The Insanometer: Batman and Robin

Part of me wants to say, "This movie isn't insane, it's just awful." And certainly, "awful" is a big part of it--nobody explained to Joel Schumacher that Batman could be other things besides the campy 60s series (not even after the seriously terrible "Batman Forever", which you'd think would have tipped some people off) and he set out to direct a movie that Adam West and Burt Ward wouldn't be out of place in.

(As an aside, I've never really liked the 60s TV series. I know some people say, "Hey, if you manage to set aside the pernicious and detrimental effect it had on Batman as a character, super-hero comics in general, and the reputation of the medium as a whole, it's actually got some funny bits," but every time I watched it, all those funny bits seemed to revolve around the idea that the people making it knew it was crap, instead of thinking they were doing something worthwhile.)

In any event, "Batman and Robin" is terrible, yes. But it's not just terrible...or at the least, it's terrible in such a way that you can't imagine how any sane person could have made it, which is the same thing for our purposes. The film opens smack-dab in the middle of what it laughably calls action, as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mister Freeze steals a giant fake diamond with the aid of his evil hockey team and ice gun. Although honestly, I think that most of the security guards he froze solid probably preferred the icy chill of death to his constant ice-themed puns.

This is actually one of the strangest things about the movie. They keep the deadly-serious motivations of the villains, for the most part--Freeze is still trying to save his dying wife while trying to find a cure for his own condition, and Poison Ivy is still a madwoman who wants to wipe out the entire human race--but the actors play their characters like the comic relief B-villains. While Bane, who could probably sustain a movie in his own right, is reduced to being the comic relief C-villain...but plays his part relatively straight.

In any event, Batman and Robin spend what feels like forty years trying to stop Mister Freeze, only to fail miserably and get into a fight about how Robin is too impetuous and Batman doesn't trust him. (Hint: This will be a Theme.) Meanwhile, Michael Gough's Alfred tries to play his part with dignity, which is hard to do when your entire role consists of mouthing bland platitudes and then grimacing in pain after everyone else leaves the shot. (See, Alfred is dying. Just in case you didn't get that, the movie takes great pains to drive the point home with wince after wince of anguished pain. After a while, you start wondering if maybe he shouldn't eat an all-burrito diet.)

Then Alfred's hot niece comes to visit, played with role-destroying vapidity by Alicia Silverstone, and then that sub-plot stalls for time until we find out she's actually a rebellious kung-fu biker chick underneath her schoolgirl exterior, but a nice rebellious kung-fu biker chick who would love to channel her energies into vigilante crime-fighting if only she stumbled into the Batcave and found out that her dying uncle had made her a skin-tight spandex outfit. Hypothetically.

Then we cut to plant researcher Pamela Isley, who's insane. But not nearly as insane as her boss, Jason Woodrue, played with enjoyable scenery-chewing skill by John Glover. (Don't get me wrong, everyone chews the scenery in this movie. But Glover at least does it with some panache, and he's playing a mad scientist who's actually meant to be over-the-top.) Woodrue is using her research to create a super-steroid called Venom, which he uses to make a super-soldier named Bane. Then he tries to kill Isley, but only succeeds in turning her into Poison Ivy, which allows her to make a rather more successful murder attempt on Woodrue. (Uma Thurman, by the way, delivers all her lines like she's channeling Kim Cattrall in "Big Trouble In Little China".)

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne helps a bunch of scientists build a "telescope" which is actually a giant MacGuffin for whatever the plot needs to do in the third act, and we find out that he's got another girlfriend (continuing the streak of having a new "serious girl" every movie. Given that both Vicki Vale and Chase Meridian found out his secret identity, and that both of them vanish without a trace in the next film, it might be worth investigating some of those bottomless pits in the Batcave. Just saying.) Oh, and he announces a big charity auction with lots of diamonds involved, which he's planning as a trap for Mister Freeze because his freeze-gun uses diamonds for fuel. (Despite the fact that synthetic diamonds have been around for fifty years, super-villains who need to use them to power giant lasers always seem to need the real thing. Go fig.)

