Vacation-At-Home Log, Day One:

(I can already tell that the Vacation At Home experiment is going to be much more successful than previous Vacations Away From Home.)

• The Man Cub let us sleep in till 5:30 a.m. Yeeha! I feel like I’m at Disneyland already.

• Just caught last night’s Superboy on the WB. I knew that somehow Jor-El had taken over Lionel Luther’s body, and tonight made it explicit. Didn’t really care much about the main plot of this episode, except that it introduces another DCU mainstay, Cyborg. But it’s been great fun this season watching Lionel Luther do stuff that doesn’t make sense unless you knew he was acting in Jor-El’s best interests. This show is definitely shaping up, but they really, really need to kill off Lana. I hope Lex Luthor does it as the defining moment of his turn to the dark side.

• More comic book geekery: It occurred to me while I was watching this episode, Superman and Batman are both orphans. Hmmm… and Clark Kent was adopted by a kind, nurturing couple, whereas Bruce Wayne was raised in an empty mansion by a domestic. Superman turns out with his head screwed straight; Batman is by any definition a nutcase. Their psych profiles even reveal themselves in their secret identities: Bruce Wayne makes himself out to be a self-aggrandizing, dilettante womanizer; Clark Kent is confident enough to let his public persona be the genial buffoon. It’s funny that the original creators couldn’t possibly have had all this complicated psychological bullshit in mind when they were crafting their 4-color funnies, but that they actually hold up pretty well to close examination.

• Also up on the vacation agenda: Working my way through the first Season of Star Trek, the Next Generation (hereafter STNG) on DVD – in order, of course. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…
-Apparently, Denise Crosby (security chief Tasha Yar) was designed to be the breakout sex symbol if early episodes focusing on her in revealing outfits is any indication. Bad call. She’s a tall blond with an impressive rack, but she just reads extremely lesbian (even The Missus thinks so). And her love scenes are all with men (including Data – WTF?). They just ring false. She was much better later in the series after Tasha Yar was killed off and Denise Crosby returned as an alternate-universe Tasha Yar who was a warrior chieftain or something. She was good in that role. I also liked her in a shitty, straight to video flick called “Arizona Heat.” Tasha Yar fans, check it out. Shower scene!
-They also seem to be grooming the Wesley Crusher character for greater things that, alas, also never came to be. Again, the casting seems to be at fault. Wil Wheaton is just irritating and they didn’t write him out of the show soon enough for my taste.
-Patrick Stewart. Oh my Gawd! Other than Brent Spiner’s Data, Stewart’s Captain Picard is acting on a whole ‘nother level than the rest of this weak-ass cast. Imagine Olivier delivering Hamlet’s soliloquy in front of “2001”s monolith, surrounded by cavorting ape creatures with bones. That’s what it’s like watching Patrick Stewart interact with his fellow “thespians” on STNG.
-Wow, the Ferengi (sp?) show up way early on STNG. I had no idea.

• And now Vacation Day #1 is done, and I have gone nowhere and accomplished nothing.

So far, so good.