40

This is the 40th day of my sabbatical. I turned 40 a few years back (3) and had anticipated it being a very traumatic event. Somehow it wasn't. I had a big party, which is very unusual for me, and invited lots of people. It was the last week of classes and I'd also just received tenure, so I pretended that was the purpose of the party so that no one would bring presents, but the cat was out of the bag when the cake came out. I hired one of my grad students to document it on super-8 film, I've not done anything with that film yet but am proposing a screening for this fall. I should have been working on the pitch today but instead I watched the late 70s cartoon series: Superfriends: the Legendary Superpowers Show with William for half the afternoon. Some great commentary tracks, more honest than previous seasons, in which the old writers and the DC historian point out the missing characters, limitations of movement due to the requirement that all movement in Hanna/Barbara cartoons is limited to left and right, the influence of Jack Kirby onto DC in the 70s with the Darkseid character, and the influence of Marvel onto DC shown through the introduction of the Firestorm character and his teen angst. Perhaps my mid-life crisis is reverting back to being 6 rather than 16 and enjoying all the shows I was too old and cynical for when I was a teenager.