Batman and Robin show up at the charity auction, because the best kind of trap is always the kind that involves dozens of potential hostages! Poison Ivy shows up too, planning to, um...I guess, something maybe with money, or...maybe she wants...um...in any event, she shows up and uses her pheromones to turn Batman and Robin against each other. This takes the form of them bidding on the right to date her, leading to Batman pulling out the Bat-Credit-Card in what had to be the exact moment where audiences lost their patience with the entire franchise so badly that they wouldn't make another live-action Batman film for eight years, and that only after replacing the director and all the actors concerned.

Then Mister Freeze shows up, and after a brief, embarrassingly perfunctory fight scene, he's captured and sent to Arkham. Poison Ivy decides to break him out so that they can team up and destroy the human race. Because nothing makes a more natural team than a plant-themed villain and one who wants to freeze the entire planet in sub-Arctic cold! Oh, yeah, that's Freeze's new motivation, because Ivy murders his wife and blames it on Batman. Which creates conflict, because Bruce finds out that Alfred is dying of the same rare disease that was killing Freeze's wife, and Freeze is the only one who knows how to save him!

During the break-out, Robin gets hit with another dose of Poison Ivy's pheromones, and decides to strike out as a solo super-hero. Which is somewhat ironic, as this movie was so terrible it actually acted as a speed-bump for his acting career. Playing a character who wants to be more ambitious and stop living in other people's shadows, even as the part winds up forcing him to take supporting roles for a while? Yeah, that qualifies. I think. In any event, Batman and Robin are totally on the verge of breaking up their partnership, and it's certainly not the kind of problem that can be solved by a wooden, unconvincing speech delivered with an utter lack of interest by George Clooney. So there's that, then.

Then we get into the third act. It turns out that by sheerest coincidence, Bruce Wayne's "telescope" can be used to beam freezing cold all over Gotham City, and Freeze plans to do exactly that! Robin tricks Poison Ivy into telling him by pretending he's still under her spell, then Batgirl defeats her in an awkward, stilted, hideously sexist sequence that neither actress will ever live down. By the way, this is the point where the script remembers that everyone already knew Barbara was going to be Batgirl.

Then it's just a matter of defeating Freeze and beaming heat all over the city to melt the ice, which can apparently be done with Bruce Wayne's "telescope". It is really damned hard to escape the conclusion that Bruce Wayne built a gigantic, obvious super-weapon as a lure to maniacal super-criminals all over the world just to give himself something to do. Afterwards, they show footage of Ivy confessing to Freeze's wife's murder, reveal that she's not quite dead yet after all, and offer Freeze facilities in Arkham to cure his wife if he'll only save Alfred. It's sort of like a plea bargain, except that the actual law doesn't get a say in the matter. Freeze agrees, handing over the cure and saying, "Take two and call me in the morning." That's this movie's Mister Freeze in a nutshell--no matter how bleak his life and his outlook, he still has a sunny quip for every occasion!

So the movie ends happily. Alfred is cured, Poison Ivy is in jail (with Mister Freeze as her wacky cell-mate), and Batman and Batgirl and Robin go off to fight crime. And we're happy, because the movie actually ended. As bad as the description of the plot sounds, it doesn't do justice to the terrible performances, the bizarre art direction choices (every set looks like it was decorated by a twelve-year-old girl and then lit by blacklights) and the incompetent action sequences. The film itself? About an eight on the Insanometer. The fact that everyone concerned, at every step of the process, thought that this was going to be a quality summer blockbuster with the potential to set up a fifth film, "Batman Triumphant"? That's got to be an eleven. Maybe even a twelve.

Words Have Meanings, You Know

As we're now fully into the 2010 election season, being bombarded by political ads from all sides whichever way we turn, a question has finally occurred to me: Why are they called the Tea Party? I don't mean, "What's the historical context of the phrase, and does it somehow relate to the famed 'Boston Tea Party' of the American independence movement in the late 1700s?" I mean, why do these guys call themselves a "party"?

