Ducks in the Library

When in doubt, take a picture of a sunset. This is the view from our deck as the Sun went down on the first day of meteorological spring. Today, that is.

Heard the usual blather on the radio today about the upcoming equinox. Something about spring starting then, but I'm not persuaded. It's usually still fairly chilly around here around the vernal equinox.

This made my day: The Schaumburg Township Library seems to have the entire Carl Barks Library of Donald Duck Adventures in Color, which are large-format comic books (ahem, graphic novels). Ann was not far away looking for things to read and I happened to notice one of the series that hadn't been reshelved yet. The publisher was Gladstone -- that name can't be a coincidence -- of Prescott, Ariz.

Gladstone republished a lot of Barks and other Disney comic authors in the late '80s and '90s. I remember seeing some of them then, but wasn't in the market. I'd read most of the stories years earlier anyway, and didn't want to pay just to have a collection of them.

But now there are small(ish) people in the house who have never read them, so I checked out No. 1 of the series, which features an early Barks comic book effort (with another Disney animator, Jack Hanna) called "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold," which I don't think I've read. But I'm going to have to wait until Ann is done with it -- she took an immediate interest.

Crunky Vessel in the Fog

Unreasoning, stupid cold today. But they say it will be above freezing beginning sometime over the weekend. That will seem like resort weather. People will start wearing shorts until the next arctic blast (and there's bound to be at least one more).

Actually, even single-digit temps don't discourage a handful of shorts-wearing fanatics. Last Saturday, temps about 10° F., I was in line at a post office when in walks a fellow in a reasonably suitable winter coat but also shorts and tennis shoes. A shortish but stocky fellow, he must have been about my age, with short, vaguely military hair, a fair number of forehead wrinkles and an enormous, unlit cigar stuck in his mouth the entire time he was in line behind me. For some reason, he reminded me of Sgt. Fury, someone I hadn't thought about in years, but I doubt this guy was ever on a secret mission to kidnap Hitler.

When I scanned Temmy's Sweet Flakes yesterday, I couldn't stop at just one scan -- who can? -- especially when I had an empty box of Crunky around the house. Usually I don't want one enough to pay $2+, but I spied one at a serious discount at an Asian grocery store not long ago.

Unlike Temmy's, I've known about Crunky for many years. It didn't take me long to find Crunky at convenience- and grocery stores in Japan, along with a lot of other native confections. Except that, as a Lotte product, Crunky isn't quite native to Japan, but to Japan and Korea.

Lotte HQ might be in Japan, but it was established by a Korean who grew up in Japan, and its presence is much larger in South Korea than Japan. Except for its delightfully fractured name, Crunky is something like Nestle's Crunch, though not as sweet.

The founder of Lotte, one Shin Kyuk-Ho, is apparently still alive at 89. This is my favorite line in his Wiki stub: "He currently resides in South Korea for odd months and in Japan for even months. [citation needed]" If I had more energy for research tasks that don't pay, I might try to find that citation. I hope it's true. A billionaire without some eccentricities is no fun at all.

Crunky's OK. But it never was my favorite East Asian chocolate. Another Lotte product, Vessel in the Fog, was. I've never seen it for sale in the United States. It's a smooth confection with a great, inexplicable name.

Homes Fit for McDuck and Glomgold

I filed a story earlier today that might be the only time in my professional writing career that I'll be able to mention the world's two richest ducks. Even better, the reference fits the story (actually just three graphs of a column), which is about Walt Disney Co.'s curious new plans to develop an upper-end residential community at DisneyWorld. Upper-end, as in resort homes for which the Mouse will ask $1.5 million to $8 million each. It seems like a contrarian play, but I suppose if anyone can make it work, it's Disney.

"Not every player in the new-home game is discouraged, however," I wrote. "Certainly not Walt Disney Co., which unveiled plans on Wednesday to develop vacation homes at its Walt Disney World resort in central Florida. Not just any vacation homes, either, but properties aimed at a distinctly upscale clientele — say Scrooge McDuck or Flintheart Glomgold."

For those unfamiliar with Flintheart Glomgold, familiarize yourself immediately. And then go to the main page of Who's Who in Duckburg to fritter away even more time. Or maybe "fritter" isn't the right word; the Ducks were part of my education, after all. But I realize that not everyone was fortunate enough to grow up in a house stocked with 1950s and '60s vintage Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, or have a subscription Walt Disney Comics Digest during most of its run, but the Internet can partly make up for that in our time.

Sea Monkeys, 3-D Glasses & Itching Powder, Updated

Someone left a bag on my front door doorknob this morning; included were a lawn care flyer, a carpet cleaner refrigerator magnet, and a comic book, among other things. None of the items were particularly odd or noteworthy except for the comic book, which is called Race Warrior, "America's Racing Comic Book."

It has a 2000 copyright and cover date, and the staff box attributes the comic to Custom Comics of America Inc. My urge to read the thing is pretty small, but I did flip through enough to notice that besides being a comic about race-car driving in the future, it's also an extended advertisement for Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up and Valvoline products.

