not the touching sole survirors from a doomed planet, but a pair of goody two-shoes who instant message and text each other while battling an NFL-sized contingent of metahuman sociopathic relatives.

Canonical issues aside, the show also suffers from uneven writing and muddled plots, and from time to time seems to shoot itself in its non-super foot while limping through its Kryptonian mythos arc.

The show does have its redeeming qualities, like motion picture quality special effects:

Much as did Helen Slater in the 1984 Supergirl film, Melissa Benoist really sells the material. She's delightful, both as Kara Danvers and Kara Zor-El. Were she not so good an actress, this show would be unwatachable. Sometimes it seems she's keeping this misguided powerful locomotive on track by sheer force of will. But sometimes, she gets a script with meat to it, such as this clip, when battling a villain in the previous episode discharged her and left her powerless and vulnerable:

Oh well. I've been a fan of Superman since the 1950s, and I'll probably continue to watch any Superman-related stuff that becomes available. But the apparent appearance of the Doomsday character in the Batman v. Superman trailers makes me think things are going to get uncomfortable.

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¹ "Panic in the Sky" was the story upon which the Lois and Clark episode "All Shook Up" (season 1, episode 12) was based. The writer of the original show, Jackson Gillis, was given a "story by" credit. Gillis had an impressive, four decade long career that including innumerable scripts for The Adventures of Superman, Perry Mason, Lassie, Lost in Space, Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, and Knight Rider. Gillis had written a motion picture script "Superman and the Secret Planet" which was never produced.

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Categories: Supergirl, Superman

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Categories: Immigration, Racism, Superman

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(YouTube video: Dean Cain on Jimmy Kimmel: Live!))

The always charming Dean Cain learns that they somehow made Man of Steel without him. Cain spent more time on screen in the iconic costume than any other actor. Hard to believe, but Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman premiered nearly 20 years ago, in September, 1993.

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Categories: Dean Cain, Jimmy Kimmel, Superman, Video, YouTube

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Given the surprising number of negative reviews, I was worried when the curtains widened and the stylized Warner Bros logo appeared at the beginning of Man of Steel.

The review aggregation site rottentomatoes.com had pegged the latest reboot of the Superman legend at a tepid 57%. But then, this was the same collection of critics who rated the execrable Star Trek: Into Darkness at an unfathomably favorable 87%. So I tried to be optimistic.

I find myself agreeing with the guy on the AMC Movie Talk YouTube channel who said, "My only explanation for why some critics didn't like the show... is perhaps their heads were so far up their asses that they couldn't see the movie screen."

Man of Steel is unlike previous incarnations of Superman. It isn't presented like a fairy tale. It's a solid science fiction epic, but one that requires far less suspension of disbelief than other entries in the relatively new cgi-based superhero genre.

This isn't the childish Superman who spins the world backward to reverse time, or gives Lois Lane amnesia by kissing her. The villain isn't trying to destroy California in order to make a killing in real estate, or forcing all the oil tankers in the world cruise in circles to jack up the price of gasoline.

This is the story of an extraterrestrial refugee with amazing abilities, raised by good people after he was stranded as an infant on an alien world. He has to decide whether to defend his adopted planet or watch its destruction at the hands of members of his own true race.

The criticisms I've read are disheartening. They mean some truly don't get the concept of Superman. They aren't bright enough to follow a straightforward narrative told partly in flashback to provide exposition and character motivation. They can't put aside the archaic "rules" that governed Superman's behavior, motivated not by a dedication to a higher moral code, but by the fear that government intervention would negatively affect comic book sales in the 1940s and 1950s.

My first memory of television is watching George Reeves pause at a storeroom door, remove his glasses, then hurl himself via a barely-concealed springboard into the monochromatic skies of a stock footage Los Angeles. That was probably around 1958.

It took them 55 years, but they finally got it right.

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Categories: KGB Opinion, Superman

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My kids are taking me to see Man of Steel today, an early Father's Day present. I'm really looking forward to seeing it; I've been a fan of Superman since, oh, 1957, once I was old enough to focus my eyes on the blurry black-and-white image of George Reeves in his foam-padded shoulders.

Here's hoping they pulled it off.

