Aldo; Daredevil; More Jamieson

First of all, my sympathies go out to Aldo on the loss of his dad. I haven't known Aldo for very long, but he's become a good friend in a hurry.

The consensus among Vince, Bill, and I (see their comments on yesterday's post) is that DAREDEVIL isn't as bad a movie as it's cracked up to be. I didn't see it in the theater (I see very few movies in the theater these days), but I watched the DVD when it came out. Had to, because I bought the first issue of the Daredevil comic book off a spinner rack in Trammell's Grocery in 1964 when it came out, and I read the book regularly for more than thirty years. (I don't read comics anymore, but that's another post . . . ) I knew that the critics had savaged DAREDEVIL, and I'm not much of a fan of Ben Affleck, but we watched the movie anyway and when it was over my wife and I looked at each other and said, "What was so bad about that?" Not a great movie, but we found it to be an enjoyable way to kill a couple of hours. And when the Elektra movie comes out, if it ever does, we'll watch it, too. But probably not in the theater.

I'm reading a Leland Jamieson novella from BLUE BOOK called "The Pirate of Vaca Lagoon". It's about the Coast Guard Air Patrol trying to stop gun-runners from smuggling a load of stolen American rifles to Cuban revolutionaries in 1935. Very good stuff so far. I've figured out that Jamieson's work reminds me of Howard Hawks' movies, specifically ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS. If I finish this story tonight I'll probably start Michael Connelly's THE CONCRETE BLONDE.

Today was a "run all over creation, do errands, and buy groceries" kind of day. No pages done, although Livia and I did spend quite a bit of time discussing the characters for our new Western series. I also mailed off a Longarm manuscript. When we got home I found page proofs for one of my ghosted Westerns waiting for me. I don't like reading page proofs (or doing revisions, or going over copy-edited manuscript), but it's all part of the job and I think I do it decently, if I do say so myself.