Red Tails

This last weekend Allison and I went to see a great movie, Red Tails. I'm not sure how many people have heard of this film, but it is amazing. Red Tails is a historical fiction story of the Tuskegee Airmen. The opening scene alone is worth the price of admissions. This film has all the special effects of Star Wars, but done realistically with planes of WW2. It should have all the SFX of Star Wars since George Lucas produced this film. Don't let that get to you though. This is a classic Lucas film, not a prequel. This movie also has heart. Red Tails looks at a part of American History that has never been given it's right due. The Tuskegee Airman fought for our country during WW2 and did it well. This movie shows how they went from being an experiment to the best bomber escorts in the war.

This story isn't just about fighting, it's about people. The characters in this movie are wonderful. You slowly fall in love with this characters. Every time they go up you hope that they make it back to their families and loved ones. Not every flight ends with everyone coming home. There could be a second film like the classic The Great Escape if they really wanted too. You'll fall in love with Raygun and Lighting so quickly that you forget you're not there with them. You may even like Coffee, he sure loves his planes.

I could go on about how amazing the movie is, but I won't. I loved this film and think everyone should go see it. If you're on the fence, get off. It's time to spend your money. Movies like this do not get made enough. Hollywood doesn't believe in many things. If you don't have a famous actor as your lead you're screwed. If you're in untested waters you're screwed. If you don't have enough white actors you're screwed. If anything we need to send Hollywood a message and see good films. Films that are fun and not the same sequel we've seen a hundred times already. Trust me, if you see this movie you'll be happy.

failed vacation

I had this week off for my first paid vacation in years, since 2001. I did not know that this was also the first week of classes for Allison. When we went to Boise State, school never started till the week of Martin Luther King Jr day. It would start on the Tuesday of that week. Well, Indiana University starts a week before that. How unfair is that. Luckily Allison was able to work around somethings and make it so that we could go out of town on Wednesday afternoon for the week.

Our adventure started off well. I decide to take interstate 65 to Chattanooga because it was the easiest route to follow. Once in Columbus you only had to turn once in Nashville to get to on the right interstate to Chattanooga. The trip was going very smoothly. No problems. We had a little rain, but other than that it was all good, until we hit Kentucky. Oh, Kentucky is the bane of my life. It makes life difficult at ever corner. Crossing into Louisville was difficult. Apparently a different bridge was close than the one we were using. So twice the traffic on our bridge. The thing that happened was Dixie Highway was closed which is near I-264, which is what you would use to get around. We didn't know why it was closed at the time, but it was because of a police chase and crash. That wasn't bad. I figured it was normal or a little heavy traffic for getting into Louisville. We passed through Louisville with no problems, other than I need to use the rest room and we were in downtown Louisville. Outside of Louisville we found a bathroom and lunch.

Getting back on the road was the problem. It was a little after one in the afternoon. We didn't know what was waiting for us. After entering into Bullitt County we hit traffic like no other. It almost came to a complete stop, actually it did for about two hours. In those two hours I was able to move my car two miles and get off at a rest stop. The VW wasn't doing so great by this time. Idling for two hours had put a toll on the little car. We stopped at the rest stop for another two hours. We watched as the cars slowly moved on. Sometimes not moving at all. It was bad. I called up 511 and found out that all the lanes were closed ahead and there was a multi-car crash ahead, about 10 to 13 miles away. Later checking the reports I found out that a semi had leaked diesel fuel on the road making it very hazardous. Then lots of cars and semis had an accident. The reports also said the lanes would be all closed till late afternoon. Considering I didn't get back on the road till after five and traffic was still not moving very fast this seems hardly likely.

During are stay at the rest stop I felt the desire not to go on. Allison felt the same way. It meant giving up the vacation I had been looking forwards to for a very long time, but we could deny what we were feeling. So when we got on the interstate again we drove the one mile the next exit and turned around and came home. We were home by eight. This is amazing because we wouldn't have been to Chattanooga till after midnight with all the delays. There were more accidents on I-65 after the one we were trying to get through. If nothing had gone wrong we would have made it to Chattanooga by seven. I guess some thing this trip was not suppose to happen. I don't know if something horrible would have happened to us if we did make it or not. I figure the spirit was telling us to turn around. I don't know what was bound to happen to us, but I can only guess it was going to be bad. That the thing, when you follow the spirit you can only assume that bad things were going to happen. You'll never truly know though.

Wordless Wednesday

Quarter Bin - Ghost Rider 1 vol. 3

This comic I read on my ipod touch. I find reading comics on the ipod is best when you are on the go or somewhere that you don't want to take your comics. The second good thing about this comic was it was a free download on the Marvel app. I love the free comics. I truly don't know of a better thing than free comics. Okay there probably is better things, but not when your board and only have an ipod with you.

So this comic rocked. I never read the 90's Dan Ketch Ghost Rider. I've never really been a big Ghost Rider fan at all. I just read the Ghost Rider Jason Aaron Omnibus a few months ago and it was nothing like this comic. They both are awesome in their own respects. I just love 90's comics. This comic was the best too. It was a double size issue. Twice as much story. I wrote a long explanation of the book earlier, but lost it. I hate computers sometimes. So this review is going to be much shorter and sweet.

