Huh:

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Saturday evening I spent some time at Barnes & Noble, and, as I often do when I'm hanging out there, I reaad some TPBs of comics I've heard good things about but haven't read. One of them was the first collection of Marvel's The Ultimates. Rarely have I ever read a more maddeningly schizophrenic comic. There's much that's very, very good here, including terrific characterizations on Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk. The last was especially interesting; a Hulk rampage, for instance, was triggered at one point by Banner's feelings of jealousy and rage that resulted from Betty Ross going on a date with another man.

But that sequence also illustrated the grievous flaw in the book: An overwhelming desire for hipness and cachet with The Young People that made the whole thing feel like you were looking at a guy trying to act like his mid-life crisis behavior is how he's always acted, man!

You see, the guy Betty Ross was on a date with was Freddie Prinze, Jr. You know, Mr. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Star of, um, not a single thing this century that wasn't an effects-drived pile of schlock that would have made just as much money if it had starred a baked potato in the same role. For some reason, we never see Prinze's face; he's always shown in a long shot, with his back turned, or with a word balloon strategically placed in front of his face.

And that's not the only instance of celebrity name-dropping; there's also Tony Stark on a date with Shannon Elizabeth in -- wait for it -- the Space Shuttle (the kids these days LOVE the Space Shuttle!), pointless references to the likes of Cameron Diaz, and a bizarre multi-page sequence in which the Wasp, Hank Pym, and Nick Fury sit around and talk about who they'd cast in a movie of the comic they're starring in.

It's like all the postmodern stuff in Morrison's Animal Man, except it's pointless and it sucks.

Worse than the hip! current! name-dropping, though, is an overall revelling in the puerile throughout the book. The Hulk going on a jealousy-filled rampage is a good idea. Hulk screaming about how horny the battle is making him is not. Nor is having the Wasp bring him to a standstill by flashing her breasts at him. It's just plain juvenile.

And for some reason, Tony Stark's butler Jarvis is now gay. Instead of subtle characterization that deepens our understanding of the character or adds texture to the world of the book, however, he's just portrayed as a middle-aged poof making what apparently in some circles pass for witty comments about Cap and Thor.

And worst of all is a brutal scene of domestic abuse between Pym and the Wasp; that scene was just plain creepy, but not in a facing-the-reality-of-domestic-violence way. It was more of a Christ-I-wish-they'd-stop-trying-so-hard-to-creep-me-out-by-wallowing-in-exploitation-film-caliber-pornographic-violence sort of way, if you see the difference.

It's a damn shame, because there's much about this book that's good; a brief sequence of Cap walking home with the Wasp after a shopping trip brings home the "man out of time" aspect of his character better than most things I've read along similar lines. But it's so wrapped up in a leering, lookit-me sensibility that all of that gets pretty much lost in the cracks. It's a damn shame; this could have been a really great comic.

The Freaks and Geeks DVD set arrived in the mail yesterday, a few weeks ahead of schedule. We ordered the super-jumbo collector's edition, since the show is just that good. When we ordered, one of the extras promised for this set was described as a yearbook. Cool, I figured, a neat little book with some information about the show.

Heh.

The set's packaging is a full-size McKinley High 1980-1981 yearbook, and the book itself is a nice thick one with articles by staff members, candid set photos, class pictures, and damn near anything else you can think of, down to "signed" end-papers from various characters from the show, to Sam on the front papers and to Lindsay on the back (and, good Lord, I hope Linda Cardellini is going to use the money she makes on crap like Scooby Doo 2 and ER to do something that does justice to her talents.

How much did Freaks and Geeks rock? Let me put it this way: Looking at the fake F&G yearbook gives me more warm and fuzzy feelings than looking at my own real-life yearbook ever will. I can't wait to dive into the set!

Gary Farber links to a bizarre rant from a failed bookstore. With an attitude like that, I can't imagine why anyone would have been shopping there in the first place.

Overall, I'm pretty unsympathetic to the whole independent bookstore good/chain store bad mentality. About ten years ago I tried to support my local independent bookstore by asking them to order a book that was already out at the local Barnes & Noble but that I was in no hurry to read. So I asked if they could order it for me; in other words, I came up to them with a guaranteed sale. They check their system. They tell me it's not released yet. I tell them I've seen it elsewhere, but I want to buy it from them. They say they can order it so they get a copy when it's released. How long will that be? About six weeks. I give them my information and they tell me they'll call when it arrives.