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Categories: Superman

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From Lois and Clark- The New Adventures of Superman:

Lois Lane: I like your new glasses.
Clark Kent: Thanks.
Lois Lane: Did you ever think of getting contacts?
Clark Kent: No.

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Categories: Dialogue of the day, Superman

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It was the last day of school- May 31, 1963. My parents decided to take me on a short weekend vacation trip to Niagara Falls to celebrate my completing third grade.

We stopped at the J&I Dairy on 13th and McClure in Homestead to pick up some last minute items. At the front of the store was a comic book display.

I was three months shy of my ninth birthday, yet somehow had managed to miss the fact that my favorite- make that only- superhero, Superman, actually had a comic book. In fact, he had an entire series of comic books in which he appeared. My experience to this point with the Man of Steel was the endlessly rerun Adventures of Superman, which I watched daily on a snowy WTOV Channel 9 Steubenville.

Naturally, I was drawn to the book. My parents bought it for me, along with some other Superman titles, to keep me quiet on the trip.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that comic book changed my life.

It was the middle of the "Silver Age" of comics, and after Superman, I discovered Green Lantern, The Flash, The Manhunter from Mars, and rest of The Justice League of America.

My comics reading habit opened a world of literature. I discovered that Superman wasn't the first hero with a dual identity, after learning (in the comics' letters from readers section) that a Hungarian baroness, Emma Orczy, had first introduced the concept in The Scarlet Pimpernel. an idea later borrowed by Johnston McCulley's Zorro.

You know how when you read an article on a web site that has a link, which you follow to another link, then ten others, until it's eight hours later and you haven't found what you were originally looking for but instead discovered dozens of other even more interesting topics and facts? Superman comics were like that for me, only instead of surfing the web, I roamed the stacks of the Carnegie Library of Homestead.

I mention all this because today in the birthday of Curt Swan (February 17, 1920 – June 17, 1996), the man whose cover art for Giant Superman Annual #7 drew me like a moth to a flame. Referred to by some as "The Norman Rockwell of comics," Swan's influence is perhaps most apparent in the original Superman film series, where Christopher Reeve appears to be a real life version of Swan's artistic interpretation.

Fifty years. Wow.

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Categories: Curt Swan, KGB, Observations, Superman

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In related news, reports are surfacing that the largest crater resulting from the Russian meteorite strike contained a spaceship, and that a childless, middle-aged couple rescued a toddler wrapped in red and blue blankets...

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Categories: Observations, Science, Superman, Technology, WTF?

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Neil deGrasse Tyson has found Superman's homeworld, Krypton.

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Categories: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Superman

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Actor Dean Cain turns 46 today. In the 1993-1997 ABC series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Cain perfectly played an updated version of the superhero. While the show embraced many elements of the traditional Superman mythos, the major twist was the portrayal of Clark Kent as the "real person", and the Superman identity as a disguise. As he said in one episode, "Clark Kent is who I am... Superman is what I can do."

(YouTube video: Dean Cain panel at Wizard World, 2012)

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Categories: Dean Cain, Superman, Video, YouTube

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George Reeves (January 5, 1914-June 16, 1959)

(YouTube video: Don McLean performing "Superman's Ghost")

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Categories: Don McLean, George Reeves, Music, Superman, YouTube

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"Pet peeve time: for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble... grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters."
-Greg Rucka

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Categories: Superman

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According to the Huffington Post,

In "Action Comics #900," Superman will renounce his American citizenship, rejecting the international notion that his actions are part of US policy. The shift comes after a personal visit to Iran in support of protestors leads President Ahmadinejad to believe America was declaring war against the government in Tehran.

By rejecting his citizenship, Superman will now work on a grander international scale, because, as he says, "truth, justice and the American way... it's not enough anymore."

That's the official story. I blame the damned birthers. Just because Clark Kent couldn't produce a "long form" birth certificate...

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Categories: Superman

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Santa Claus is going to make an unscheduled appearance at a local church function this week, and a member of the congregation asked me my opinion.

"I'm the wrong person to ask," I replied. "To me, it's sort of like asking what would happen if Spiderman showed up unannounced at Superman's Fortress of Solitude."

It's an interesting premise, but there are weightier philosphical matters to consider, such as the such as the origins of Christmas itself.

Whatever. In the words of Ogden Nash, "Merry Christmas, nearly everyone!"

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Categories: Superman

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