Batman Day 2019

September 21, 2019, was the annual instance of Batman Day.

I know it's late in the day, but as part of my own observance of Batman Day 2019, here are several of my favorite Batman stories (in no particular order):

Friday 80s Flashback for September 20, 2019

[Beatitude for a Car] -- 80s fans lost another icon this past week. Ric Ocasek, best known as a member of The Cars, passed away at his home on September 15. He was recuperating from surgery. By now, many tributes have been posted and Ocasek's best songs with The Cars have been shared. But this is my little corner of the 80s, so for this week's Flashback post, I want to remember Ric Ocasek by revisiting his first solo album: Beatitude (1982).  The title was meant to be pronounced "beat-itude" -- mashing "beat" together with "attitude." There were no singles released from this effort, so I'm going to go ahead and share the full album. The embedded playlist has nine tracks while Ric's album had ten -- the ninth video here contains both the ninth and tenth tracks from the album. While Beatitude might not contain anything near as catchy as his work with The Cars, it is still compelling. My own favorites are "Jimmy Jimmy," "I Can't Wait," "Prove," and "Connect Up to Me." Which ones strike your fancy? This is Ric in a playground of his own making. This is a personal, if sometimes strange, visit with a songsmith.

RIP you odd duck of a musical genius, Ric.

Flashback: "connect up with me | i feel your heartbeat | a pounding soft | oh i, i'm taking off."

---

That's all till next week. Dedicated 80s-philes can find more flashbacks in the Prophet or Madman archives or via Bookended's 80s Flashback tag. As always, your comments are welcome on today's, or any other, flashback post. And if you like what I'm doing here, please share the link with your friends. If, however, you don't like the flashback, feel free to share it with your enemies.

I'll see you in seven!

Friday 80s Flashback for September 13, 2019

[An Affair Less Remembered] -- Another Friday the 13th has rolled around, and I briefly thought about a horror or bad luck theme to honor the rare occasion when the Flashback crosses paths with Friday the 13th. But, no, I'm not going there. Instead, I'm going to tell you about a record that is celebrating its 30th anniversary on this date: Tina Turner's seventh solo album, Foreign Affair (1989). It launched six different singles, only two of which were able to crack the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. The album itself peaked at #31 on the US Billboard 200. And while the record sold over 6 million copies, it was not as commercially successful as her two prior outings, Private Dancer (1984) and Break Every Rule (1986). You don't recall Foreign Affair? Well, I'm sure you remember one single from it. Let's see if you do; just read and hear more after the jump.

(Note: The last time a confluence of Flashback and Friday the 13th occurred was 10/13/2017, and I didn't do a 13-themed post then either). 

Lucifer Convention

A friend of mine was worried when she saw I was attending a Lucifer convention. She did not realize it was for the TV show Lucifer.

We flew to LA and stayed right at LAX. We didn't say in the convention hotel but we easily walked to it. The convention hotel was the Hyatt Regency and it was a lovely hotel and the ballroom we were in worked out very well. It was small and intimate with good sound and our seats were very good too.

This was a Creation Entertainment convention and I always go Gold because it is always worth every penny and this was no exception. We were close to the stage, we got all but one autograph included and we had a special Gold panel on Sunday morning with Tom Ellis, Kevin Alejandro and Tricia Helfer.

We met some amazing attendees and throughly enjoyed meeting all the actors and hearing their stories. They were all hilarious and all very engaging. They LOVE their show and the fans too. And the fans LOVE them right back. All the fans were well versed in the show and at times stumped the actors with their questions. It truly was a lovefest and it was sad it was only two days. They mentioned maybe doing another in Chicago in 2020 and we will definitely check it out if they do.