Because last I checked, a political party is a group of like-minded individuals that seek to have their views represented in government by fielding candidates for office. And also last I checked, there's not a single Tea Party candidate out there. There are plenty of independents out there--the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party, the Communist Party, even the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, although oddly enough, it's not fielding a candidate this year. ("You say your name is Fred Lieberman? Well, we just love that name! Can't get enough people in office with the last name 'Lieberman'!") But apart from the entirely unrelated and extremely tiny Boston Tea Party (which is mostly endorsing Libertarians this year anyway) there's not a single "Tea Party" candidate to be found.

Instead, we get Republicans. "Tea Party darling" Rand Paul? He's a Republican. "Tea Party favorite" Sharon Angle? She's a Republican. "Tea Party embarrassment and total headcase" Christine O'Donnell? She's a Republican. All of the supposedly anti-establishment, not-part-of-Washington-politics-as-usual, brand-new-party Tea Party candidates seem to have one thing in common: A little (R) behind their names that they'd just as soon you not notice.

Let's be blunt and call this what it is: An attempt to rebrand the Republican Party in the wake of their disastrous performance over the last decade. The Tea Party is nothing more than the radical right wing of the Republican Party, and should be referred to as such. Anything else is just giving them exactly what they want: A chance to pretend that despite having the same worldview, policies, and goals for America, the Republicans of 2010 have nothing to do with the Republicans we've thrown out of office over the last four years.

Not that I blame them. Heck, if I were a Republican, I'd want to pretend I was someone else too.

My Geeky Amazing Race Joke

I couldn't inflict this on the readers at Mightygodking, but if you're reading me here, you probably have a pretty high tolerance for my peculiar sense of humor already, so here goes. This week's premiere of "The Amazing Race" had the contestants racing from Heathrow Airport to Stonehenge to collect their next clue. My comment: "When they get there, they should find a giant metal box that slowly opens up to reveal Karen Gillan, holding their next clue. And she'd look at them and say, 'OK. This is where it gets complicated.'"

Now you see why I didn't inflict it on a large audience.

What Bugs Me About "The Event"

...is that I actually had an idea for a comic book called "The Event", that I was thinking vaguely about pitching to CrossGen, during the five minutes before that company imploded. The idea was that there was a guy who developed perfect precognition--not only could he see the future, but he could see every possible future including the futures created by him altering the future as a result of his own actions. And he saw, five to ten years down the line (an appropriate length of time for a sixty-issue series or so) a big, apocalyptic event coming down the line. Something very Cthullhu-esque, if you get my drift. The rising of some ancient evil, that could only be stopped through a very specific and unbelievably complex series of events. Essentially, a one-in-a-million chance to save the world...but this guy could see every single thing that needed to be done over the next five or so years to make it happen.

And so he becomes this elaborate puppet-master, working behind the scenes to ensure that all these different people play their roles in saving the world. Some knowingly, some unknowingly, some even unwillingly (after all, he's the only one who knows the big plan, and he can actually see how big of a mistake it would be to tell the wrong person. Some of these people would suspect him of trying to destroy the world, not save it.) The story would be told not from his point of view, but from the viewpoint of the people he's manipulating: Every issue would gradually unveil the plan and their parts in it, until at the end they come together in the full understanding of how they need to save the world from the creature that would destroy it.

The opening gambit--and the opening scene of the first issue--would involve him getting one of the key characters involved in events the only way he can. He steps out in front of her car. She winds up getting him medical treatment, meets a nurse who's also involved in events...and then he disappears from the hospital. The two of them begin investigating his disappearance, leading them into the conspiracy behind it all... (The opening panel is captioned with, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," with a picture of the guy walking directly into the path of the car.)

I would have fleshed it out a bit more as a serious pitch, of course, but there's no point now. Trying to pitch a series called "The Event", involving a big conspiracy? Nobody would ever take the idea seriously again. Thanks so much, NBC.

Misdelivered Package

Hmm...three interceptions, no TDs, failure to convert a fourth-down in a game-to-go situation...I think we accidentally signed the wrong player. We wanted to sign the Brett Favre who played for Green Bay back in the mid-90s, but we accidentally got the Brett Favre that played for the Jets a couple of years ago. I know they both live in Mississippi...maybe those three Vikings players who went to go get him wound up at the wrong house?

