I’m not sure why, but lately I have been finishing things I started 15 to 20 years ago. Oh, not big and life changing things, but small things I had always meant to get back to. So in the 80s I read and enjoyed Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, but I never read the sequels. Last week I finished Speaker for the Dead, which was excellent, and Xenocide is on deck. In the movie department I finally watched Superman II. I had seen the original in the theater but never bothered with any of the sequels. After seeing the new Superman film this summer, which decided it was important to cleave to the continuity of the original two movies, I figured I’d check out part II and see why. Thankfully, I only recorded this on Tivo and so didn’t spend any extra money to see it, because man Superman II blew. I mean OK, “In Zod We Trust” is funny and all but overall it was a total piece of crap. I have considerably higher hopes for Samurai II, the middle installment of Hiroshi Inagaki’s trilogy about legendary samurai Musashi Miyamoto starring the mighty Toshiro Mifune. A lifetime ago when I was working at Kim’s Video in NYC I had taken home and watched part I but never got around to finishing the trilogy. When I saw IFC had part II coming up, I had Tivo record it. I haven’t watched it yet but hope to next week some time.

In the morning I’m leaving for Oakland. I’ll be there for the aforementioned 5 year Anniversary party at Endgame. Bay Area folks, I hope to see you there.