I'm glad that I took the time to send him fanmail while it still had the chance of meaning something to him; Gene Colan was one of the legends of Marvel comics, a genuine artist with a distinctive and dreamlike style unlike anyone else in the field, then or now. His art on Doctor Strange and Daredevil was iconic, and his work on Tomb of Dracula remains an unsurpassed milestone of moody horror. He was gracious and generous, and his response to my fanmail was just one of many examples of that.
"Gentleman" Gene Colan, one of the great ones. Rest in peace.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Review: Bloodstone, by Nate Kenyon
I found this book on my bookshelf one day a while back. It was in with the unread books (I sort books into two groups, read and unread) but I couldn't remember when I bought it. In fact, not only could I not remember when I bought it, I also couldn't remember where or why. I don't think I bought it based on the back cover blurb; I suspect that I must have read a slightly more detailed synopsis, saw the word "zombies", and decided to pick it up and only just now got back to it.
Having finished it, I don't feel too bad about not getting to it right away. It's not a bad book by any stretch; I've read far worse novels by far more experienced authors. (This is Nate Kenyon's first book.) But it is what it is, a first novel by someone who hasn't yet stepped out of the shadow of his idols Stephen King and Peter Straub to find his own voice as a writer. While I suspect that Kenyon might have some good books ahead of him, maybe even some genuinely great ones, this is the work of a fledgling writer who's still sorting things out.
One of the big things that he needs to sort out is who he is. Right now, this feels like a painter trying to forge the work of an Old Master; the touches are all King, but the inspiration that guides the work is clearly that of someone of lesser skill. A clarifying disclaimer: I'm obviously not saying that Kenyon is plagarizing King, merely that he uses many of King's stylistic touches. There's a Christine-like social outcast who falls under the domineering influence of a possessing ghost, a Shining-esque sequence where a character is tempted to drink by ghosts in a bar that inexplicably appears the way it did where it was new, and one of the death scenes of a minor character feels like it fell out of Salem's Lot and the vampires turned to zombies when it hit the ground. Even the opening sequence, which is attention-grabbing and clever, has more than a little similarity to the opening of Peter Straub's Ghost Story.
And the similarities make the weaknesses of the story compared to King or Straub's work that much more apparent. It's an "ancient evil comes back to haunt small town in Maine" tale (it's not Kenyon's fault that he lives in the same part of the country as King, but it is unfortunate...) But Kenyon hasn't yet learned how to write on the kind of grand tapestry this sort of story requires, where the small New England town becomes a world in microcosm and the intensity builds as the novel moves towards a climax. There's plenty of atmosphere, but nothing actually happens until about page 280 of a 33o-page novel. It's as if Stephen King had to cut IT down to fit the publisher's requirements, and so he took out all the monster attacks and all of the town history sequences.
Despite all this, as I say, the novel is not without promise. The prose flows well, and is not marred by any of the clumsy cliches that plague the horror genre. The zombies and supernatural elements, while underused, aren't bad (although again, too reminiscent of King.) The characters are sympathetic and well-drawn, and there are some interesting choices in their backstory and the dynamic between them. This is a novel that you could maybe look back on and see the potential in...but I don't know if it's worth reading for its own sake.
Having finished it, I don't feel too bad about not getting to it right away. It's not a bad book by any stretch; I've read far worse novels by far more experienced authors. (This is Nate Kenyon's first book.) But it is what it is, a first novel by someone who hasn't yet stepped out of the shadow of his idols Stephen King and Peter Straub to find his own voice as a writer. While I suspect that Kenyon might have some good books ahead of him, maybe even some genuinely great ones, this is the work of a fledgling writer who's still sorting things out.
One of the big things that he needs to sort out is who he is. Right now, this feels like a painter trying to forge the work of an Old Master; the touches are all King, but the inspiration that guides the work is clearly that of someone of lesser skill. A clarifying disclaimer: I'm obviously not saying that Kenyon is plagarizing King, merely that he uses many of King's stylistic touches. There's a Christine-like social outcast who falls under the domineering influence of a possessing ghost, a Shining-esque sequence where a character is tempted to drink by ghosts in a bar that inexplicably appears the way it did where it was new, and one of the death scenes of a minor character feels like it fell out of Salem's Lot and the vampires turned to zombies when it hit the ground. Even the opening sequence, which is attention-grabbing and clever, has more than a little similarity to the opening of Peter Straub's Ghost Story.
And the similarities make the weaknesses of the story compared to King or Straub's work that much more apparent. It's an "ancient evil comes back to haunt small town in Maine" tale (it's not Kenyon's fault that he lives in the same part of the country as King, but it is unfortunate...) But Kenyon hasn't yet learned how to write on the kind of grand tapestry this sort of story requires, where the small New England town becomes a world in microcosm and the intensity builds as the novel moves towards a climax. There's plenty of atmosphere, but nothing actually happens until about page 280 of a 33o-page novel. It's as if Stephen King had to cut IT down to fit the publisher's requirements, and so he took out all the monster attacks and all of the town history sequences.
