DeLorenzo's Dugout

Traditionally, February 29th is Superman’s Birthday…At least, it’s been traditional since a DC Comics editor named E. Nelson Bridwell came up with the idea during the late 1960s (when I started buying Superman comics)…Superman and I have been friends since my early days, when the only thing my mother would let 2-year-old me watch was George Reeves in “The Adventures of Superman“…My friendship with the Man of Tomorrow continued with my very first comic book, Superman #198 – picture on this post…Followed closely by Captain America #100 (the actual first issue, continuing the numbering of Tales of Suspense, but that’s a story for another day)…Superman fandom took hold with me throughout my childhood, being cemented in 1976 when my father took me to New York City for the 1976 Superman-DC Comic Con, where I met Siegel & Shuster (creators of Superman), Julius Schwartz, Cary Bates, Neal Adams, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, and others who wrote and drew the adventures of the Man of Steel throughout the 1970s…I didn’t know it then but it was all preamble for the 1978 premiere of “Superman The Movie,” and the 40th anniversary of Superman…By 1988, the 50th Anniversary, I trekked solo to Cleveland for the Great Superman Exposition, where I met Noel Neill, Jack Larson, Kirk Alyn, Jerry Ordway, and others who helped bring Superman to life…(Cleveland was where Siegel & Shuster met and created the character in the mid-1930s)…In the summer of 1994 I traveled solo in a rented car from Chicago to Metropolis, Illinois to celebrate the small town that boasts itself as Superman’s Home (seven hours one way, seven hours back, and nothing but cornfields once you get outside the Second City)…Let’s just say me and Supes go way back…Anyone who visited my apartment in Norristown in the early 199os or my town house in Malvern between 1995 and 2002 knows that I have a ton of Superman memorabilia, and a ton of Superman comic books to boot…I still love the George Reeves show, got to meet Dean Cain a couple times (star of Lois & Clark) and met Brandon Routh once (Superman Returns), so other than George Reeves, Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill, I’ve had the good fortune to meet three of the true gentlemen who portrayed Superman on TV and in films (Kirk Alyn was the first Superman in the 1940s movie serials)…I was 2nd in line at the Eric Prince Movie Theatre on Route 1 between Lawrenceville and Princeton to see Superman The Movie in 1978 at its premiere, and only learned later in life that the kid who beat me to the front of the line was Bryan Singer (noted movie director of Superman Returns and a couple other hits)…I was upset with “Man of Steel” but in general like Henry Cavill, but I have misgivings about the upcoming “Batman v Superman“…But for the most part, aside from the last seven years of DC Comics mishandling of the actual Superman comic books, I remain…A loyal and loving member of the Supermen of America.  Happy Birthday to Superman, also known by some as Clark Kent, by others as Kal-El.  You are still tops in my book!  Until someone who knows what they are doing takes the helm of the Superman franchise like the late, unlamented Mort Weisinger once did, I’ll see you in the stands!

Lots of things I never dreamed I would watch on TV I now view regularly as a result of my wife, Mrs. DeLorenzo’s Dugout, and her influence…For instance, as I write, we are watching the Westminster Dog Show…I have never owned a dog…I was even afraid of them until my late 30s…But for some reason Mrs. D.D. loves dogs, and therefore, we love to watch the dog shows on TV…Earlier today we learned we had a serious Comcast Xfinity Cable Outage because…Mrs. D. D. was in the middle of watching the Law & Order marathon on TNT when the channel went dark…Another program I never, ever watched until I met her…Of course, there are shows that she never watched that I “brought to our marriage”….What shows, you ask?….Green Acres…Beverly Hillbillies…The Rockford Files…Wonder Woman…The Adventures of Superman…Star Trek (and all iterations)…There are shows that have come and gone since we met that both of us enjoyed, like The Unit and Human Target and Boston Legal, and shows that only one of us enjoy…For her, Project Runway, Top Chef, Real Housewives…For me, The Blacklist, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter...And any movie or TV show with either William Shatner or James Spader in it, or an old Hawaii Five-O or Mission: Impossible…A lot of MeTV is consumed at our humble home, as well as Johnny Carson reruns on Antenna TV…At the end of a three-day-weekend in which we haven’t left the house much due to the “Polar Vortex” and today’s snow storm, TV is the last battleground!…So, until True Detective Season Two gets the long-overdue love we both believe it deserves, I’ll see you in the stands!

I’ve been promising for a long time to return to writing DeLorenzo’s Dugout, so if it took until January 12, 2015 to get started again, so be it!  Welcome to DeLorenzo’s Dugout, which started in the fall of 1995 as an e-mail newsletter written by me, Jim DeLorenzo, and morphed into an AOL-hosted website in 1996, then into a full-blown multi-page website from 1997 through 2000-something, migrated to a Google blog in the mid-2000s, and was in hibernation for the past couple years until I could get my act back together.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge since my last DeLorenzo’s Dugout posting, which I believe may have been in the aftermath of the “great Philadelphia earthquake” of August 2011!  Here’s a link to the previous DeLorenzo’s Dugout blog.  Welcome back to some old friends, and hello to some new friends!  I’ll see you in the stands!