Pocket Protector

My family can’t seem to not have front-row seats to natural disasters this year.

My sister, Mom and Dad endured the smoke-strangled skies of July’s 18,000-acre Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs.

Now, not to be left out it would seem, my little brother watched oceans rise and cloudbursts fall while winds uprooted trees and whole East Coast towns went the way of Atlantis.

He lives in New York City, one of many metropolises besieged by a monster of a Storm named Sandy, which made landfall Monday.

The ordeal terrified my mom. I’ve been a little worried myself. I’ve always thought of my brother, Blake, as a resourceful dude, a survivor. But the scenes I’m seeing on the news look like they’re straight out of “The Day After Tomorrow.” Cars float in pools, Micro-Machines-in-the-bathtub-style. Thick, muscular trees that have to have been there since the War of 1812 got pulled up like weeds. Whole towns are submerged in water.

It sounds like Blake rode out the worst of it. He stayed in an apartment with friends over on 66th Street and Central Park West. It’s the same building “Ghostbusters” was filmed in. The group stayed inside, drank wine, ate and watched movies.

“We’re really lucky to be where we are,” he says. “This apartment building is really, really well-designed. There’s no damage to it.”

Outside is different. He can see the crane over on 57th Street that snapped and is dangling 1,000 feet up. There are banners wrapped around poles. CNN’s Columbus Circle sign went out during the night. The subway platform at 145th that Blake uses frequently is completely underwater.

“There’s a huge tree that I can see right now that’s completely snapped and gone,” he says.

Still, he slept through the night. He wasn’t ever scared, it seems.

“I just don’t have the perspective for natural disasters because I was not raised in a state where they occurred,” he says. “Growing up we didn’t have any sort of comprehension or education about it. Yeah, there were tornadoes, but we never saw them. Yeah, there were lightning storms, but they didn’t do anything.”

He’s absolutely right. But for a big fire or two – ones that are way out in the woods – Colorado doesn’t have an apocalyptic feel to it.

But there is a similarity between New York City and Colorado, Oregon even. Call it instinctual, but people just really seem to know it’s time to step up and help strangers out when nature or God (or both, if you wish) decides to pull the trigger. Blake’s one of them. He’s going out to volunteer today, breaking this 48-hour Cabin Fever bug he’s been fighting.

I was proud when he told me that. I’m sure if I told him that he’d just say “Whatever” and brush it off like it was no big deal, because it wouldn’t be to him. He’s like that when it comes to these things. I’d like to think most people are.

If you want to help, but don’t have the means to make the 3,000-mile trip, the American Red Cross has a spot on their website where you can make donations. Check it out. I’m heading there when I finish this.

Blake’s probably just a few minutes from going outside. If it’s still anything like he described it to me, it’s a cloudy, wet day, but you can see the sun.

“It’s beautiful out,” he says. “It looks like a normal day again.”

The Daily Planet.

It’s a fictional media outlet that’s embedded in American culture. It’s the New York Times (or Wall Street Journal, depending which publication you prefer) of the DC Comics universe, or DCU if you speak Nerdanese.

Its star reporters: a vibrant, strong-willed lady named Lois Lane and a visitor from another world who can fly and see through walls disguised as a mild-mannered wordsmith.

Well, until this week.

Clark Kent, Superman’s eyeglassed and stuttering alter ego, departed from the Daily Planet this week. He didn’t hang up the notebook and pen, but he did hang up the editorial process that puts several sets of eyes on every story to make sure it’s balanced, credible, etc.

Supes is a blogger now.

Superman no. 13, part of DCU’s New 52 reboot broke the news.

The timing on this couldn’t be weirder.

I’ll explain.

I recently canceled my subscriptions for both Superman titles. Action Comics, penned by Grant Morrison, tells tales of Clark’s early days as the Man of Steel. The regular Superman title tells of his later years. That’s the title where he went rogue as a journalist.

The reboots were underwhelming, but I stuck with them. I think comics readers want to like their characters, no matter how terrible the story arcs become at times. They stick with them. They’re loyal. So it went with Superman and me.

Then one day I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’d been the chump blinded by love for a spouse who had just gone sour in recent years. I did it because of our history, because of memories of being 10 and getting my first treasury of vintage Superman comics from my dad and being BLOWN AWAY by the Richard Donner movie.