Despite all this, as I say, the novel is not without promise. The prose flows well, and is not marred by any of the clumsy cliches that plague the horror genre. The zombies and supernatural elements, while underused, aren't bad (although again, too reminiscent of King.) The characters are sympathetic and well-drawn, and there are some interesting choices in their backstory and the dynamic between them. This is a novel that you could maybe look back on and see the potential in...but I don't know if it's worth reading for its own sake.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Half-Hearted Perfunctory DC Complaint
So let's get this straight. DC is making a fresh, young, accessible DC Universe...where Batman has already gone through four Robins, Superboy has already been cloned from Superman, and the entire War of Light has already happened because God forbid Geoff Johns has to erase even a single one of his stories from continuity. Oh, and Hal, Guy, John and Kyle are all Green Lanterns already in this new, more accessible DC. And "The Killing Joke" is in continuity, but Batgirl isn't Oracle.
This isn't even worth making fun of...except for the blurb for Justice League Dark, which is the perfect parody of a crazed talentless manchild fanboy's idea of what the Justice League "should be like" that somehow got made into an actual comic. This isn't like "Crisis on Infinite Earths", where they genuinely tried to start the DC universe over as a single coherent construct and got hamstrung by some lingering pre-reboot continuity. This isn't even like "Infinite Crisis", where they tried to undo "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and go back to the convoluted continuity because they liked it better. This is just plain inept. Seriously, all the analogies I can think of for this reboot, I can't say, because I think that jokes about the mentally challenged are mean-spirited and tasteless.
The only good thing I can say is coming out of this is that they're finally folding the Wildstorm universe into the DC Universe the way they should have six years ago. (And I haven't heard anything about the Authority, which is also good. The Authority are a good stand-alone team, but they've always fit awkwardly at best into a shared fictional universe, and that would only get worse if they had to rub shoulders with Superman and Batman.) But really, once you've decided to bring back Batman, Inc. in a year rather than piss off Grant Morrison, why even bother calling it a reboot? Why not just say, "Fuck continuity, we're changing the backstory whenever we feel like it and you can just fucking cope!"
Oh, right. Because the only reason fans stick around for the bad stories is to find out what effect they'll have on the vast, overcomplicated metastory. My bad.
This isn't even worth making fun of...except for the blurb for Justice League Dark, which is the perfect parody of a crazed talentless manchild fanboy's idea of what the Justice League "should be like" that somehow got made into an actual comic. This isn't like "Crisis on Infinite Earths", where they genuinely tried to start the DC universe over as a single coherent construct and got hamstrung by some lingering pre-reboot continuity. This isn't even like "Infinite Crisis", where they tried to undo "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and go back to the convoluted continuity because they liked it better. This is just plain inept. Seriously, all the analogies I can think of for this reboot, I can't say, because I think that jokes about the mentally challenged are mean-spirited and tasteless.
The only good thing I can say is coming out of this is that they're finally folding the Wildstorm universe into the DC Universe the way they should have six years ago. (And I haven't heard anything about the Authority, which is also good. The Authority are a good stand-alone team, but they've always fit awkwardly at best into a shared fictional universe, and that would only get worse if they had to rub shoulders with Superman and Batman.) But really, once you've decided to bring back Batman, Inc. in a year rather than piss off Grant Morrison, why even bother calling it a reboot? Why not just say, "Fuck continuity, we're changing the backstory whenever we feel like it and you can just fucking cope!"
Oh, right. Because the only reason fans stick around for the bad stories is to find out what effect they'll have on the vast, overcomplicated metastory. My bad.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Body Fascism Is Deeply Disturbing
Last night my wife, who is a frequent and unrepentant knitter, decided to test a theory she had heard about unisex hat patterns. Supposedly, unisex hats are all really made for women and called unisex, and guys just wind up needing to buy a larger size to accommodate their heads. (No, this is not the body fascism of the title. Making men feel as though they have grotesque melon-y heads is not actually body fascism.)
My head came out to be 24 inches in circumference. And I was like "Oh, hey, that's interesting," until someone made a joke about how we just needed to find two people with heads 36 inches around. And then I thought about it. Seriously? That's what's supposed to be attractive in a woman? Having a waist that is literally about the size of my head? That doesn't seem sexy, that seems freakish and disturbing. And oh yeah, deeply deeply unhealthy. I can't imagine what it would take to make your waist that thin (actually, having read some stuff about Vampira, yes I can and oh that poor woman...) But honestly, I can't say I'd even find it attractive.
