What more does one need? Great art, incredibly fun storylines, some more of them by-now-trademark great one-line gags and one hell of a twist in the dangerously epic rivarly between the Goon and the Zombie Preacher. Not to mention a fabulously demented homage to the jungle jim scene from The Birds.

Seriously, Eric Powell’s gonna have lots of my money if he can keep this up.

Maybe it was the far-too-short page count afforded each fairly momentous event in this collection, maybe all the build-up and lack of follow-through had taken its toll (I mean, what was up with Angstrom Levy? whatta jip!), but I only half-heartedly finished this one.

I still really wanted to finish it, so it was better than bad. But not great. Need more great.

Time for more Science Dog!

I thought the whole Underworld premise had so much potential that wasn’t realized. Maybe it was the different moods I was in when I saw them, but I found the sequel to be better than the original—not great, but not very horrible. The action was much more fluid and interesting, the story wasn’t as utterly ridiculous as in the original, naked Kate Beckinsale is always good…

Still, when you have to figure out whether you liked a movie or not, you probably didn’t like it all that much. Which is a shame—I really did want to like the Underworld movies.

Goldstar is by far the better of the two most successful Israeli beers (the other being Maccabbee, previously the main competitor and now produced by the same company.) It’s a dark, Munich-style lager, rather amber in color with some strong flavor to hold on to.

Mind you, neither Israeli beer ranks alongside the highest quality beers known to man. It may seem unfair to compare mass-produced beers with microbrews but honestly every beer in Israel is produced on a microbrew scale when compared to those abroad. Personally, my dad and I (both Israeli) agree that the U.S. Pacific Northwest area produces some of the best beers in the world, bar none (Mac n’ Jack’s African Amber, anyone?) Still, when out drinking in Israel, a half-liter of Goldstar will do quite nicely if nothing better is on tap.

One of my favorite beers in the world. Hell, most likely my top favorite. One reason I intend to live out my days in Seattle is that pretty much any place you go to around here serves it.

I’ve been around. I’ve tasted German, Italian, English, French, Czech, Belgian, Israeli, Japanese and of course American and Canadian beers, doing my best to avoid the piss-poor mass-market crap in search of high-quality microbrews, though still taking a hit of PBR or such in search of a decent factory beer. I’m telling you the Pacific Northwest makes many of the world’s best beers. And African Amber is the best of those.

Indeed the last time I consume this—I’m having the last of a ten-pack I brought over from a no-longer-recent visit to Israel. Since no return trip is imminent, I dread having to go without mekupelet at hand.

I shall savor each and every crumb. Roll the chocolate on my tongue, never biting. This will be the most obscenely prolonged consumption, a love affair with cocoa and milk powder.

Sigh. Goodbye, my sweet. Until I come upon some of your sisters.

The grandfather of a good friend of mine invented Mekupelet. Not sure if he actually invented the method of making chocolate sheet crumbles, which is what this is (as is Cadbury Flake), but this particular candy goes in the books under his name (well, did, until his company, “Lieber”, was bought out by the competition and the candy was somewhat re-branded.)

Anyway. Oh, the genius. Nothing but chocolate here, thin sheets rolled-up over and over to produce a tube of flaky, crumbly chocky. Munch it as is or dip in warm milk to make hot chocolate (literally!), smash it up to top over ice cream… it’s a wonderfully useful candy.

And once white chocolate and dark chocolate came out, even non-milk chocolate lovers have no excuse (I’m talking to you, dad.)

I’ll get in trouble for opening this way but it must be said:

Tim Tams are crap as a snack. Or candy, cookies, biscuits, wafers… whatever you call ‘em. Straight out of the box, pop ‘em in your mouth, crunch crunch crunch, they’re not much to write home about. Got nothing on Twix, about on par with the chemical-after-tastey Kit Kat. Maybe Aussies love ‘em so much cuz they’ve grown up on ‘em, maybe North Americans who mostly know Hershey’s think it’s something special, but I’m from a country where good chocolates abound, so I have no use for them as munchies.

BUT!

Nibble off two opposing corners, dip in hot coffee or cocoa, slurp some liquid up until it touches your lips and then blammo! you’ve got the best gooey chocolate mess in the world to suck up and thrill your mouth. A good cappuccino and some of thems classic darks or double coats… I can see why some call it the Tim Tam Orgasm.

I’ve stopped drinking coffee regularly several years ago. But I still have a cup every then and again just for the sake of slamming a Tim Tam or two. or ten. In fact, I’m gonna go do that right now.

Tons of flashy effects, cool clothes, lovely old buildings… but surprisingly little in the way of story or character development. The basic premise is really good but the end result is an overly glossy actioner rather than a true monster flick. I’m loathe to say it but even Van Helsing was better. Van bloody bastard Helsing.

Maybe I’m expecting too much of my dim-witted entertainment lately. Maybe I really crave vampire horror but instead feed my brain vampire action.

(I feel the same way about most zombie flicks lately—far too little brains in them. Literally and figuratively. Hell, most horror genre stuff is becoming mindless action gorefests now. Where are the days of Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street… I’ll even take Event Horizon. I’m that desperate.)

But I digress.

Of course, I still intend to watch the sequel. Might as well kill another couple of hours hoping for one very cool sequence (which, disappointingly, this movie barely had. People, seriously—the slow-motion “ooh, ooh, this shot is soooooo kewl” overabundance only makes your undercompetent filmmaking more apparent. Hell, even as pure eye-candy this was sorely lacking.)

• stop reading now if you’re anti-spoilers, as i tend to casually reveal plot points. you’ve been warned. *

At 4 issues, the shortest Fables collection yet (albeit with a double-length 50th issue) manages to tell pretty much one story – Bigby coming back for Snow (you knew it was gonna happen.) It does it in a well-told roundaboutish way, certainly, but overall this was the first collection that didn’t leave me utterly breathless. In fact, the wedding itself was far too old-fashioned and actually seemed more out-of-character than thrillingly romantic. Snow would never agree to obey any man (well, at least not after the Charming days.)

The missing cub being with Bigby for so long was also strangely done—a cub who is so blithely aware of his father’s indiscretions? There was something just a little bit too yikes about that. I kept picturing the previous months at the cabin, with a young cub wondering why daddy won’t let him talk to the pretty lady or anyone else, and why he wasn’t doing lovey stuff with mommy…

Maybe I’m too hard on this series. After all, it’s meant to be an old-fashioned fairytale mashed up into today’s reality. But I still feel it has never misstepped quite as badly as this before.

And as an Israeli, don’t even get me started on the hard-line view of Israel that DC/Vertigo comics (first Y: the Last Man, now Fables) have been showing lately. While mostly in favor of the country and its people, we’re all apparently ultra-tough commandos with hawkish politics. It’s borderline stereotyping. Hell, it’s Israel as a tough little superhero—not altogether unflattering but somewhat ignorant of reality.

Still, with many great tales past and future, there’s plenty to love in Fables, and this volume. Not to mention a naked Cinderella. There’s always a chuckle to be had at a clever twist of a classic character or story.