I just wasn’t that into him anymore. His stories had just gotten weird, even boring in some cases. This character I idealized wasn’t living up to expectations, so I decided to focus on the times he exceeded them: stories like “Birthright”, “Red Son”, and “Earth One.” Ones where I closed the book after finishing and thought, “Now that was Superman.”

I’m narrow-minded when it comes to ol’ Faster Than A Speeding Bullet. It’s the same way I approach the ‘Alien’ movies. In my mind, the story ends after the second one. All the other weirdsmobile crap, including the recently disappointing ‘Prometheus’ prequel is just a bad dream.

And right after I canceled the books, this drastic identity shift happened. C.K. decided to join the squad claiming to be this edgy alternative to the “lamestream media” I’m part of. You know, the kind with editors and all sides of the story.

Supes, you’ve just changed so much.

But maybe you’ll come back someday. Maybe you’ll be in some organic coffee shop scratching your beard and adjusting your scarf while writing about how contrails are poisoning some rare species of endangered bird that would mean blah blah and blah blah. Maybe you’ll just stop, shut your laptop, and run for the nearest phone booth where you shed your hemp shirt and fair trade jeans before changing back in to a tie and slacks.

We’ll see. Point is, I miss you, buddy. I’ll always be here for you.

XOXO.

I have to imagine sci-fi fans feel like they’re trapped in a Petri dish of unoriginality at times.

And when I refer to sci-fi fans, I’m not talking about Star Wars nerds. No. I’m talking about the hard-boiled folks, the ones raised on Asimov and Bradbury who follow the goings-on of science fact just as closely. These are the guys who will sit you down and lecture you on how Arthur C. Clarke imagined satellites before they were a reality, who can quote ‘Blade Runner’ line for line.

My dad’s one of these types. Where comics are my thing, real-deal sci-fi is his. He digs ingenuity, stories and concepts that don’t look or sound familiar but still include familiar elements like space, time, physics, etc.; tough to find in the money-hungry world of big budget film studios that prefer sequels over substance.

Tough, not impossible. Sometimes people like my dad get bread crumbs thrown to them, little science-y tidbits of nourishment that fool them into thinking creativity and story are still royalty when it comes to modern cinematic storytelling. The surprise 2009 hit “District 9,” about an alien race trapped and contained in modern-day Johannesburg, was one such morsel.

“Looper,” I think, is another. I saw it with friends over the weekend. We were “fortunate” to sit next to a young lady who narrated the entire film. Guy gets shot, she says, “Oh my God, that guy just got shot.” Someone does something brave that puts their life on the line, she says, “Yeah, wow, self-sacrifice.” Trailer for Bin Laden movie “Zero Dark Thirty” concludes, her inner tinfoil hat wearer kicks in with, “That is such bull___, he was dead a long time ago.”

Fifty-fifty shot her significant other broke it off after the credits started rolling. No joke, he looked like he wanted to die that whole two hours.

But shrieking harpy aside, I genuinely enjoyed the film. It’s a “in-the-not-too-distant-future” type-tale, but a hip, intriguing one. It’s about Joe, an assassin who has unusual targets: people sent back from the past because they’ve pissed off this person or that person.

They ride the Rolex, Joe blows ‘em away, gets paid, and disposes of the bodies in a furnace. Like they never existed. Everything’s going great until his future self pops up as his next target.

Hmmmmm.

It’s a nifty premise to be sure, one that comes with some pretty solid performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. The action scenes are HOT: explosions, telekinesis, gunslinging, everything the 14-year-old me could want. I did have reservations about the storytelling methodology. Director/writer Rian Johnson used A LOT of voice over, and while I’m not anti-voice over, it’s easy to get excessive with it. Remember that middle school writing instruction of show, don’t tell? It applies in screenwriting the most, as you’re telling a visual story.

Other than that though, definitely recommending it to Dad. He will, no doubt, have some philosophical/academic response to it that’ll make me think too hard and lose sleep.

That seems to be the way of things. Thanks in advance, Dad.

Until recently, I knew virtually nothing about President James A. Garfield.