Please, women of the world. On behalf of my gender, I say...we're really not worth it. Go ahead and have dessert with that.
My head came out to be 24 inches in circumference. And I was like "Oh, hey, that's interesting," until someone made a joke about how we just needed to find two people with heads 36 inches around. And then I thought about it. Seriously? That's what's supposed to be attractive in a woman? Having a waist that is literally about the size of my head? That doesn't seem sexy, that seems freakish and disturbing. And oh yeah, deeply deeply unhealthy. I can't imagine what it would take to make your waist that thin (actually, having read some stuff about Vampira, yes I can and oh that poor woman...) But honestly, I can't say I'd even find it attractive.
Please, women of the world. On behalf of my gender, I say...we're really not worth it. Go ahead and have dessert with that.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
How 'The Lion King' Should Have Gone
Scar: The future is littered with prizes
And though I'm the main addressee
The point that I must emphasize is
You won't get a sniff without--holy crap, is that lava? Oh my god, this whole place is going up! Run! Run, my hyena minions! Oh, God, no! Sweet merciful mother Earth, we're all going to dieeeeEEEEEEAAAGGHHH!!! (screams drowned out in an unholy explosion of superheated sulfuric gases, pyroclastic ash, and molten rock)
Then the rest would have just been Rafiki hitting people.
And though I'm the main addressee
The point that I must emphasize is
You won't get a sniff without--holy crap, is that lava? Oh my god, this whole place is going up! Run! Run, my hyena minions! Oh, God, no! Sweet merciful mother Earth, we're all going to dieeeeEEEEEEAAAGGHHH!!! (screams drowned out in an unholy explosion of superheated sulfuric gases, pyroclastic ash, and molten rock)
Then the rest would have just been Rafiki hitting people.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Things I Just Got Around To Reading: Burning Chrome
Not just 'Burning Chrome', actually, but William Gibson in general. Not just William Gibson in general, actually, but pretty much cyberpunk as a genre; aside from 'Headcrash' and the stellar cyberpunk pastiche Doctor Who novel 'Transit', I've just missed the genre completely. I was born just a little too young to hit it square on as it happened, and since I knew it would be there whenever I got around to it, I never felt any great hurry to get back to it. But then a very close friend was encouraging me to read it, and I popped it in my luggage for a trip, and then when I got back from the trip after reading "Johnny Mnemonic" I popped it in my book bag to take to work, and now I've finally read it. And what do I think?
Well, there's a lot to admire. Gibson is an unquestionably talented writer; his short stories have amazing prose that is almost like Beat poetry (this is not, of course, a coincidence) and he's a master of storytelling economy. He manages to fill in entire worlds in the gaps between sentences, where lesser writers might have had to insert monologues to explain them. (Actually, in general short stories are a far more challenging art than novels; Stephen King, for example, is a good novelist but a masterful short story writer. It is much harder to say something well in 8,000 words than it is to say it in 800 pages.)
But I will admit that I admired Gibson's stories more than enjoyed them. There was a sense of coldness to them, as though they were saying to me, "Look but don't touch." I spent a lot of the collection trying to figure out where that sensation came from, and I finally came to the conclusion that a lot of it came from his treatment of women.
I'm not going to say that William Gibson is a misogynist. I think that's a very strong word that gets thrown around a lot and tends to shut down discussion a lot more than it starts it. But I do feel like it seemed like Gibson was having some issues with women that came out in his work of the period. Virtually all of his female characters in the collection are manipulative, loveless, ambitious and duplicitous. I realize that some of this came out of the deliberate attempt to pastiche the film noir genre in a different medium and setting, which in turn replicated those writers' very real misogyny (anyone who wants to try to argue that Mickey Spillane wasn't misogynist, good luck to ya...) But when it's a repeated theme, that the lead characters are betrayed by the women in their lives (or in the case of "Dogfight", betray them in a sequence that's uncomfortably close to rape...) it's hard to feel good about what you're reading. It's hard to enjoy it. So I admire but don't enjoy.
But I do admire a whole lot.
Well, there's a lot to admire. Gibson is an unquestionably talented writer; his short stories have amazing prose that is almost like Beat poetry (this is not, of course, a coincidence) and he's a master of storytelling economy. He manages to fill in entire worlds in the gaps between sentences, where lesser writers might have had to insert monologues to explain them. (Actually, in general short stories are a far more challenging art than novels; Stephen King, for example, is a good novelist but a masterful short story writer. It is much harder to say something well in 8,000 words than it is to say it in 800 pages.)
But I will admit that I admired Gibson's stories more than enjoyed them. There was a sense of coldness to them, as though they were saying to me, "Look but don't touch." I spent a lot of the collection trying to figure out where that sensation came from, and I finally came to the conclusion that a lot of it came from his treatment of women.