A little Googling finds a 10-year-old article in Promo magazine, which tells me that "Dr Pepper/Seven Up Inc., Dallas, and the Valvoline Co., Lexington, Ky., last month initiated sponsorship of Race Warrior, a weekly kids comic-book series that, with Seven Up's help, is being sold in more than 2,500 grocery, drug, and mass merchandise outlets including Wal-Mart, CVS, Kroger, Target, and Winn-Dixie locations...

"Although the project is billed as a years-in-the-making concept being aided with sponsor contributions, the comic book itself comes across as blatant shilling, with brand imagery in every panel and names and marketing slogans sprinkled within the narrative.

" 'The very first comics were created to sell soap,' says Race Warrior creator John Powell. 'In our case, instead of selling sea monkeys, 3-D glasses, and itching powder, we are helping market 7 Up and Valvoline.' "

All that isn't so strange. But what was a decade-old soda pop promo comic doing on my doorknob this morning?

Batman & Ferro Lad

We should have watched something Australian, you know, for Australia Day (see January 26, 2005 comments on that day) but Batman Begins somehow made it into the Netflix queue, and arrived in the mail in the morning. In the evening, Lilly obliged us by playing girly computer games the entire time the movie was on. Sometimes Ann watched her, sometimes she bothered us.

Batman’s interesting enough in various iterations – I haven’t read or seen them all – but he never was a favorite. Not sure any superheroes count as favorites, though I did read and enjoy a cache of early- to mid-60s superhero comics passed along to me by my brothers. My favorite among them was a two-parter of the Legion of Superheroes that told the story of the death of Ferro Lad while fighting the sun-eater, a mindless space cloud that ate stars -- and was headed right for Sol! (I think that was where I learned that another name for the Sun is Sol. Later, I learned it was Latin.)

Ferro Lad's ability was to be able to turn into iron at will. The biochemistry of that is a little dodgy, but no more so than, say, the physics of Superman. He also always wore a helmet that obscured his face - so he might have been disfigured. This remained a mystery, because he gave his life to save Sol. He might have had a horible face, but he had moxie.

Anyway, if I had more energy I might write more about this latest Batman. Michael Caine as Alfred the Butler was good casting. The movie had lots of explosions and chases. Gotham City was suitably Gothic, and corrupt as Medellin, and occasionally I saw bits of Chicago passing as Gotham. (I’ll check again, but I’m positive I saw 35 E. Wacker, where I used to work.)

It was amusing to imagine where it was that Bruce Wayne went to study “ninja” ways – Japan, you’d think, but it looked more like Tibet. Seemed to be an all-purpose Orient, the place from which mysterious Oriental wisdom can be learned, from that mysterious Oriental, Liam Neeson.

Indy for the Nth Time

Usually, I wrap up writing about short trips with miscellaneous observations, but today I’m going to start with them—observations of various sizes and shapes from my recent 24 hours in Indianapolis, which started on Tuesday afternoon and ended on Wednesday afternoon.

It’s a hiccough airplane trip across the flatland between Chicago and Indy: one state over, one metropolis down. Up you go, get your drink, down you go, do not stand until the plane has made a complete stop. Leaving Indianapolis this afternoon, I got to see the city from up high, making the downtown especially look like a model of itself on a table. Off to the west was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the famous race, looking like a model Circus Maximus in a model of ancient Rome.

I’ve been to Indy so many times now, I’ve lost count. This was my nth trip, then. But I always forget how empty downtown seems, even in the full flush of a business day. My business in town took me from my hotel, the Hampton Inn on Meridian Ave., to the huge Marriott down Maryland St., a wide street, as many of the CBD streets are. I walked the five blocks or so several times. I’m used to the rush and din of Chicago, where the downtown streets always flow with cars, and the sidewalks always sport pedestrians. In Indianapolis, cars seem to trickle down the major thoroughfares, and there are only a handful of walkers on each block.

Many of the crosswalks have timers. That is, along with the standard Walk-Do-Not-Walk ideogram lights, there’s another electronic sign, a timer, to let you know how many seconds are left until the light changes from Walk to Do Not Walk. I’m fairly sure Indy was the first place I ever saw that particular pedestrian aid, though I have seen it a few other places since.

It was cold during my visit, but this time precipitation didn’t chase me, like it did when I came to town in January, or like last week in Michigan. I did notice, while walking to my gate at Midway yesterday, that a lot of flights to LaGuardia had been canceled. Later, the Weather Channel confirmed that a late-winter blast had hammered the Northeast U.S. that day, illustrated by beleaguered pedestrians in Manhattan and snow-shoveling Bostonians. This is the kind of thing that excites the Weather Channel. Gives them some thrilling weather to report till tornado season gets under way.

Saw an enormous man—a 100 lbs. my senior in bulk, at least—reading a comic book at the Indianapolis airport. I mean, a graphic novel. Dungeon, was the name, I think. Sure, they’re supposed to be for adults. But I don’t see too many adults actually reading them in public. Maybe it’s because we suspect that, despite adult themes, they’re still just comic books. Besides, “adult” themes usually don’t mean stories about dealing with your spouse, your kids, your house, your job, or other activities that fill the days of adults. No, it means large breasts slung in small cloth, plus a little ultraviolence, if the cover of Dungeon is any indication.