neadods has been asking about podcasts lately.

I don't listen to that many. The large bulk of mine are old time radio oriented. I had to go digging yesterday to find the superheroes one for my Green Hornet fix.

I've also listened to some of Pendant Audio fan programs, particularly the Champion of Themiscyra one. They're in the middle of their latest crossover bonanza. Some of the voices flat out don't work for me. Some do.

I've listened to a couple of the comics ones, Word Balloon or FanboyRadio, if the author/artist being interviewed interests me.

In my more recent interests, I've listened to Behind the Black Mask's author interviews. They have a second podcast called "Out of the Past" reviewing films, some classic and some modern.

Crimewav: Relatively new podcast of short crime fiction. Two of the authors with stories are Vicki Hendricks and Christa Faust. All we need is Megan Abbott for the trifecta of female noir writers... (Not remotely family friendly readings I might add, if that bothers you.)

Frank Kelly Freas, the SF/Fantasy illustrator, is dead. He did artwork for everything from pinups to Skylab to Queen album covers.

Almost on his heels, Will Eisner is dead, after recovering from quadruple bypass surgery. Neil Gaiman has a lovely memorial in his journal.

As expected, Free Comic Day was something of a bust. Hole in the Wall did not get the Del Rey manga sampler, but then, they sell very little manga anyway. None of the other titles really appealed to me. So I just picked up my usual batch, including the "Global Frequency" trade I ordered. I had some ice cream at the Stacey's Coffee parlor, the former Caffeine, now with wireless access. CD Cellar appears to have taken over part of the upstairs from the looks of it.

Then I came home to go see "Spider-man 2" with whytcrow and boffo9. Much fun was had by all. No spoilers, except I'll have a certain damn theme song stuck in my brain for the next month! They also dropped by the apartment to acquire the computer monitor, so now I have space on my floor where there wasn't before.

I will be spending my 4th with the family in Warrenton. Hopefully that will not be an ordeal.

If anyone is vaguely interested, I created a new community 1602 for Neil Gaiman's mini-series for Marvel. I still need to create a icon for the community and write the official welcome type message, but it is open for members. Without spoilers, this series is a wower on many levels. Lots of little Easter eggs if you know the Marvelverse. Also very appealing to my inner Elizabethan. (The one that needed a database just to keep track of which Elizabethan books and mysteries she had found over the years...)

The hills are alive with shamrocks and Irish music. The local mall is hosting their Shamrock festival closing off one corner of the neighborhood. Judging by the beads and ugly hats, though, I keep thinking it's a green Mardi Gras instead. Real fun being one of normal pedastrians just trying to get *around* the party, of course. At least the weather is absolutely gorgeous! You'd never know several weeks ago we were groaning about the snow. Everyone is walking around in short sleeves.

Also discovered that the local BDaltons has a *strange* sense of displaying books. Noting the Sci Fi Channel's adaptations of the "Dune" books, I looked for the original book of the series on the shelf. They had most of the others, but not the original. That seemed strange so I asked one of the shelvers. Fortunately I found the SF person in the store. He led me straight to a book dump of the three books being adapted, hidden in an odd corner at the *other* entrance to the store which would actually be blocked from view through the windows by the other displays. Even he seemed to think that was a strange place to put the dump. One of the things I learned at my short stay at Borders was you *always* leave a book in the section, because some people do not see displays.

I also found the second Ruse graphic novel collection in a display at the front of the main store entrance I hadn't noticed coming into the store. I hadn't mentioned discovering this in a previous entry, but Ruse is published by CrossGen Comics and basically a Sherlock Holmesian style series with some supernatural/super-powers thrown in for good nature. The series only seems tangentially associated with the rest of the CrossGen universe which is one of those complex shared comics universes that I either love or hate.

Jasper Fforde's second Thursday Next book comes out at the end of the month. I'm rereading "Eyre Affair". Bizarre universe with lots of literary references.