I'm not going to say that William Gibson is a misogynist. I think that's a very strong word that gets thrown around a lot and tends to shut down discussion a lot more than it starts it. But I do feel like it seemed like Gibson was having some issues with women that came out in his work of the period. Virtually all of his female characters in the collection are manipulative, loveless, ambitious and duplicitous. I realize that some of this came out of the deliberate attempt to pastiche the film noir genre in a different medium and setting, which in turn replicated those writers' very real misogyny (anyone who wants to try to argue that Mickey Spillane wasn't misogynist, good luck to ya...) But when it's a repeated theme, that the lead characters are betrayed by the women in their lives (or in the case of "Dogfight", betray them in a sequence that's uncomfortably close to rape...) it's hard to feel good about what you're reading. It's hard to enjoy it. So I admire but don't enjoy.
But I do admire a whole lot.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
River Song: A Confession
I know this is going to be a bit of a shocker, particularly to fellow Doctor Who fans, but...to me, River Song gets less interesting every time she shows up in the series.
I obviously don't want to give anything away for "A Good Man Goes To War", which hasn't officially aired in North America, but suffice to say that Big Revelations about River are in the offing. And like all the other Big Revelations about River Song, it seems to me to diminish her in my imagination just a little bit more. When we first saw River Song, she was a larger-than-life human able to hang with the Doctor on his own level, a woman who may or may not have been his lover (or even his wife) who has her own tremendous, exciting adventures that only occasionally intersect with those of the Doctor...and those not necessarily in consecutive order at that.
Now? She's that woman who lives in Stormgate Prison and breaks out every once in a while when the Doctor needs her. She's someone who lives life backwards to the Doctor, not sideways and upside-down and at crazy non-Euclidean angles. She's someone who, not to spoil "A Good Man Goes To War", has a specific and finite character arc that we have already seen, in a sense, the beginning and end of. It's hard to see her as an equal to the Doctor in that light. After all, he's a man with an unlimited past and a wide-open future. River is anything but.
I miss the River who wasn't anything but. I miss the River whose story couldn't be told on television because you can't hire an actress to time travel fifteen years into the future to pretend to be her own younger self. I miss the River who might only have lived into her forties (assuming she wasn't from an era where someone could live to be two hundred and still look like they were in their forties...) yet spent those years full of life and adventure, crossing paths with twenty-seven incarnations of the Doctor in her career as archaeologist, smuggler, burglar, professional jailbird, and dozens of other professions in a rich life filled with incident. Like the Star Wars prequels, River fails for me not because of any failings of Steven Moffat, but because the River Song in my head was mine and nobody else's is ever going to be as good.
I know that a lot of people aren't going to agree with this. They like Moffat's River Song, and I don't blame them. But I think if you could meet mine, you'd like her better too.
I obviously don't want to give anything away for "A Good Man Goes To War", which hasn't officially aired in North America, but suffice to say that Big Revelations about River are in the offing. And like all the other Big Revelations about River Song, it seems to me to diminish her in my imagination just a little bit more. When we first saw River Song, she was a larger-than-life human able to hang with the Doctor on his own level, a woman who may or may not have been his lover (or even his wife) who has her own tremendous, exciting adventures that only occasionally intersect with those of the Doctor...and those not necessarily in consecutive order at that.
Now? She's that woman who lives in Stormgate Prison and breaks out every once in a while when the Doctor needs her. She's someone who lives life backwards to the Doctor, not sideways and upside-down and at crazy non-Euclidean angles. She's someone who, not to spoil "A Good Man Goes To War", has a specific and finite character arc that we have already seen, in a sense, the beginning and end of. It's hard to see her as an equal to the Doctor in that light. After all, he's a man with an unlimited past and a wide-open future. River is anything but.
I miss the River who wasn't anything but. I miss the River whose story couldn't be told on television because you can't hire an actress to time travel fifteen years into the future to pretend to be her own younger self. I miss the River who might only have lived into her forties (assuming she wasn't from an era where someone could live to be two hundred and still look like they were in their forties...) yet spent those years full of life and adventure, crossing paths with twenty-seven incarnations of the Doctor in her career as archaeologist, smuggler, burglar, professional jailbird, and dozens of other professions in a rich life filled with incident. Like the Star Wars prequels, River fails for me not because of any failings of Steven Moffat, but because the River Song in my head was mine and nobody else's is ever going to be as good.
