Who the heck? (things only I wonder about)*

So, while I was in Value Village today as part of an errands run, I encounter this guy hanging in a plastic bag on the cheap toys wall:

He was eye-catching in the first place because I didn't immediately recognize him: the brown suit, green bird-motif cape, and visored helmet rang no bells. At first, I thought he might have been an owl-guy of some kind, and Otis has been developing an owl-theme for me lately, so I picked it up. A closer look revealed more details:

Look at that phiz. Seems determined, but a little confused at the same time. The design of the helmet looks less like and owl, and more like a... parrot? Parrot-man? There ain't no Parrot-man I know of.

And the belt: besides his, shall we say, greater that typical belt size for a superhero, his buckle is a big "G." G is for... owl? parrot? Is this a Spanish superhero or something?

But get a load of the detail on the boots - the split-toe really makes the costume.

As I was taking photos and moving through these details, I started getting some resonance that I had indeed seen this fellow before, and that he was a Japanese character, from one of those groups of heroes like the Power Rangers. A little bit of internet research later, the mystery is solved: he is Ryu, the ship's pilot for Science Ninja Team Gatchaman! This series was known more popularly in the U.S. as G-Force or Battle of the Planets.


It's nice to know I haven't completely lost my touch for pop culture, even stuff I'm not directly interested in.

Oh, and despite indications to the contrary, that is indeed an owl suit: Ryu's name in some English translations is Hooty.

So, what did you do while you ate lunch today?

*Actually, that title is a lie: the server here in the Green Bean Coffee Shop took a close look at the figure and texted her husband to ask him who it was.

Baby steps

Life in the 21st century seems to revolve around not jetpacks and undersea cities but rather social networking technologies. I was at the movies last night and during the previews it was suggested that not only should I follow the theater's Twitter and check out their Facebook, but also that I should log the event on Gowalla and do something else with another network I'd never even heard of and can't remember now. All this near-instantaneous revelation and communication has seemed to lead to the demise of (or at least a sea-change to) blogging as we knew it (a topic I mused about here). If nothing else, the social networking phenomenon nearly killed this site, as evidenced by my having written only four posts in the ten months since that rumination.

So imagine my surprise when Jim Wilson, the force behind the brilliant Let's Not Talk about Movies and one of the Stalwarts, ticked me off on his list of noteworthy bloggers, despite that overlong hiatus. His notice was like good whiskey: warming, but bracing as well. He talked of inspiration, and I guess his praise was close enough to that. This morning, I shuttered the ol' Facebook site and came back here to turn on the lights, open the windows, and pull the sheets off the furniture.

I'm not going to promise anything specific, but I imagine that this summer will allow me to exercise my writing muscles a little bit more than I have recently. I think we'll let the freak flag fly high, and talk about superheroes, roleplaying games, movies, and how science fiction hasn't been any good since Stanley Weinbaum died.

But first, I need to pass on the meme that Jim gifted me with. That'll be the next post.