They should probably check. But if they do go back down there, they need to get the Brett Favre who played for the Packers in the 90s, not the Brett Favre who played for the Packers in the 00s. That guy was mediocre, at best.

Why Zombie Fans Hate Fast Zombies

I'm reading "Day By Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile", by J.L. Bourne. It's the sequel to "Day By Day Armageddon", which is the tale of a virus that reanimates the blah blah blah civilization collapses blah blah blah lone survivor has to blah blah blah fortified against the living dead. Sorry if I can't seem to work up much enthusiasm for it, but zombie fiction has an unfortunate tendency to the formulaic, much like romance novels. People don't read zombie books for surprises, any more than they really expect the latest Danielle Steele novel to end with the couple deciding they really aren't right for each other, and giving up on the relationship because of all the obstacles in their way.

But I pressed on with the sequel nonetheless, and I noticed something while I was reading about the hero's daring rescue of his sixth and seventh fellow survivor. Namely, he doesn't actually seem to have much trouble dealing with the zombies. And it occurred to me that this is actually a pretty fundamental feature of the genre--the zombies are slow, unintelligent, and suffer from a weakness that makes them easy to defeat. The hero outfights what he can't outrun, outruns what he can't outfight, and outthinks everything else.

Which leads to the question, "How the hell did the zombie problem get so bad in the first place?" The zombies are slower than the walking pace of even a child, they don't use any kind of tactics or strategy, they are exceedingly gullible (in the "Day By Day Armageddon" series, they're attracted to any loud noises...set up a loudspeaker playing "In Your Eyes", and you've pretty much neutralized the zombie threat for half a mile around) and their only weapons are tooth and nail. And as Jonathan Maberry pointed out in his book, "Zombie CSU", tooth and nail are actually fairly sucky weapons in even unarmed combat. It's much harder to break the skin with a bite than it looks. So why is it that in zombie fiction, the zombies always overrun everyone and everything...except the protagonists, who never seem to have serious trouble with them?

I think the answer is that zombie fiction is exceptionalist fiction. The audience is encouraged to identify with the protagonist, the lone man (or, on rare occasions, woman) who rises in the brave new world of the zombie apocalypse. These people who were relentlessly average, stuck in a menial job and an uninteresting life before, they were just waiting for their chance to shine. The crisis might not be a serious one--it just requires a cool head, a steady aim, and a willingness to gun down one's former neighbors--but that's way too much for the sheep-like masses to handle. It takes a real man (or, on rare occasions, woman) to deal with this. A real man like (insert audience stand-in here)!

Of course, not every zombie story follows this formula (originally, Romero made his zombies non-threatening to emphasize the idea that the true threat is our inability to co-operate) but a surprising amount do. As a result, you can see why stories with the zombie as a fast-moving, genuinely lethal and terrifying threat tend to be viewed as a blasphemy against the formula. The harder it is to overcome the zombies, the more sympathetic and understandable the "failures" are and the harder it is for the audience to see themselves as so much better than everyone else. Fast zombies suck because they're a real danger, and that's not actually what zombie fans want.

Shameless T-Shirt Plug!

After looking around a bit, I decided to go with CafePress after all. So for those of you who want to go ahead and buy yourself some geeky T-shirts, here's my brand spanking new T-shirt sales site! I'll be adding designs as inspiration strikes, but here's the initial line-up. I hope everyone enjoys them enough to buy one.

And I mean EVERYONE. In the world. Six billion sales should set me for a while, right?

A Question for the Internet Hive Mind

I've been thinking about leveraging my lack of fame to sell some geek-themed T-shirts, but everything I have heard (and, for that matter, experienced) about Cafe Press suggests that it actually kind of sucks for selling product. But I still want to do this; I have quirky sayings in my head that must be printed on fabric and sold to smart, pop-culture savvy sci-fi fans, dammit! So I figured I'd ask my readers about their experiences with online custom clothing, what they've seen for themselves and heard elsewhere. Is there a site you really like? Please, then, mention it in the comments section!

