Two signs that we’re nearing the end: we heard closing arguments in the case, and Tintin’s wearing jeans. In fact, it’s a little premature; I grabbed the wrong book on the way out the door this morning, the last completed Tintin book, Tintin and the Picaros, instead of the one I should have, Flight 714. Oh well.

Back to Tintin’s jeans: it’s a little startling at first, but doesn’t really make any material difference to the character. The book does seem like it’s a bit of a catch-up, though, as though Hergé is suddenly pulling Tintin out of the timeless 1940s-’50s period in which nearly all of his adventures were set, and into a present day of color TV, jet travel, hippie musicians, and so on.

The book is entertaining, and manages to bring back more friends (Alcazar, Castafiore, Jolyon Wagg) and enemies (Colonel Sponsz, now “Esponja”) from previous adventures, but the stakes and the tension are a bit lower here. First of all, Tintin and Haddock are international figures, engaged in a very public argument with the leader of San Theodoros; it doesn’t seem like they’re actually in danger of being snuffed out, with their high profiles. Second, when they do help out to overthrow the present dictator, it’s a very painless event – Hergé made sure that Tintin made sure of that – and in the book’s wisest observation, nothing changes when a new dictator takes over. The troops change their loyalty and the signs have a different name on them, but the citizens still live in the same slums.

On another note, we took in a Dodgers game yesterday, good seats in a shaded section somewhere in the blurred line between the Trinity Alumni Club of Southern California and Atheists United; we heard a lot of interesting conversations.