I know that a lot of people aren't going to agree with this. They like Moffat's River Song, and I don't blame them. But I think if you could meet mine, you'd like her better too.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Hulk Relates the Classics: His Girl Friday
"Hello. Today Hulk tell you about classic screwball comded...commud...funny movie by Howard Hawks, called His Girl Friday. Hulk think Howard Hawks is Bird-Nose, Hulk's old friend, but Hulk not sure. Hulk will ask Bird-Nose next time he sees him what it like in Tinseltown.
"His Girl Friday starts with pretty girl and boring puny man going to say hello to shouty man. Boring puny man thinks shouty man is scary, but shouty man not scary. Hulk could crush shouty man! Shouty man never win Oscar anyway, except for honorary award in 1970! Honorary award sop to actor more famous than good! Hulk hate puny character actors! RRRRRAAAAARGH!
"Where was Hulk? Oh. Right. Shouty man and pretty girl talk too fast about stupid things. Shouty man says he loves pretty girl, but pretty girl is bored with him talking too fast and wants him to go away forever. Shouty man says he will do it if pretty girl goes to talk to puny puny man in jail, but he is lying! Hulk hate lying shouty man! Hulk think 'Arsenic and Old Lace' overrated translation of stage play anyway! Hulk prefer 'High Society' better than 'Philadelphia Story'! GRRRRRRRR!
"Hulk sorry. Hulk better now. So then pretty girl goes to jail to talk to puny puny man, and...puny puny man remind Hulk of Banner! Hulk hate Banner! Hulk hate puny puny man! But Hulk nonetheless finds moral ambiguity of situation fascinating. Puny puny man's insanity defense not genuinely warranted, but pretty girl support it anyway because stupid Mayor want puny puny man put to death. Stupid Mayor deserve to resign in disgrace, but puny puny man merely pawn in vaster game of politics. Hulk love flawed heroes!
"Then puny puny man escapes. Shouty man and pretty girl help him. Boring man not seen for most of movie. This not fair to boring man! Boring man not bad, just boring, and pretty girl dump him for shouty man just because shouty man has big chin! Hulk hate movie where romance presented as superior to long-term stability and emotional compatibility! Hulk hate unrealistic expectations placed on couples based on Hollywood "fiery romances"! Romance easier when couple only stays together until end credits! REARRRRRRGH!
"But before contrived and unrealistic romance plays out, stupid Mayor and stupid policeman try to arrest pretty girl and shouty man and puny puny man. But governor commutes sentence. Stupid Mayor looks stupid in front of everybody! Stupid policeman looks stupid in front of everybody! Contrived and unrealistic romance seems natural because actors have good chemistry. Everyone talks very very fast and boring man goes away. THE END."
"His Girl Friday starts with pretty girl and boring puny man going to say hello to shouty man. Boring puny man thinks shouty man is scary, but shouty man not scary. Hulk could crush shouty man! Shouty man never win Oscar anyway, except for honorary award in 1970! Honorary award sop to actor more famous than good! Hulk hate puny character actors! RRRRRAAAAARGH!
"Where was Hulk? Oh. Right. Shouty man and pretty girl talk too fast about stupid things. Shouty man says he loves pretty girl, but pretty girl is bored with him talking too fast and wants him to go away forever. Shouty man says he will do it if pretty girl goes to talk to puny puny man in jail, but he is lying! Hulk hate lying shouty man! Hulk think 'Arsenic and Old Lace' overrated translation of stage play anyway! Hulk prefer 'High Society' better than 'Philadelphia Story'! GRRRRRRRR!
"Hulk sorry. Hulk better now. So then pretty girl goes to jail to talk to puny puny man, and...puny puny man remind Hulk of Banner! Hulk hate Banner! Hulk hate puny puny man! But Hulk nonetheless finds moral ambiguity of situation fascinating. Puny puny man's insanity defense not genuinely warranted, but pretty girl support it anyway because stupid Mayor want puny puny man put to death. Stupid Mayor deserve to resign in disgrace, but puny puny man merely pawn in vaster game of politics. Hulk love flawed heroes!
"Then puny puny man escapes. Shouty man and pretty girl help him. Boring man not seen for most of movie. This not fair to boring man! Boring man not bad, just boring, and pretty girl dump him for shouty man just because shouty man has big chin! Hulk hate movie where romance presented as superior to long-term stability and emotional compatibility! Hulk hate unrealistic expectations placed on couples based on Hollywood "fiery romances"! Romance easier when couple only stays together until end credits! REARRRRRRGH!
"But before contrived and unrealistic romance plays out, stupid Mayor and stupid policeman try to arrest pretty girl and shouty man and puny puny man. But governor commutes sentence. Stupid Mayor looks stupid in front of everybody! Stupid policeman looks stupid in front of everybody! Contrived and unrealistic romance seems natural because actors have good chemistry. Everyone talks very very fast and boring man goes away. THE END."