I knew his name and that he’d been shot a few months into his presidency. I have vague memories of seeing a dimly-lit wax museum re-creation of the event, maybe in Washington, D.C. Beyond that, my knowledge was nonexistent.

Enter former National Geographic editor Candice Millard and her second book, “Destiny of the Republic,” released September 2011. I purchased it, admittedly, in part for the cover. It has Garfield’s picture on the front, a sepia tone profile with a magnificent beard and grand hat that give off a stoic, Norse vibe. He looks utterly serious, an 1880s version of Chuck Norris.

The time period the book is set in hooked me further. The 50 years between the U.S. Civil War’s end and World War I is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting periods in U.S. history. It makes me think of smoke and iron; of archaic, lightning-powered technology in the hands of sorcerers like Tesla; of Colt six shooters, Pinkerton detectives, telegraphs and coal-powered locomotives.

I’d read Tesla’s biography. I’d read “Devil in the White City” and “Thunderstruck.” I’d read “American Lightning.” “Destiny” was new to me. I snatched it right up.

Great decision.

Millard’s key strength – among many – is imparting a sizable amount of information effectively and concisely. At just over 300 pages, the book isn’t just about an assassination attempt; it’s about a volatile, corrupt political climate, a country still enduring the outcomes of a brutal Civil War, a people’s primitive – albeit evolving – understanding of medicine, germs and human anatomy, and the lasting effects of not caring for the mentally ill. It’s also about how drastically choices affect outcomes. It is a book of enormous topics that is succinct in its presentation, and it’s beautifully done.

So in the spirit of succinctness, I’ll end here, only to say it has become the best non-fiction book I’ve ever opened. And rarely closed.

Been a bit since we’ve posted anything here at the Pocket Protector’s zombie-impregnable bunker. This will make for a bit of a lengthy post now, as there’s a lot going on in our bespectacled, suspendered world.

So have a seat. We have a three-course meal ready.

We’ll start with an appetizer to whet those closeted nerd appetites.

Focus Features’ zombie kid flick ‘Paranorman’ is A-grade excellent, and for those keeping a watchful eye for approaching undead clans here at the bunker, that’s saying a lot.

Animators Chris Butler and Sam Fell, who also worked on claymation hits like ‘Coraline,’ tell a really fun and visually interesting story. It’s about a boy who can see and converse with ghosts and gets caught in the crossfire of a raise-the-dead prophecy that threatens to overrun his town. Think ‘Sixth Sense’ meets ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ but for 10-year-olds. And dorks here at the bunker.

Now for the main course. Comics, comics, comics.

My MY there has been a lot going on in this corner. Publisher Marvel Comics will be making a lot of changes to its universe soon. Marvel NOW will take beloved characters like Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man back to no. 1 issues with new storylines and looks that will follow the numerous outcomes of the ongoing Avengers VS X-Men story arc. While this has been referred to as a reboot like DC Entertainment’s recent New 52 launch, editors say it’s quite a bit different.

Dynamic duo Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo – writer and artist respectively for ‘Batman’ – are bringing the Joker back out of the shadows. When we last saw the Clown Prince of Crime, he’d purposefully cut his own face off in the New 52′s Detective Comics No. 1, then disappeared. Now he’s back, Leatherface-style. If Snyder’s Tweets have even a degree of truth to them, it’s going to be one hell of a scary arc.

In the words of Heath Ledger’s ‘Dark Knight’ Joker: “People will die.”

Speaking of Snyder, the Twitterverse buzzed for a few hours this weekend during a Tweet feud Snyder was part of. Comics icon Rob Liefield, who recently announced he’d be stepping down from his duties as artist/writer on DC’s Hawkman, Grifter and Deathstroke titles, went after Snyder, claiming the Batman writer had berated him for lashing out at DC after he announced he was quitting.

“Excuse me if I don’t marvel at your amazing abilities to write Batman. Piss off,” Liefield said at one point in their jab match.

Snyder fired right back: “I’ll give you credit, Rob. Batman might sell in spite of me and Greg Capullo as you say, but Deathstroke and Hawkman failed because of you.”

Etc.

Snyder later apologized for his part in the digital boxing match. Liefield also went off on DC, Marvel and Marvel vice president Tom Brevoort, criticizing his weight.

