The Summons

I don't think I mentioned that Debbi and I basically spent the weekend either shopping or being slugs. In the latter case, I mainly mean that we spent Sunday watching football, including the rather embarrassing thumping of the Green Bay Packers by the Minnesota Vikings. I mean, a 35-14 score is roughly what I'd expected, but the other way!

One thing that really made me happy this weekend is that I finally found some new drinking glasses. I've had the same drinking glasses since grad school - 16-ounce glass tumblers, just very convenient all around. But I've gradually been breaking the 32 I once had, all together, and indeed I've broken quite a few in the last year, for some reason, and with not a little "help" from the cats. But I haven't had any luck finding replacement in a similar style or for a decent price. Even at Target.

Well, K-Mart to the rescue! They had a 20-piece set of glasses, 10 each 12-ounce and 16-ounce, in exactly the style I wanted, and for only ten dollars! So that little quest has ended successfully.

I get worked up about the silliest things, don't I?

Tonight I came home to find that I've received my first summons to jury duty.

I've never been to jury duty either in California or anywhere else, but I know many people out here who have been called, and several who have even sat on juries. I understand that the waiting-to-be-chosen part is really dull, and that while in the court room while other potential jurors are being interviewed, you can't even read a book. Yawn!

Fortunately, my dates don't conflict with any of my present plans (unless, say, I end up on a jury whose trial lasts into Christmas). So I'm curious to see how it works out.

Except, that is, that I fear that I'm going to spend most of it being really, really bored. But, maybe it'll be interesting anyway.

Tonight I watched last Tuesday's premiere of Smallville, the latest television entry in the Superman mythos. This one is about Clark Kent's teenage years in his home town, being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent. He begins the series as a freshman in high school, and something of a loser, since his father refuses to let him play football or otherwise get in situations where he could reveal his powers. Worse, he has a big crush on Lana Lang, whose parents were killed in the meteor storm which accompanied Clark's rocketship's arrival, but he becomes a complete klutz when he nears her because she's wearing a piece of Kryptonite around her neck. Lastly, Clark saves the life of Lex Luthor, whose father is a major - and not loved - developer in town, and who lost his hair in the meteor storm. Lex, naturally, wants to become friends with Clark, especially since he chafes against his father's plans for his future.

There are no costumes, and no flying, though Clark's essential abilities - strength, speed, invulnerability - are in evidence, but kept secret from Smallville's populace. And it's actually carried off quite well: The characterizations are vivid and mesh well together. There's even another superpowered youth in evidence, with revenge plans to carry out. Sadly, I didn't seem to get the whole episode on tape; either it ran over an hours (contrary to the listing in the newspaper), or something else happened. So I didn't get to see the whole thing, but I found what I did see promising, and I'll watch tomorrow's episode with curiosity.

I can't say the same about Enterprise, the new Star Trek spin-off, which started with a promising episode, but which has gone steadily and sharply downhill ever since. The last three episodes have featured:

• Discovery of a drifting alien ship, with life signs, but which doesn't reply to hails. So our heroes send them directions to their home planet, despite having no idea whether the aliens are faking it, or would be friendly if they were.
• A woman who can learn a completely new alien language in mere hours, fluently enough to conduct diplomatic negotiations with them while the ship is under attack.
• Landing on an Earth-like planet without any preliminary safety scans whatsoever, despite such being recommended by their Vulcan advisor.
• Deciding not to use protective suits when on the planet.
• Leaving a party on the planet overnight without a means to return to the ship. (Yes, the third episode was a true "idiot plot"; all the characters had to be idiots for it to go anywhere.)
• Encountering a disabled alien ship and sending over their chief engineer to help them with repairs, again without a protective suit.
• Aliens who don't know what water is and try to synthesize it. (Isn't it hard to develop starfaring technology without a basic grasp of chemistry?)
• The revelation that they don't have cameras - digital or otherwise - on the ship, since the engineer is unable to show his friends what the alien ship looked like.
• A male crewmember becoming impregnated by a female alien through his fingers.
• And developing nipples on his wrist as a result.

Have you ever noticed the proper names given to comic book characters and how they feel like the product of their eras, and often feel rather dated? For instance:

1930s: Clark, Bruce, Jay

1940s: Alan, Carter, Al, Oliver, Arthur

1950s: Barry, Hal, "Snapper"

1960s: Reed, Hank, Janet, Tony, Rick, Bruce (again)

Anyway.