Two months later, having heard nothing, I bought the bloody book from Barnes & Noble, and yea, it was good, and the independent store lost a guaranteed sale. Eventually -- and I mean, months later -- they called left a message telling me the book had arrived and did I still want it?

I didn't call back.

An essential part of shopping for men's jackets online seems to be repeated moments of thinking, "I don't remember clicking on a link to a gay porn site. Oh, wait, that's just a guy modeling a jacket. Talk about making love to the camera."

This is especially so if one clicks on "Leather/suede."

Chris Sullentrop of Slate argues that Scooby-Doo may be the most popular kids' cartoon ever:

Maybe Scooby's appeal makes sense when you compare it to the rest of kids' TV. The most ham-handed of children's shows try to stuff a moral message down the audience's throat. But the moral code of Scooby-Doo permeates the entire enterprise without you ever noticing it. The Washington Post's Hank Stuever concisely elucidated the "Scooby worldview" when the first live-action movie came out: "Kids should meddle, dogs are sweet, life is groovy, and if something scares you, you should confront it." What needs to be explained about that?

Which is all well and good, but, damn, Scooby-Doo is really, really annoying. Particularly whatever 70s-era iteration of the show featured celebrity guest-stars. There was one in particular in which great hay was made over the fact that the guest was Dick Van Dyke. How many five year-olds in 1977 knew or cared who Dick Van Dyke was, for God's sake?

This strikes me as deeply stupid:

There's been a lot of fuss over four little letters lately, particularly when used by Bono on TV. However, I suspect the real usage they want to block was this:

Did I expect George Bush to fuck [the war in Iraq] up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did. -- John Kerry

Kerry uttered said quote in Rolling Stone, which, last time I checked, and I admit, it's been a while, was not on television. Of course, one wouldn't expect a little thing like, you know, basic facts to get in the way of a certain breed of mouth-breathing, cringing, barking moonbat...

This is what happens when I take this test after reading the Sherlock Holmes vs. Lovecraft collection:

In my not so humble opinion, you, of course, belong
in the Picture of Dorian Gray, and do not try
to deny it. You belong in the fashionable
circles of Victorian London where exotic
tastes, a double life, decadence, wit and a
hypocritical belief in moral betterment make
you a home. You belong where the witty
apothegms of Lords, the silly moralities of
matrons, the blinding high of opium, and the
beauty of visual arts mingle to form one
convoluted world.


Which Classic Novel do You Belong In?
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D'Oh:

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:


Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very Low


Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

At times I wonder what the hell is wrong with Minnesotans.

On Friday night, we went to see the astonishingly good Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And at the end of the movie, as soon as the house lights went up, the asshat sitting behind us announced, "Well, that sucked!" Then he gave an avuncular chuckle and added, "I don't even know what that title is supposed to mean!" He must have been asleep during the part of the movie where the poem from which the title is taken is quoted. Maybe there's just something in the water that makes the locals feel the need to offer up "snappy" comments after movies that are any more challenging than, say, Maid in Manhattan; when we saw Monster, the middle-aged asshat behind us felt the need to announce, "Well, that was an uplifter!" Or maybe it's just a geographic inferiority complex; by going to these movies, and then proclaiming how they didn't get it, these morons get to reassure themselves that they're smarter than all those smart-alecky art types who like this sort of highfaluting whatnot, dontcha know?

In the picture above, is Captain America

A. Dressed up like Eric Cartman because the young people love the South Park?
B) Wearing one of those stiff, cylindrical leather jackets Andrew Dice Clay used to wear in the 80s too look less fat than he was?
C) Actually Forbush Man in a premature Halloween costume?

Here's a decent interview with Brian K. Vaughan about his upcoming superhero/political thriller comic Ex Machina.

I realized watching Saturday's episode of SNL, which was surprisingly funny given that Ben Hoofleck was hosting, that the terminally unfunny Jeff Richards is no longer in the credits. A quick check of alt.tv.snl confirmed that he's been gone since February and that no one is really saying why he's gone. Except that, you know, he was perhaps the worst cast member in recent history. I've read he was a pickup from Mad TV, and that makes sense, since he always seemed more suited for the sort of lower-than-low-brow, look-Ma-I-pooped-'em-again dumbass humor that show seems to revel in. But the reason, in the final analysis, doesn't matter; what matters is that we will never, ever, ever see Drunk Girl again.

Fight Club!


What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
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Watson! The needle!

Last night the Home Theater Forum held an online chat with a group of executives from Warner Home Video.