Danny goes to Houdini's grave with his sister, Barbara. They run into a gang on the way there and Danny totally chickens out and has Barb save him. That's the start of the trouble. Then as they make it into the graveyard they over see two rival crime groups fighting. One is Deathwatch and his crew and the other is the Kingpin's crew. This comic is so tied into the marvel universe. The two groups see Danny and Barb. Barb get's shot with a arrow into the chest. Danny hides her in the junkyard next door. He finds a motorcycle in the junkyard. He's magically transformed into the Ghost Rider. He goes and fights the crime families. The local gang steals what the two crime families want. The cops show and see Ghost Rider and assume he's the bad guy. Which why wouldn't they he's got a flaming head in leather. Sounds evil to me. Ghost escapes and get's Barb to the hospital. We meet Danny's parents. He's dad is a cop and thinks Ghost Rider hurt his daughter. Tons more story happens with the local gang and crime families.

All and all I really liked this comic. I've never been a big Ghost Rider fan and haven't read much by him. The story wasn't all fighting and big muscles like most 90's comic. It was interesting. Danny wasn't sure about himself, but when the Ghost Rider took over things worked out. I felt like Danny could be a real person. He wasn't two dimensional. He had a little depth and I hope they build on that. One thing I wish was that I had a physical copy of the comic. I love the feel of paper between my hands vs the ipod. I see full pages instead of individual panels. I think I'll even start looking for these comics in quarter bins when I'm in comic shops. I would love to have this comic and maybe even the full run in my collection.

I give this comic 4 out of 5. It was a lot of fun to read.

goals for 2011 are done

I don't make many new year's resolutions. I never have. I kind of always thought they were stupid. When I was a kid I thought if I made new year's resolution I could do them, but I would fail after a month or two. Never in my life have I ever completed a single new year's resolution. That was until last year. Last year I set out with the most ambitious resolution I have ever tried. I decide to draw something everyday. Kind of like a daily comic because I love comics. After 365 days I can say I did it! I kind of thought I would fail. I fail at a lot of things so I kind of figured I'd give this up after a month or two. I thought about giving up, put I didn't. I now have three full and one half filled sketch books for 2011 drawings. Now I'm not going to lie, I did miss a few days here and there, but I always went back and did them, I have 365 drawings all done in 2011. I never said they had to be done by end of day, just that I had a comic day and I have a drawing for each day. I loved doing them too. Summer was favorite time to draw them. I was really inspired by the baseball season. I drew a few baseball players from past and present. I really tried to capture their movement in my drawings. I was able to do this with some of the comics but not all of them. Another great thing that came out of my comics was my presidential or political comics. My father encouraged me to draw all the presidents after I put up a funny little comic on President's Day on my comic blog. I drew these comic with fever till October. Then in October I decide to dedicate the month to monsters. That was a really fun month of comics. Then I picked them back up in November but didn't finish. Instead I drew lost of other comics leaving the Barack Obama comic still to do. I'm glad to say I finished his comic yesterday. I still have a few more politicians to draw, but seeing as it is now a weekly comic on my comic blog I'll be looking for even more politicians here soon.



Drawing wasn't my only goal. On Goodreads they put up a challenge on their site to read books. You could enter how many books you think you could read in a year. I put down a hundred, but that's including comic books. I planned on reading fifteen regular books with eighty-five comics. I was able to succeed in this goal too. I read twenty regular books. I haven't been reading this many books since I got out of high school. I felt good about this number. I read a lot of different type of books. Allison has had that effect on me. She's got me reading tons of cool things.

All and all I think 2011 was a good year. I did the things I set out to do. Drawing a comic a day was really hard, but rewarding. It took a lot for me to come up with enough ideas to fill a full year. I don't know when I'll that again, but hopefully next year. This year I'm taking a break and going to work on more personal stories. I'm bring back my Lost Guns series. I loved drawing those comics in college and I want to get back to telling stories about my life. I plan on drawing at least one a week. Plus I got my goodreads goal for this year. Plus you can see my 365 at flickr.

Here's for another great year.

The New Year in Indy

On December 30 we decide to go up to Indianapolis for some fun. There's always tons to do up in Indy. It's one of my favorite cities to go too. This time we did somethings I've never done in Indy before! After living only an hour away for more than 15 years there is still things I've never done. We went to Momument Circle while it was actually open. I've been done to Momument a lot of times growing up, but never when it was open. For the longest time I didn't think you can enter it. I was wrong. When Allison and I were driving downtown we saw that it was open and decide it was time to go in. Once in and finding out you can go to the top we had to do it. I know, Michael going up a tower, bad idea. He's got acrophobia. Well, we decide to go up anyway. It was two dollars to use the elevator or free to climb the 300 plus steps. We did the steps. We made it all the way to the top without me freaking out. We had to take a couple breaks in the middle, but we made it to the top, and It's pretty cool up top. You can see all of downtown Indy. A fun time no doubt.