Day Six of our vacation ended in Pueblo, Colorado — an address well-known to anyone who ever saw one of the famous commercials from the ’70s/’80s about the Consumer Information Center and its free catalogs by mail. For that alone, my wife and I assumed the city held world-famous status. Some of our friends disagreed, but that’s their problem, not ours. Believe it or not, TV had more than just toy commercials back then.
The two of us spent the evening visiting the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo, a pleasant downtown diversion that interested my son not one bit. This, we decided, was the perfect opportunity for a husband/wife outing. Our hometown of Indianapolis has its Canal Walk, and we enjoyed the visual diversity of the San Antonio Riverwalk in 2005. Pueblo is much smaller than either city, but its foray into the beautifying riverwalk business is fairly new, still expanding, and worth several moments of time and dallying.
I was a little surprised to reunite with the Arkansas River, the very same waterway that runs beneath the Royal Gorge Bridge back in CaƱon City, a few dozen miles west of Pueblo. How nice of the Arkansas to serve as a thematic through-line to our day. Note that Pueblo has succeeded in containing the Arkansas and removing those turbulent rapids and imposing mountainside walls.
Strictly speaking, this morning’s impulse sharing of the freshly minted Iron Man 3 trailer fulfilled my self-contractual post-a-day quota, though it was shamefully light on word count. I normally don’t post before work because I’m not a morning person (vociferously anti-morning, really), but I was excited and wanted to pass along the neat thing, even if I didn’t have time to add 500 words’ worth of elaboration to accompany it while scarfing my bagel.
NBC told us all summer long that our great and powerful TV series Community would return to us for its fourth season on October 19, 2012. They worked out their fall schedule. They announced it to the press. They promised.
Of all our household’s rules and guidelines that aren’t Scripture quotes, one of the simplest and most scrupulously enforced in our family is four simple words: Wednesday is Guy Night. What we call “Guy Night”, normal people call “father/son quality time”. Then again, normal people rarely use the word “enforce” in that conversation.
Today’s subject: Grifter, one of the initial titles from DC Comics’ “New 52” relaunch of September 2011. For review purposes I picked up the most recent issue, #13, which was new in stores last Wednesday.
Barely recovered from last week’s 
The amusement-park phase of my life has been slowly wrapping up over the past few years. My son has decided amusement parks no longer offer him sufficient intellectual incentive, and also they’re just not cool. My wife has never been a fan of any fun-time vehicle that exerts greater G-force than my interstate driving. My mother’s requests to visit such places have receded as she’s very, very slowly realizing that such devices will be the death of her.
Today’s subject: Dredd, the movie industry’s second attempt to adapt the iconic British comics character to the silver screen. The first attempt had okay visual effects, Sylvester Stallone reprising Cobra in funnier clothes, and Rob Schneider. Incredibly, the new version has fared even worse at the American box office, possibly because of rampant fears of an uncredited Schneider cameo.
Viewers have had a week since last week’s episode of Revolution to write down their guesses as to which character would die tonight. Would it be Aaron, the softest of Our Heroes, whose death would take all sense of comic relief with him? Would it be Miles, the main character? Would it be Charlie, the character that the show keeps telling us is the main character? Would it be “Nate”, sacrificing himself to atone for his nebulous militia past? Would it be Neville, executed for the crime of being too interesting a villain?
Today’s subject: the Fox sitcom New Girl, now in its second season. Instead of researching at length and arming myself with knowledge of characters and situations in advance, I followed in the footsteps of our primitive ancestors and sat through a random episode with as little forethought as possible. In the old days of comic books, there was a saying that would translate into the TV world as, “Every episode is someone’s first.” Theoretically, if a TV show would like to attract new viewers and see ratings rise over the years, instead of dropping steadily from episode one to episode the last, then it would be in the showrunners’ best interest to ensure that every episode is a satisfying dosage for any viewer, whether new or returning. 
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 