The 3rd question of the evening came from me, and I crammed questions about a number of TV shows into a single question (my thanks to Warner Brothers and HTF owner Ron Epstein for putting up with me doing that!). One of the series I asked about was V: The Series.

Warner replied "V is coming." Yes, it's just that simple...it's coming. That's all they said, but for now it's enough. Yay!

For some reason, I searched for and found an online episode guide for the abomination that was V: The Series. One of the episode descriptions consisted pretty much entirely of, "At this point, the series becomes officially unwatchable."

I'm just sayin', here, is all.

Joel Achenbach is probably the best writer at the Washington Post, and today he presents a fascinating interview with physicist Brian Greene (no relation, I hope, to Brian Austen Greene of Beverly Hills 90210 fame, and, boy, do I need to stop watching F/X before coming to campus):

His reputation as a leader in the field of "string theory" must inevitably compete with his reputation as a good-looking guy who's comfortable on television. He recently hosted, with boyish enthusiasm, the three-part PBS series "The Elegant Universe," a madcap romp through the funhouse of modern physics, based on his bestseller by the same name. Invariably Greene is compared to the late Carl Sagan, for like Sagan, Greene makes science sound like the coolest thing humankind ever invented. There's an unspoken refrain of, Check this out, this will really blow your mind . . .

His new book focuses in particular on time, the most baffling dimension of them all. Length, breadth, depth -- no one's got a real problem with those. Time is the brain-boggler.

"I do believe in time," the scientist says. "I just think our intuition about it is wrong."

Just as we hit 18th Street, and seem to be heading into the Starbucks across the street, we take a sharp turn to the right, northward. Or perhaps we also go straight. And left. And stop completely. And return backward. Such multiplicity would be possible under the "many worlds" scenario of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis that there is no singular reality, that not only do subatomic particles exist in probability waves, but all their possible trajectories come true, causing the universe to splinter continually into parallel universes.

Greene finds that theory too extravagant, and in any case, in the version of reality that culminates in this story, we go to the right.

We head up 18th, up Mass. Ave. to Dupont Circle, down 19th. Greene doesn't do much sightseeing -- he's trying to explain that the past is as real as the present.

"I don't think that the past is gone. I think the past feels gone," Greene says. "There you were at a party, New Year's Eve, you were experiencing that moment. I would say you are still experiencing that moment."

Greene isn't just saying that somewhere on some distant place in the universe, an astronomer can see the light finally arriving from some event in our past. That's not controversial. That's simply speed-of-light stuff. When we see the Andromeda galaxy, we're looking about 2 million years into the past, because it takes that long for the light to reach us across the enormous distances of space.

Greene's point is more radical: That there is no such thing as "now." That just as there is no center of the universe, there is no location in the "loaf" of spacetime that's more special than any other . This is an implication of Einstein's theory of relativity (his "special" theory, if you can stand the irony).

"This is really a question of what's real. You're saying what's real to me is 'now' " -- the former judo competitor is hacking at the air in a fashion that might alarm other pedestrians -- "but she" -- a woman walking by -- "would slice through the spacetime continuum at a different angle."

This article will a) blow your mind and b) make you want to stay very, very still for a while.

This what be what the young people mean by repurposing.

I find it hard to get very enthusiastic about this news:

On his messageboard, John Byrne has announced that his next project for DC will be a relaunch of Doom Patrol.

While Byrne is remaining somewhat tight-lipped about the news the group will include - as will a handful of new, yet unnamed members - apparently, Niles Caulder - the Chief; the Cliff Steel Robotman, Rita Farr - Elasti-Girl; and Larry Trainor - Negative Man.

As for the feel of the book, Byrne said that the series’ catchphrase is “Together Again for the First Time!” – this given the team’s “appearance” in the pages of JLA #94. In regards to an explanation, Byrne related that their JLA appearance is the first time they have appeared openly in the DCU, although Batman knows something about them, and Ray Palmer (the Atom) has a connection with them.

Byrne also has referred to the relaunch as a reboot in the style of Wonder Woman, which many have taken to mean that the characters will be introduced fresh, without references to previous continuities or earlier adventures. This is referenced in JLA #94 when the character resembling Robotman is told by a wheelchair bound character that he (and the rest of the team) is not ready to go out into the field.