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
There Is No Hyperbole Great Enough
DC Comics made an announcement today that should absolutely, positively, unequivocally stun everyone in the entire comics-reading world today. Seriously. There has never been news this big in my entire lifetime in the industry, not ever.
No, not the "We're relaunching everything at #1!" crap. That'll be retconned away within five years, max. (Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison have a collective Silver Age crush that makes Mark Waid look like Alan Moore. Their "reboots" are never going to last, because they're coming from the guys who undid 'Crisis' and invented a whole cosmology-shattering mini-series so that they could bring back the 70s Legion. Geoff Johns is psychologically incapable of true innovation.) No, I'm talking about the news of same-day digital distribution.
Or, as I call it, "Hey, comic book stores! F*** you sideways!"
Sure, DC is trying to downplay this. They're trying to say that they will have special incentives designed to get people into stores. (This is roughly akin to stabbing someone with a broadsword, hooking the open wound up to a turbine-powered exsanguinating vacuum pump, and then announcing that you plan to put some band-aids on the counter.) They're no doubt going to say that collectors will always want the print edition. (But in the kinds of numbers that can support an independent retailer?) They will no doubt point to their back-catalog of trade paperbacks. But honestly, that's all like spritzing the Hindenburg with one of those little plant misters.
Because this...this is in all likelihood the beginning of the end for print comics. Same-day digital means that anyone who wants to can go download their comics directly. No trips to the comics store, no waiting, your very own copy of a comic right there on the hard drive. And let's face it, the iPad has been regarded from the beginning as a perfect platform for digital comics. This is going to drain away a big chunk of the market from print.
And the profit margins for comics stores aren't great. Losing a big chunk of your DC sales is probably going to result in some retailers going out of business, especially for those stores that are going to have to try to guess how much their demand is going to drop and will be stuck with unsold copies if they over-order. (Personally, if I was a comic book store owner? Tomorrow, I'd have a sign outside saying, "DC Comics will only be available at this retail outlet if you pre-order them.")
And if stores start going out of business, Marvel is going to have to either jump on the digital bandwagon or lose money as they lose outlets for their product. And if Marvel goes digital, the death spiral continues...there's not a retailer running that can survive on solely its indie books. They need Marvel and DC to pay the bills, and they might not be there much longer.
Some might suggest that this is hyperbole. They might say that comics is such a tradition-oriented industry that this initiative will fail and leave comics back where it started, a niche market catering to nostalgia. (It's certainly the argument that I'm using regarding the "Every issue is a new #1!" BS.) Time will tell if I'm right or wrong.
But on the other hand...if MGM announced that it was making a new James Bond movie, and also announced that all their movies would be available on Netflix the same day as they came out in theaters...wouldn't you be talking less about who Bond is going to be and more about how hard this is going to make life for movie theater owners?
No, not the "We're relaunching everything at #1!" crap. That'll be retconned away within five years, max. (Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison have a collective Silver Age crush that makes Mark Waid look like Alan Moore. Their "reboots" are never going to last, because they're coming from the guys who undid 'Crisis' and invented a whole cosmology-shattering mini-series so that they could bring back the 70s Legion. Geoff Johns is psychologically incapable of true innovation.) No, I'm talking about the news of same-day digital distribution.
Or, as I call it, "Hey, comic book stores! F*** you sideways!"
Sure, DC is trying to downplay this. They're trying to say that they will have special incentives designed to get people into stores. (This is roughly akin to stabbing someone with a broadsword, hooking the open wound up to a turbine-powered exsanguinating vacuum pump, and then announcing that you plan to put some band-aids on the counter.) They're no doubt going to say that collectors will always want the print edition. (But in the kinds of numbers that can support an independent retailer?) They will no doubt point to their back-catalog of trade paperbacks. But honestly, that's all like spritzing the Hindenburg with one of those little plant misters.
Because this...this is in all likelihood the beginning of the end for print comics. Same-day digital means that anyone who wants to can go download their comics directly. No trips to the comics store, no waiting, your very own copy of a comic right there on the hard drive. And let's face it, the iPad has been regarded from the beginning as a perfect platform for digital comics. This is going to drain away a big chunk of the market from print.
And the profit margins for comics stores aren't great. Losing a big chunk of your DC sales is probably going to result in some retailers going out of business, especially for those stores that are going to have to try to guess how much their demand is going to drop and will be stuck with unsold copies if they over-order. (Personally, if I was a comic book store owner? Tomorrow, I'd have a sign outside saying, "DC Comics will only be available at this retail outlet if you pre-order them.")
And if stores start going out of business, Marvel is going to have to either jump on the digital bandwagon or lose money as they lose outlets for their product. And if Marvel goes digital, the death spiral continues...there's not a retailer running that can survive on solely its indie books. They need Marvel and DC to pay the bills, and they might not be there much longer.