Oh, um, and obligatory controversial opinion, witty topical reference, strange and goofy pun. You know.

The Inevitable Star Wars Remake

It's going to happen, right? I mean, we all know that sooner or later, someone is going to remake "Star Wars". They remade "Psycho", they remade "The Manchurian Candidate", they remade pretty much every iconic horror movie of the last century...it's only a matter of time before someone says, "Hey! 'Star Wars' was good for its time, but that was almost thirty-five years ago. Who can relate to this Mark Hamill guy nowadays?"

And I figure, let's go ahead and embrace it. If it's gotta be remade, let's have a good remake. One with a good cast and a good director who can handle the material well. My choice for director is simple: J.J. Abrams. He did a good job with "Star Trek" (lens flares aside), he's got some solid sci-fi chops apart from that, and I think he'd make just the right changes. (Which, frankly, are minimal. It's a good movie that holds up even now.)

As to the cast...let's go role by role, shall we?

Tobey Maguire as Luke Skywalker. You need someone with that air of youthful naivete, and Tobey Maguire does that very well (as evidenced by the fact that he's my age and still playing high-school kids.) The only question is, would he be able to pull off the cockiness that Hamill displays? After all, Peter Parker isn't exactly Mister Overconfident.

Maggie Gyllenhall as Princess Leia. This is actually the genesis of the post; I saw her in "The Dark Knight" and thought, "She would be perfect as Princess Leia." She's smart and pretty, which is absolutely vital to the role--the last thing you want is some eye-candy starlet who's reading all her lines phonetically. The thing that set Leia apart from every other sci-fi heroine at the time was grit, and Gyllenhall can play grit.

Chow Yun-Fat as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yes, I know, he's not Toshiro Mifune. But he's awesome, and the perfect age to play the Old Master/Wise Mentor figure for the movie. And if you could level a single criticism at the original "Star Wars", it's that it wasn't exactly a model of diversity. Having a major character played by an Asian can only help.

Leonard Roberts as Han Solo. Not exactly a marquee choice (but then again, the only big names in the original "Star Wars" were Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing) but he's charming, suave, charismatic, and has made a good career for himself in TV (if you've seen "Heroes" or Season Four of "Buffy", you know who he is.) This could be the break-out role he needs, and he's exactly the kind of person needed to play the part.

Alan Rickman as Grand Moff Tarkin. Let's face it, it's the role he was born to play. A lifetime of being suave, sneering British villains has been leading to his destiny, that of reprising the role of one of the greatest British character actors ever to politely condemn his enemies to death.

Jason Statham and Samuel L. Jackson as Darth Vader: Yes, I know, Statham's not quite as tall as Prowse; but I'm picturing a slightly sleeker re-design of Vader, one more in keeping with modern action-movie styles that makes him into a lethally quick cyborg Sith Lord. Less of the "massive and powerful" and more of the "across the room and cutting his way through six guys before you can blink." For that, Statham works better. As to the voice...part of me is tempted to just say, "Heck with it," and stick with James Earl Jones. But I am determined to recast the major parts, and so Jackson it is. (If the remake goes all the way to "Jedi", I'd pull a Sebastian Shaw and put a different actor into the suit for the final reveal. Probably Daniel Day-Lewis.)

David Tennant as C-3P0. Oh come on. How can I resist?

Of the other parts, most of them would probably be unknowns and character actors. And of course, I'm open to suggestions...after all, that's what comments sections are for!

Horror Tropes That Could Probably Use a Rest

1) In "found footage" horror movies, where the camera is actually being held by a character in the movie, I think you'd probably surprise more people by now if you didn't have the camera-person die horribly at the end, usually right as they discover something shocking. (e.g. "Cloverfield", "The Blair Witch Project", "Quarantine", "The Zombie Diaries" (three times in that film), and others.)

2) It does not make your zombie movie a new and different zombie movie if your cast of characters is trapped in a different location than a farmhouse. Ripping off "Night of the Living Dead" is ripping off "Night of the Living Dead", no matter where they're trapped. (Putting fast zombies in was innovative...twenty-five years ago.)