Don't get me wrong; the Doom Patrol is a venerable and solid concept, and Byrne is clearly enthusiastic about it, but, well, I just don't see much point to a ground-up reboot. The team is such a minor part of DC's overall tapestry of characters and history (convoluted though it may be) that I don't see why this approach is a better idea than replacing the dead characters with new ones or similar ones (as both Grant Morrison did and subsequent writers tried less successfully to do). I also wonder if Byrne has (to paraphrase Hunter Thompson) the kinky Mick Jagger streak it takes to do the concept justice. These folks are supposed to be STRANGE. And Byrne seems like he's relentlessly resisted anything smacking of strange in recent years, at least when it comes to the depiction of super-heroes.

Sigh. I wish DC would collect the rest of Grant Morrison's run. At least there's a second Doom Patrol Archive coming out soon...

Snarky question: Why does the cover art for the Bend it Like Beckham DVD feature the best friend character much more prominently than it does the actual protagonist of the film? Is it just because Kiera Knightley is inexplicably the It-Girl of the moment, or did it have something to do with the ethnicity of the two characters? I'm usually the last person to cry "RACE!", but this is the kind of thing that makes you wonder...

This person is entirely too kind to asshat chef Bobby Flay. I'm amazed Morimoto didn't (literally) kick his ass.

Not much time today, but the storm of classwork has somewhat abated. So here's some good news that perked me up:

Toon Zone's Steel recently caught up with a Warner Home Video representative at the most recent Home Theater Forum chat. When questioned about box sets regarding the "DC Animated Universe" properties, the representative responded that, "there will be season boxed sets of both Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. Teen Titans is scheduled as well."

And it's about damn time. For whatever reason, I missed the vast majority of the episodes of the animated DC series prior to Justice League and I'll gladly pay to have them all on the shelf. I just hope Batman Beyond gets the boxed treatment as well.

This goes a bit farther than just rocking the vote, I think.,

Who says there's no second acts in America?

Ten years ago, Scott Styles the porn star didn't exist. In his place was a man with a different name who left his Clear Lake apartment every morning and drove a mile to Johnson Space Center.

Link via Obscure Store.

The Minnesota DFL has an uncanny power for pissing me off, even when I'm inclined to agree or sympathize with it. At Tuesday night's precinct caucus, some white-haired washed-up asshat local politician decided to kick things off with a meandering Bush-is-the-devil-who-caused-the-bus-strike speech, which was kind of misplaced, as it seemed like preaching to the choir, but whatever. Then he said, "I heard George Bush is the most well-read man from Texas! Let's send him back there to impress everyone!" Then he sat down, realized he'd skipped his non-joke's punchline, stood again, and said, "See, he's read ONE BOOK!"

I guess hate speech against Texans is less equal than other hate speech, or something.

Good news: The very funny Mary Jo Pehl of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame now has a web site to promote herself and her upcoming book. No blog, alas, but still cool.

Yeah, the one guy was there to protest for the animal rights whatnot:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Police arrested six shivering protesters on Monday after they braved cool temperatures and staged a nearly naked pillow fight outside Harvard University to promote animal rights.

The five women and one man, members of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, were arrested on criminal misdemeanor charges, said police spokesman Frank Pasquarello.

"This is nothing compared to what the animals go through," protester Karla Waples, wearing nothing but pasties to cover her nipples and a pair of panties, shouted to reporters as she was led in handcuffs to a waiting police van.

Link via Fark.

Thought Balloons links to this series of recollections about the great Jack Kirby, and it's well worth a read, but what really struck me was how much Kirby's Superman resembled what a grown-up Tom Welling might look like in the cape and tights:


I'm just sayin', here, is all.

Philip Michaels links to this terrific article about other Oscars head-smackers from ESPN, which seems an unlikely source. But it's still worth a look. Dances with Wolves beat GoodFellas? The English Patient beat FARGO? Whoopi Farking Goldberg beat Lorraine Bracco? Yo, Oscar! WHAT THE FARK?

Surprisingly, the list omits the biggest Oscar travesty in my memory, which was Forrest Gump's win for Best Picture over Pulp Fiction, the most ground-breaking and influential movie of the last decade or so...

You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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Lileks is just being stupid this morning. He presents two quotes, the first from a George W. Bush State of the Union and the second from John Kerry during yesterday's debate:

I ask you: who’s speaking his heart, and who’s crafting a response on the fly trying to cover all bases? One more question: take these two statements:

“The liberty we prize is not American's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.”

Or:

“We pray that God is on our side, and we pray hard. And God has been on our side through most of our existence.”

Which one best represents the face of America you’d like the President to show to the world?

Isn't juxtaposing a scripted line with an off-the-cuff one is just a wee little bit like comparing apples and elephants? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Here's an alternate take on the awards Lord of the Rings should have won.