The Middle of the Dark

Now broadcasting at The Piss Jitters .

I remember very vividly the week I spent in Belfast. It changed my head. I knew my family came from Ireland, knew of the Troubles, but not until a few weeks before I left, I didn't know my family came specifically from the north, and until I got there, I had no real idea of the reality there. The division of Belfast - material, spiritual - splits my head still. One thing that stood out to me most was a tour we took of the Catholic/Protestant neighborhoods - streets like Shankhill divided like some contested border - and the tour guide putting the difficulty down primarily to the relative poverty of the area. Up the road near Queens, the realtive prosperity of that part of town saw a healthier, less hostile environment. Indeed, the Celtic Tiger gave all Ireland a reason to look forward and not behind; the economy exploded, and with each year, it seemed the Troubles were finally over. Maybe not. Ireland's economy, like the world's, has collapsed and just like that, the

SPOILERS follow “Watchmen” is really two movies: one for people like me, who remember the earthquake it was for comic books in 1987, when it first appeared, and one for people just looking for a good movie. In a lot of ways, it succeeds on both levels; in a lot of other ways, it doesn’t. “Watchmen” arrived in 1987 as comic book that for the first time in the history of comics looked on the idea of superheroes as a real thing; what if in the real world these people actually existed, and what would happen? I first read it at 13, finding it on the bottom shelf of the comic stand in the back of the Cigar Store down on Sycamore – this when comics were still sold outside comic shops – and I didn’t understand it, but knew a comic – a funny book – with blood and murder and various other adult things was not normal. I found a lot of books there that were an absolute awakening to me, and make me feel very lucky to have been that age, at that time: “Swamp Thing,” “Sandman,” even “Cinder