We here at the bunker bid you good astonished riddance, Mr. Liefield. You keep burning bridges at this rate, you’re eventually going to set yourself on fire.

But on the other end, another comics departure we’re quite sad about is Ed Brubaker, Captain America scribe of eight years and author of numerous well-penned crime comics. Brubaker announced on Twitter he was “done doing superhero books for awhile,” choosing instead to focus on more independent works. If his wildly popular horror/noir “Fatale” comic is an indicator of how that will go, we’re not worried at all. Really, we’ll just miss his voice in the Cap comics. He made a historically goofy character grounded, serious and relevant in the 21st century, and that’s commendable.

Finally, artist/writer Jeff Lemire banked another slam dunk for a stand alone graphic novel with “The Underwater Welder.” It’s a dark, surprisingly moving tale about a Canadian offshore rig welder named Jack, a married man with a son on the way who is on a subconscious quest to find his father, presumed dead after slipping into the ocean’s cold waters when Jack was 10. I’ve admired Lemire’s talent as a storyteller and artist for over a year now, and his newest story shows he’s nowhere close to being out of truly unique ideas.

For dessert, it’s important you know the bunker is in full-fledged watercolor painting overload. I tried it on a whim a couple months back, and I haven’t stopped. I shared a couple of them below. The deer/boy is Gus, from “Sweet Tooth,” yet another amazing story by Mr. Lemire.

End transmission.

“‘I’m significant!’….screamed the dust speck.” – Calvin from ‘Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Curiosity has landed, and that’s not a metaphor.

It’s literal, and it’s a cause for celebration, as this real-life Michael Bay-esque montage shows:

The successful landing of the Mars rover this week seems like the beginning of a science fiction story. Humans shoot device into space to land on Mars. It’s tasked with finding alien life. You can fill in the rest confidently, I assume. Most of you have seen “Independence Day” or “Transformers” or read a story or two by the late Ray Bradbury.

But while those films are tales of fiction, a 9-month voyage through space followed by a 13,000 to 0 mile-per-hour descent onto the Martian surface is now a tale of fact.

Sidenote: How cool is it that we get to say stuff like “descent onto the Martian surface” now and not be talking exclusively about a Star Trek episode?

The Curiosity rover will reside on the planet for two years, looking for evidence that the planet could have supported life at one time. That and other Bill-Nye-the-Science-Guy stuff like timelines on atmospheric processes over billions of years. It’ll utilize high-grade HD cameras, lasers and spectrometers to amass that data.

I have to wonder if Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov are watching from a distance and grinning; maybe nudging each other and saying “See? Told ya so.”

It’s summer of 2005 and I’m with my sister in a movie theater, grinning.

“Batman Begins,” the first film in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham Trilogy, is about 15 seconds from ending. James Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, is on the Gotham Police station’s rooftop with the Dark Knight. He’s just given him the calling card of the Joker, a setup for the next movie, the famed “Dark Knight.”

“I never said thank you,” Gordon says.

Batman turns: “And you’ll never have to,” he says. Then he jumps off the building and sails into the night, black cape propelling him.

“That was AWESOME,” I say. Nah, I shriek it. Shrieked. My sister laughs at me.

Worth it. I’ve just watched something pretty special, and I need to tell the world.

Flash forward seven years. I’m married now, and my sister’s about to be. I awake at 5:15 a.m. Work’s in an hour and a half. I pick up my phone to look at the overnight box office numbers from “Dark Knight Rises” midnight premieres across the country. I just know it’s going to be mind blowing, that records are…

And like that, none of that matters as the AP news feed on my phone opens up. Angry headlines and photos glare back at me and transport me to Aurora, Colo., where a particularly cowardly and disturbed individual ambushed a theater full of Bat fans like me and killed 12 of them, injured nearly 60 others. It’s an hour or so from Colorado Springs, where I grew up, and less than a half hour from Littleton, where Columbine High School is.

Suddenly I’m hurting for the families of a dozen strangers I’ve never met. I spend the day that way. The next day, too. Then it’s Sunday and my wife, my buddy Max and my sister-in-law and her fiance’ head to our own screening. It’s great fun, and in somewhat of a full-circle moment, I say, “Hawwww that was awesome” and draw some pitiful laughs a second time.

