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 )