3) Cell phones exist. Please get used to it, or else set your movie in an era where they didn't. Constant refrains of, "Oh, no! My cell phone doesn't work!" get old, fast.

4) There is a small, but significant difference between "the serial killer is very intelligent and has a good knowledge of his target's behavior" and "the serial killer has a precise understanding of every conceivable event that will unfold over the course of the movie, right down to minor and inconsequential acts of chance such as the way water flows down a drain." (See the first "Saw" movie, which would literally have been five minutes long if the killer's taunting gambit had played out even slightly differently.)

5) M. Night Shyamalan. Really, who does this man have pictures of?

Question of the Day

Is there a "Ventriloquism for Dummies" book? And if so, does it actually teach you ventriloquism, or just how to be a dummy?

If Cartoon Characters Aged In Real Time...

...Pebbles Flintstone would be almost fifty, now, with two kids (Chip and Roxy) who are almost ready to graduate high school. Fred would presumably be dead, life expectancies not being much in prehistoric times.

...Judy Jetson would be sixty-four (and presumably wondering if her boyfriend will need her, or for that matter even feed her.) This being the future, though, she might retain her youthful looks well into her second century, so that might not be so much of a problem.

...Jonny Quest is a bitter fifty-seven year old, who probably has endless therapy sessions where he talks about his intimacy issues due to his dad's inability to love him. "He thought that just giving me an Indian boy would solve everything. Well, it didn't, Dad!"

...Scooby-Doo is forty-eight (that's 336 in dog years. Actually, I think that's just "dead" in dog years.)

...Hank, the oldest member of the "Dungeons and Dragons" party, would be forty-two and probably well into the Epic Character supplements; while the youngest, Bobby, would be thirty-five and have several NPC henchmen by now.

...the Planeteers are all in their early thirties, and have emigrated to the United States due to political instability in their respective homelands. (Kwame's sick of all the "email spam" jokes. Please stop telling them.) They don't do much forming of Captain Planet these days, but they do make sure to recycle, and Ma-Ti attended a rally at the state capitol a few months ago about "going green".

...and Dexter is now twenty-three. Although he has not yet succeeded in conquering the world, it seems like more than coincidence that he got a job at Google just before they changed their stance on Net Neutrality.

Conspiracy Theory? Sure, Why Not!

The new Spider-Man film has begun casting, with Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man (presumably a Spider-Man who hates Mondays and loves to eat his own weight in lasagna. It's a daring choice.) They're also working on casting his love interest, an as-yet-unnamed character (or, at least, one whose name they're not putting on the scripts that are circulating through Hollywood) who apparently is definitely probably not Mary Jane Watson.

Since I'm bored, I'm going to go ahead and circulate a half-baked conspiracy theory that I may or may not believe. Remember how "One More Day" happened, and went over like a lead balloon stuffed with dwarf star material because contrary to editor-in-chief Joe Quesada's expectations, nobody really was pining for a Spider-Man comic that looked just like the ones that came out when he was a kid in 1970? And how to the average Spider-Man fan, Mary Jane was and pretty much always had been Spidey's "true love", because we didn't even start reading comics until almost after they were married? And how the casual fan had barely even heard of Gwen Stacy, because all the film adaptations, cartoon versions, and even most of the non-616 versions of Spider-Man had Peter dating MJ?

So now they're rebooting the movies with a new, MJ-free version. The "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane" comic got canceled a while back, despite great reviews and steady trade paperback sales. Ultimate Spider-Man is living with Gwen Stacy. There hasn't been a cartoon Spidey in a little while, but the last one had a far more prominent role for Gwen and emphasized MJ's desire to stay single. (Yes, I know, they're returning to the original series' roots. That is rather my point, though.) All in all, it seems like there's a concerted branding effort to take MJ out of the picture in order to bring the alternate media versions of Spider-Man in line with the "Amazing" version, complete with what seems like a plan to push Gwen Stacy to the forefront.

