Maybe May
May thinks he’s pretty special (Oh yes. Don’t be misled. May is male, no matter what he says or how many dresses he wears). May is the only month that begins and ends on the same day of the week in any year.
And I for one, am sick of hearing about it. Every time there’s a party where the months get together it’s only matter of minutes before May starts asking what day of the week the other months started on. Poor old February always gets caught out. Knowing she sometimes has 29 days, she thinks one year she’ll start on the same day as May. But no. She’s lost a lot of money betting with May on that.
The other thing May gets all uppity about is his birthstone. “What’s your birthstone again, December?” he’ll say. “Oh yeah. That’s right. Zircon. What’s the current price for a zircon? What’s that? Oh. $40 a carat. Wow. That’s really something. I guess if you got about 1600 of them you could trade it for one of my birthstones - the emerald. Assuming anyone who had an emerald wanted a zircon.”
And don’t even get May started on what Greek god the months are named after. All you’ll hear for the next hour is about Maia the goddess of fertility. To hear May tell it, you’d think nobody conceived babies any other month (and don’t even bother trying to tell him that fertility doesn’t just mean people having babies).
All in all, May is petty, vindictive, untrustworthy but has a terrific singing voice so, all is forgiven.
I didn’t see any movies in May (the films I wanted to see at the Astor clashed with other commitments) but I read 22 books and 26 comic collections.
Along with 11 more Dr Seuss books (I’ve only a few more to go now) and 3 more Jim Thompson books (including a tie-in novel for the TV series ‘Ironside’ that is far grittier than I remember the series ever being), my favourites in May included
Paradoxical Undressing by Kristen Hirsch (I haven’t heard any of her music but her story is fascinating) and
Dreams and Nightmares by Bob McCabe (his telling of the making of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brothers Grimm’ - I wonder if Terry Gilliam will ever make a movie that isn’t a struggle to finish?)
My least favourite was, unfortunately, ‘Hail Hail, Euphoria’ by Roy Blount. Admittedly, he says the book is a text version of what he hoped a DVD commentary for the Marx Brothers film ‘Duck Soup’ would have been but, I hope the commentary would have stayed more on topic and revealed things the casual Marx fan wouldn’t have known.
I read the rest of the pre-New 52 Supergirl and, whilst there were some good stories, it was ultimately a disappointing run. So my favourites were
‘Locke & Key Volume 1’ (loaned to me by my soon-to-be-Comic-Con-buddy Michelle. It’s engaging and scary. Not an easy combination);
‘Red Rascal’s War’ (the latest Doonesbury collection which just keeps getting richer and richer.) and
‘Batman: The Black Casebook’ (all of those weird and wonderful 1950’s Batman stories that Grant Morrison then tries to justify in his run. Boy, I wish comics were still this much fun).
June soon.