Some might suggest that this is hyperbole. They might say that comics is such a tradition-oriented industry that this initiative will fail and leave comics back where it started, a niche market catering to nostalgia. (It's certainly the argument that I'm using regarding the "Every issue is a new #1!" BS.) Time will tell if I'm right or wrong.
But on the other hand...if MGM announced that it was making a new James Bond movie, and also announced that all their movies would be available on Netflix the same day as they came out in theaters...wouldn't you be talking less about who Bond is going to be and more about how hard this is going to make life for movie theater owners?
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Line Item: Hired Goons
Sorry about the slight delay in posting; I started a new job last week (yay!) and they've thrown me right in at the deep end on a big project, which necessitated lots of overtime this week. (I'm being slightly vague about the details because if there's one thing I've learned from being on the Internet, it's that no matter how innocuous your blog posts about your job are, you still don't want any identifying details about the job.) The big project involves collecting some information from all of our outside contractors in order to update the database.
Anyhow, I got corrected (I'm still a little too new to actually "get in trouble") because, when one of the contractors refused to provide the information, I passed word of that refusal along to the regional manager for that area. I did so mainly because the refusal sounded like it was "with prejudice", as it were, and I wanted them to know that they might have some angry contractors to soothe. As it turned out, though, people like me don't talk directly to people like him. There are channels to go through for that.
I apologized, like you do, and explained that I went directly to the regional manager because I'd been told in the email that "it is your responsibility to make sure the information is collected for every name on this list." As far as I was concerned, that meant I should do whatever I had to in order to get that update done.
I didn't say so at the time, but I did picture using comic hyperbole to make my point. "If I have to email the regional manager, I will. If I have to call the CEO and ask him to make a personal visit, I will. If I have to hire some goons to go out and rough these people up until they update their profile in our system, well, then, that's what I have to do." Pause. "Of course, I'd expect to be reimbursed for that. Do I have to submit an invoice, or...?"
Of course, I'd have to note it in the "Comments" section of their profile. "Goons hired, will contact when vendor roughed up sufficiently."
Anyhow, I got corrected (I'm still a little too new to actually "get in trouble") because, when one of the contractors refused to provide the information, I passed word of that refusal along to the regional manager for that area. I did so mainly because the refusal sounded like it was "with prejudice", as it were, and I wanted them to know that they might have some angry contractors to soothe. As it turned out, though, people like me don't talk directly to people like him. There are channels to go through for that.
I apologized, like you do, and explained that I went directly to the regional manager because I'd been told in the email that "it is your responsibility to make sure the information is collected for every name on this list." As far as I was concerned, that meant I should do whatever I had to in order to get that update done.
I didn't say so at the time, but I did picture using comic hyperbole to make my point. "If I have to email the regional manager, I will. If I have to call the CEO and ask him to make a personal visit, I will. If I have to hire some goons to go out and rough these people up until they update their profile in our system, well, then, that's what I have to do." Pause. "Of course, I'd expect to be reimbursed for that. Do I have to submit an invoice, or...?"
Of course, I'd have to note it in the "Comments" section of their profile. "Goons hired, will contact when vendor roughed up sufficiently."
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Paul Ryan Medicare Plan In a Nutshell
"Now, I think we're all aware that we have a serious spending problem in this household. I make ten thousand dollars a month, but with the three thousand dollars a month that we pay for Grandma's heart medication and the three thousand dollars a month I spend on sweet, delicious candy, that barely leaves enough to make ends meet. Therefore, I propose that we cut down to spending only one thousand dollars a month on Grandma's heart medication--and because I'm fiscally responsible and willing to make hard choices, I'll only use half of the two thousand dollars we're saving to buy more candy. That's right--I'm such a serious, responsible person that I'm willing to take a full thousand dollars a month that could be used to buy chewy, chocolatey goodness and put it towards saving for our future.
"It's a tough decision, but that's just the kind of guy I am."
"It's a tough decision, but that's just the kind of guy I am."
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Exciting Pixar News!
Of course, we've all heard the announcement of Monsters University, the next movie after Cars 2 and Brave and the first Pixar prequel. But what you may not have heard is that this is just the first of an entire new slate of films exploring the beginnings of Pixar's beloved characters! Brad Bird and John Lasseter are already thrilled about the idea of getting at the roots of what made Pixar's protagonists tick. Some of the slated films include:
Losing Coral: A shocking and gruesome tale of terror and revenge, Losing Coral focuses on the night when clownfish Coral runs afoul of a brutal, sadistic barracuda named "Heartless" (voiced by Christopher Walken.) The taut, suspenseful thriller follows the deadly game of cat-and-mouse Heartless plays with Coral, a game that ends in tragedy when Heartless murders her and devours her eggs. The film then follows Marlin as, pushed over the edge by the death of his mate, he hunts down and kills Heartless by luring him into a nematocyst. About to commit suicide, Marlin discovers that one egg has survived...an egg he decides to call Nemo.
