It's The Epicest!

 

 

 

Pronounced epic-est, that is the superlative form of "epic" with synonyms like "ultimate", "classic", and "awesome". And that word which I'm borrowing from 2014 was coined by my son Jeffrey on a Sunday afternoon last month when we were playing in his room with his toy cars are doing daredevil stunts with them. Just spending the time with the kids, and their wanting to spend the time with me right now, is worth it. Over the last few days we've also been playing a new card game -- one with the standard 52-card, 4-suit deck that was new to me -- called "garbage", where you have to turn over cards one through ten (one being an ace) with a king as your wild card and the jack and queen not counting and once you get ten you deal to yourself again trying to build a hand one through nine, then one through eight, and so forth. Also, we're getting back into playing chess, and he's really challenging -- our game last night kept us up past his bedtime! Oh, and Lex Luthor saved the world.

Lex Luthor saved the world. Once you're done processing that, let me tell you about the awesome story arc that DC just concluded, where the Justice League and most major heroes are taken down by the actions of the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, et. al. Forever Evil (ISBN 9781401248918) has us cheering for the villains Luthor's gathering to resist the majority willing to take over the world with the Syndicate, and picking up this seven-issue collection with the gift card I'd gotten from Barnes and Noble just made my day. And DC makes this work easier that Marvel can because it gives its heroes so much angst and grudges to bear, in my opinion. Ironic, huh ... what's often cited by comic book fans -- that I've read anyway -- as a weakness in DC's stable in this context turns out to be its strength. Besides, I've always liked Captain Cold,

who's one of the villains taking Luthor's side. As for the play (and likely just the first play I've read this year, I'll go WAY beyond that 2015 Reading Challenge) The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein (ISBN 0822205106), I'll have to review my notes on the late 1980s. It's one of those plays I heard about in my senior drama class in high school but I'd never read -- essentially the main character is an art historian and the scenes are vignettes on growing up as a woman and "finding yourself" in America during the 1960s through the 1980s ... think Dirty Dancing and you're supposed to find the deeper meaning in it. That, and a children's book about Alice Roosevelt -- daughter of Theodore -- that I bought at Main Street Books the day after it came in (What To Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, ISBN 0822205106) all keep me smiling!

And makes my home life the epicest, David