Does this mean that Joe Quesada is abusing his lofty position within Marvel's hallowed halls in order to make all comics just like they were when he was a kid? (If so, he could probably take some lessons from Geoff Johns. **rimshot**) I doubt it, really. It seems like a lot of work for such a petty agenda. But if the new movie girlfriend for Spidey is named "Gwen Stacy", well...all I'm saying is, don't be surprised if there's a "shocking resurrection" a few years down the line in the main Spidey book.

Color Me Shocked

Oh, look. Despite his grave uncertainty over whether his ankle injury is healed enough to let him play, Brett Favre has managed to recover himself just in time for the regular season. Unfortunately, this indecision made him miss training camp, something we all know he loves so very very much. I'm so surprised that he couldn't make it this year. I'd never have expected this particular outcome.

In all seriousness, I will admit that there was something kind of hinky about the way all this played out--nobody was really expecting him to report before the end of training camp anyway, so why all the extra drama? Why the text messages that weren't, the trip to Mississippi to pay court to him, the epic levels of excitement about what seemed like a routine question? Did he really need the extra flattery to draw him back to the team, or was this all just the Vikings panicking over nothing?

I'm inclined to believe the latter, at least for the most part. I think that Favre always intended to play, he always intended to milk the injury for a free pass out of training camp (which he understandably despises), and that everything else was just a crazy little sideshow on the part of the Vikings. Either way, I'm glad it's over; I might be a Vikings fan, but I'm not one of those sports fans who excuses bad behavior when it's "my" team indulging in it. Favre really should be ashamed of himself, the Vikings haven't exactly covered themselves with glory either, now can we please shut up about this and play some football?

New On DVD

Apparently "Furry Vengeance" came out on DVD and Blu-Ray yesterday. Good for them. They get so much flack on the Internet, I think it's only fair that they should get their own back somewhere along the line. Brendan Fraser's in it--I'm guessing he's playing someone from 4chan, or Something Awful, perhaps?

In any event, it's probably fun for the entire family, or at least those parts of the family that aren't offended by people who like sex with heavily anthropomorphized animals. I probably won't see it myself, but anyone who's into that, have fun!

500th Post!

I try not to make a whole lot of "milestone" posts, because somehow it feels like cheating--if every tenth post is, "Hey, wow, look, another ten posts!", then I'm really not earning those milestones quite so much, am I? But I like to think that the 500th post (which happens to fall right around the 5th anniversary of my decision to sit down and start blogging, give or take a week) is worth celebrating a little, in an egotistical sort of way.

So yes, I will toot my own horn a little and say, "Here's to me, for sticking with this as long as I have!" Thanks to every single person who read, especially those who commented, and I hope to do 500 more!

If the United States Government Was a Couch

Yes, I've been in a political mood lately. What can I say, it's nearing November and I'm hearing so much stuff that the opinions are leaking out of my ears. This is the benefit of having your own blog; nobody but me tells me what to say. The only measure I have of how bored people are getting is how many readers I lose, and um...look, I'm sure I'll get back to talking about crazy Silver Age comics pretty soon, OK?

In any event, today I wanted to talk a bit about balancing the budget, and more specifically about the Republican plan for doing so. They tend to talk about it in two ways: First, about the need to cut taxes. (Which I'd be fine with, if not for the fact that Republicans only think taxes can go one way: Down. No matter how low the taxation is, you can always find Republicans who will insist that the only cure for whatever current crisis we have is to lower taxes.) Second, though, is that we'd be fine if we just cut all the "waste" out of the federal budget.

Now, I'm not going to say that there's no waste in the federal budget. In fact, that's why their argument seems so strong; every time someone makes it, they go through the entire federal government with a fine-tooth comb and find an example of someone whose job it is to regulate ear sizes on rabbits raised for meat, or a department that spent $50 million dollars on boats just in case they need to go to sea as part of their job at the Department of Cactus Management. That's part and parcel of any big organization; the bigger it is, the more likely that something nuts gets lost in the nooks and crannies. You also hear about it in private enterprise; I recall reading about one company whose inter-office mail was so inefficient that employees were sending envelopes from one floor to another via FedEx. (Federal Express: When you're absolutely, positively too damn lazy to walk it down three flights of stairs by yourself.)

