So, thanks again to everyone who recommended heist movies and books. Over the last few weeks, I've watched Heist (David Mamet), The Great Train Robbery (Michael Crichton), The Italian Job (Marky Mark), Lady Killers (Obi Wan), Rififi, the three Firelfy heist episodes ("The Train Job," "Ariel," and "Trash"), and read Comeback (Richard Stark). In addition to Sneakers and Oceans 11 and sequels and Pink Panther and probably a few others I'd already seen. A lot of fun and entertaining stories there. And all of them dependent on stunning coincidence, absurd depictions of computer hacking, conveniently easy access to police uniforms and ID's and security passwords, cops who have to wait for shops to open up so they can use the phone, and likesuch.

My conclusion: Heists don't work and writers are just makin' shit up.

Real heists are almost always inside jobs. Except for art thefts. Those tend to depend on conveniently incompetent museum security. So, my advice: Steal from museums. Or pull the Brink's Job. But that's a lot of work.

I don't think I can stand to watch another heist movie at the moment, so I'm going to consider my homework done for now and get back to writing.

Oh! We're having an earthquake!

It's over. Still alive. Anyway, back to writing.

ETA: The earthquake was apparently out in Chino Hills. That's a fair distance from here. Hope all my LA peeps are okay. :-/

Golly, this week has flown by. Not sure what happened to it. Did manage to hit the gym twice, go to kung fu twice, and I'll be going to kung fu again today, so I feel that my physical conditioning requirements will have been met, at least. Yesterday's class was a lot of fun, too. I learned the rest of the moves for my belt level for long staff sparring counter set, which involves a lot of energetic thwacking, so that was good, sweaty fun.

Also managed to get out to the movies to see The Incredible Hulk. I never read Hulk comics -- just an annual that John Byrne drew -- but I was a huge fan of the TV show when I was a kid, and the movie managed to deliver big cinematic movie action while still capturing the spirit of the show. That's two good Marvel superhero movies in one summer, which is two more than I expected.

I dove head-first into the the revision of the novel I took to Blue Heaven, and am almost half-way through. I'm not trying to make everything perfect. Just trying to fix the biggest, most obvious flaws. Then I figure I'll send it to my agent and see if she thinks it'll fly.

So, more writing today, and kung fu, and housecleaning, because friends are coming to stay for the weekend, and there's the small matter of pride.

It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

On the whole, I liked Superman Returns. Those first two Superman movies were formative film experiences for me, but Bryan Singer's loving continuation of them does them honor. Part of what makes Superman tick is that he's not just an alien brought up as a human, but he's a god brought up as a humble man, and Brandon Routh captures this with grace and poignancy.

Kevin Spacey turned in a perfectly fine performance, but I do think the Luthor character has gotten stale. Frankly, the movie version never made much sense to me. He's kinda smart, he's greedy, he's mean and sarcastic, and he succeeds far beyond his capabilities. Never very interesting to me. Let's see Brainiac or Mogul or Mordru or someone really formidable. Bizarro am formidable.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Kandor, or red kryptonite, or Krypto the Superdog (or Streaky the Supercat, or Comet the Superhorse, or Beppo the Supermonkey). Maybe Superman might have been lent a hand by Nightwing and Flamebird, the superheroes of the shrunken city of Kandor. Or Jimmy Olsen could have adopted his sometime guise of Elastic Lad.

But, hey, no movie's perfect. And if Superman Returns is a box-office success, maybe in the next one they'll tell the story I really want to see (yeah, that's Sonny Bono sitting next to Batman):

( super graphic here )