And sitting down to write about it, I can’t bring myself to, beyond telling you that it’s great and you should see it.

I wanted to write about how great the film ended up being. I wanted to claim it as “my” trilogy. I wanted to gush about director Christopher Nolan and how he redefined comic book movies. I wanted to talk about how frightening I thought Bane was and how Anne Hathaway IS Catwoman, about the movie’s handful of flaws and how…well, I wanted a soapbox.

I wanted to talk for hours.

Instead, I’m left wanting justice for so many families and friends of victims slain by the epitome of a demented individual, of a monster, someone Batman would have fought and not required any thanks for.

Beyond that, there’s nothing else to say.

Opinions.

They’re a tricky, evolving concept, and a lot of times, they lead to fights. Not the constructive kind. The irrational, knee-jerk kind.

And most of the time, they’re over something dumb; like comic book movies.

“The Dark Knight Rises,” director Christopher Nolan’s final chapter in his purposefully-grounded Gotham Trilogy, opens tomorrow. Not that anyone who trolls the Internet – professionally or on a volunteer basis – would know any differently. Many film critics have put forth their thoughts on the movie. Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review aggregate site, posts these reviews and allows users to give their own feedback. The site also gives the movie an overall percentage score based on how many good and bad reviews the film has received.

“Rises” reviews started coming in Monday. They’re still coming in. As I write this, 86 percent or so of the reviews have been positive. What you won’t see on the reviews is the usual reader feedback.

There’s a reason. Because, apparently, a lot of Batman fanboys are escaped mental patients that twitch a lot and see fanged clowns in closets.

Don’t believe me? How do you explain their death threats against critics who didn’t like the movie?

Yup.

Death. Threats. Not just the usual “You’re an idiot” fanfare that tough guy Internet trolls are famous for; requests that the person – yes, movie critics are people…with families and all that – get hit by a bus, maybe purchase a gun and shoot themselves.

Bravo, Internet.

The editors of Rotten Tomatoes responded maturely by disabling the ability to comment and wrote a candid essay on the whole ridiculous matter. They summed it up nicely: “Don’t be a dick.”

On some level, Bat freaks, I feel for you. The first two films – notably “The Dark Knight” – were important to a lot of people, including me. They proved comic book movies could be elevated beyond the cartoon-y stereotypes those who don’t migrate to comic shops weekly can’t see past. They wrestled with big themes like evil, power, fear and truth. To see someone trash the final chapter of such a grand arc – even though we haven’t seen it yet – is, admittedly, a little heartbreaking.

So sulk for a few minutes. Drink some coffee. Then feel better. Remember that opinions are simply that, opinions. They differ. You’re nerds. You should know that. You nitpick everything related to your fictional heroes. If it’s not exactly right, you bitch about it. I should know. I’m one of you. I, too, invest entirely too much energy in these trivial things, and when someone challenges their value, yeah, it’s a bummer.

But if someone doesn’t like your trivial thing, maybe it’s something as simple as it doesn’t speak to them. Nolan’s first two movies spoke to me on a level Dickens speaks to English teachers. If people don’t feel that same connection or just flat-out don’t like it, meh.

It’s not up to the nerds of the world to dictate what others like with threats. It’s up to us to mumble quietly under our breath about it, push up our glasses, and get back to our comics.

Batman would approve.

The city I grew up in is burning.

They’re calling it the Waldo Canyon Fire. Waldo Canyon is northwest of Colorado Springs, nestled somewhere between Blodgett Peak and  Pikes Peak. Both mountains offer a pleasant backdrop to the city residents nestled beneath them.

The fire started as scenery, too. It smoldered and grew in the canyon, shot a plume of smoke into the sky that, while worrisome, was not an immediate cause for alarm. It’s summer. It’s fire season. It’s Colorado.

Smoke happens.

Then it started growing. One-thousand acres. Two-thousand. Five-thousand.

Evacuations started, went from Garden of the Gods all the way up to the Air Force Academy. I started to get a grasp of the situation via Facebook and the Gazette, my hometown newspaper. It was serious.