But here's the key--just because you find waste, that doesn't mean that there's an unlimited amount of waste to be found. Once you find it and fix it, it's gone, and it's a relatively small percentage of the money you need. It'd be like finding two bucks in change in your sofa cushions one day, then finding another three bucks a week later, and somehow coming to the conclusion that you can quit your job and live off the unlimited largesse of your couch.

The decisions we need to make to balance the budget aren't easy ones. Anyone who says they are--Republican or Democrat--is either lying to you, or is too damn stupid to know what they're talking about. Either way, they should be kept as far away from government as humanly possible.

Killing a Lie In Its Cradle

Conservatives who are up in arms about the overturning of Proposition 8 in California are trying to explain how non-homophobic they are by telling everyone that it has nothing to do with the icky, icky gays being allowed to marry just like normal folks. No, siree! It's just that they're deeply, deeply upset that one judge (one gay judge, who must be biased, because a gay judge ruling in favor of gay marriage is biased while a straight judge ruling against it is just applying common sense...) is allowed to overturn the will of the people. How is that fair, that one person can overrule a majority?

The answer is simple. That judge didn't overrule the majority. He just pointed out that Proposition 8, passed by a little over half the people in one state, conflicts with the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868 by 2/3rds of the US Congress, then ratified by 3/4ths of the country. In other words, Proposition 8 isn't the will of the majority. It's the will of a small, cranky minority that's trying to ignore all the people disagreeing with them. Which is working out about as well as you'd expect, really.

Demolishing Conservatism In One Quick Sentence

The fundamental flaw with economic conservatism is that they insist that private enterprise is more efficient than the public sector, while never actually considering the fact that what they're more efficient at is making money, and not at actually getting done the things that need to get done; for example, McDonald's might be the most profitable restaurant, but it's more profitable because it makes lots of cheap food it sells for a moderate profit, not because it actually makes tasty and nutritious meals.

Review: Paul Is Undead

Really, can there be a better concept for a book than "What if the Beatles were actually a group of brain-eating zombies from Liverpool with super-powers that set out to conquer the world with their music, only to fall victim to internal discord brought about by the arrival of Eighth Level Ninja Lord Yoko Ono?" Seriously, is it actually possible?

I fell in love with "Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion" the moment I saw the cover, and nothing I read ever convinced me that I'd made the wrong decision by snapping it up. It's a zombie book that isn't the same lame "zombie plague spreads across the world, here's the tale of the survivors as they try to fend off the hordes of the undead...and fail!" plot that's been the paint-by-numbers source of so many recent zombie movies, comics, and books. (I'm not pointing any fingers at any specific books, because hell, I've enjoyed a few of the paint-by-numbers zombie stuff...but let's just say that "City of the Dead" isn't getting a review like this.)

And it's more than just a zombie book. Author Alan Goldsher gleefully tosses in vampires, ghosts (the ghost of Ed Sullivan cracked me up), mole men, Satan, invisible men, and of course ninjas. Ringo Starr's difficulties as a ninja drumming in a zombie band forms a good chunk of the underpinnings of the book. It's a bizarre, kitchen-sink approach to writing that probably wouldn't have worked anywhere but here, but somehow it's exactly what the material demands.

In fact, that's a good description of the book as a whole: "It wouldn't have worked anywhere but here." Any other book would have worn out its welcome before the end of three hundred pages of comedy-zombie material. Any other book would have driven me nuts with the "oral history" style of writing. (Actually, that's not quite true. I hate non-fiction books that use the "oral history" style with a passion, but I adore novels that pretend to be non-fiction "oral history" style books. Perhaps it's because the style tends to simply present people's narratives unquestioningly, which is fine for fiction but very off-pissing when you're trying to find out the truth of something.) It's just one of those books that works because it's what it is.

And what it is, is hilarious. Read it for the account of the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, where the screaming wasn't hysteria, it was terror. Read it for the shocking account of the Shea Stadium concert where thousands were brutally murdered by Beatlemaniacs. But mostly, read it because it's funny.