On Tuesday, it went from serious to scary. The blaze shot into nearby Queen’s Canyon. High winds – 60 miles an hour or so – turned it into a slow motion explosion that hopped two containment lines and rolled down the tree-dotted hills into Flying W Ranch, an Old West educational/entertainment/dining resort I have fond childhood memories of, mostly how quickly the tin coffee cups got third-degree-burn hot in about two seconds.

It’s gone now.

The Mountain Shadows area was next. I watched a minute or two of the footage last night as houses in the area ignited. The neighborhood’s a few miles away from Peregrine. I grew up in Peregrine. 8165 Routt Court. My elementary school is less than a mile away.

I hiked nearby Blodgett Peak with my dad and brother, with my friends the day after our last day of high school. We ate sandwiches on the top and used rocks for pillows.

The surrounding wilderness is an oversized torch now.

As I write this, the fire’s just up the road from Routt Court. Over 32,000 have been evacuated. The blaze has grown to a shocking 15,000+ acres.

Thankfully, my parents and sister live at opposite ends of town now. They have to endure smoke, but beyond that, they’re fine.

Everyone keeps saying this feels like a dream. It felt like a dream yesterday. Today it feels like something else. I couldn’t tell you what exactly. A friend of mine is feeding me updates in real time via Facebook. I’m trying not to imagine what 8165 Routt Court looks like on fire.

I’m going to ask you a favor. I’m going to ask because Superman’s not going to suddenly burst from the clouds and extinguish this fire with a super sneeze. Miracles happen, I’ll grant you that, but just waiting for them is silly.

So here we go, my slacktivist contribution to this whole mess:

Click here and scan this list for ways you can help evacuees out. Most of the service organizations are based in Colorado, yes, but there are phone numbers, addresses, ways you can donate. I can’t imagine leaving my home and coming back to nothing.

I’ll leave you with this. It’s a Facebook comment from my mom. Hopefully it’ll inspire you to actually take a peek, make a call:

“This morning, they announced that they were handing out teddy bears at the Red Cross shelter near me (Cheyenne Mountain H. S), so I packed up three bags of bears and headed down there. I didn’t get through the parking lot before one bag was gone, but when I got inside, I noticed a little girl sitting on her mom’s lap and crying inside the medical tent. I pulled Snuggle bear out, and she reached out for it, hugged it, and stopped crying.”

Thank you.

I can’t claim to be a genuine Ray Bradbury fan.

Fans obsess. Fans follow what they’re fans of with ferocity. Fans claim to know everything about said topic/person/place/book/movie/band.

I’m a fan of Christopher Nolan films, of comics by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire, of anything Dennis Lehane has ever written.

Confession: I’ve read one Ray Bradbury book. “Fahrenheit 451″, the one everyone’s read, the story that speaks about a dystopian future where books are illegal. I read it freshman year of high school. I liked it.

Still, I’m not a fan.

Call me a quiet admirer; of one who has now departed this world. Bradbury, 91, passed away Tuesday night.

So if I’m not a genuine fan, why take the time to write about him for a few minutes? I had to think about this for a second. Maintaining a blog is pretty far down on the daily laundry list for a journalist, especially one that has to do with a very specific audience, and I want to write about topics that not only have to do with the theme of general nerd-ism, but that interest me deeply.

When it comes to writing about Bradbury, it’s simple: I admire how prolifically he wrote. I checked out his bibliography of works on Wikipedia. It’s extensive, dozens of short story collections, novels, plays, screenplays, essays and non-fiction. It’s the kind of list any fiction writer, I’d hope, would be proud of.

I wonder if Bradbury was, though. I wonder if it just was never enough. That seems to be the way with successful authors. It’s like this plug on a dam gets pulled on a reservoir full of ink that spills words across thousands of pages, never stops.

So while I won’t talk about the dozens of things I could talk about regarding this man, I’ll just say I admired his passion for the craft of sci-fi and fantasy writing. Bradbury wove worlds, lots of them, and he obviously had fun doing it. You’d be hard-pressed to find a successful fantasy, horror, or sci-fi author – maybe just fiction in general – that wasn’t inspired by Bradbury’s tales.

Maybe some of his work ethic rubbed off on them, too. As he said, “I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.”

Well said, Mr. Bradbury. Rest in peace.