Cars 0: Carmageddon: When the first machines develop sentience, humanity is initially thrilled by the development of a machine culture. After all, we built them--surely they'll be grateful to their creators? But instead, the human race finds itself locked in a deadly battle with the vehicles they designed, and only one race can survive. In the end, the machines exterminate the people, leaving nothing but the trace remnants of our culture to survive in the entertainments the new mechanical race devises for itself.
The All-Too Credibles: Thrill as Bob puts on a few extra pounds and loses job after job! Gasp as Helen slowly gives up on her own ambitions to become a stay-at-home mom! And be astounded by Violet's unhappy school years as she slowly learns to keep her head down and not make waves because girls don't get called on anyway! It's an exciting descent into vague dissatisfaction for the whole family!
WALL-Lander: As it becomes apparent that humanity will not return, and the trash removal robots slowly begin to break down, each one realizes that the only path to survival is to cannibalize its brethren for parts. A vicious war begins, as each robot seeks to disable its fellows so that it can keep itself alive that much longer. In the end, there can be only one...
...this isn't doing anything to disprove my belief that I'm never going to be working for Pixar, is it?
Losing Coral: A shocking and gruesome tale of terror and revenge, Losing Coral focuses on the night when clownfish Coral runs afoul of a brutal, sadistic barracuda named "Heartless" (voiced by Christopher Walken.) The taut, suspenseful thriller follows the deadly game of cat-and-mouse Heartless plays with Coral, a game that ends in tragedy when Heartless murders her and devours her eggs. The film then follows Marlin as, pushed over the edge by the death of his mate, he hunts down and kills Heartless by luring him into a nematocyst. About to commit suicide, Marlin discovers that one egg has survived...an egg he decides to call Nemo.
Cars 0: Carmageddon: When the first machines develop sentience, humanity is initially thrilled by the development of a machine culture. After all, we built them--surely they'll be grateful to their creators? But instead, the human race finds itself locked in a deadly battle with the vehicles they designed, and only one race can survive. In the end, the machines exterminate the people, leaving nothing but the trace remnants of our culture to survive in the entertainments the new mechanical race devises for itself.
The All-Too Credibles: Thrill as Bob puts on a few extra pounds and loses job after job! Gasp as Helen slowly gives up on her own ambitions to become a stay-at-home mom! And be astounded by Violet's unhappy school years as she slowly learns to keep her head down and not make waves because girls don't get called on anyway! It's an exciting descent into vague dissatisfaction for the whole family!
WALL-Lander: As it becomes apparent that humanity will not return, and the trash removal robots slowly begin to break down, each one realizes that the only path to survival is to cannibalize its brethren for parts. A vicious war begins, as each robot seeks to disable its fellows so that it can keep itself alive that much longer. In the end, there can be only one...
...this isn't doing anything to disprove my belief that I'm never going to be working for Pixar, is it?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Why They Will Never Let Me Work At Pixar
2025: Overpopulation and pollution conspire to breed a new "super-virus", created by chemical-induced mutation of an existing bug and incubated in the vast shantytowns of the underclass. The virus causes vast mutations to the human brain, turning key sections to become anaerobic tissue and allowing other sections to die off. This creates mindless, vicious assailants that continue to attack long after their circulatory and renal systems have shut down. These infected, quickly nicknamed "zombies" due to their difficulty to kill and hunger for living human flesh, spread like wildfire through the overcrowded Earth.
2030: Overpopulation is now the least of humanity's problems, as the zombie plague has now covered 95% of the areas inhabited by humankind. With the last few strongholds of humanity about to fall, the decision is made to evacuate Earth completely. The resources of the remaining population are devoted to creating ships that can hold the survivors for as long as it takes for the zombies to die off. Robotic killing machines are sent out into the wastelands to humanely exterminate the infected, as humanity leaves the world of its birth forever.
2546: A robotic probe is sent back to Earth to determine whether the planet is fit for humanity once more. What it discovers is a terrifying dystopia where the zombie virus has mutated yet again; the zombie survivors have retained their intelligence, and now rule the Earth. Humanity is kept in "breeding pits", enslaved for life and used either for food, or transformed into consumers of human flesh. The robots have all been overwhelmed, save for one. One last hope for the enslaved and exiled humanity, one last hero for the human race...
WALL-E, Zombie Hunter.
...oh, come on. You'd pay to see it.
2030: Overpopulation is now the least of humanity's problems, as the zombie plague has now covered 95% of the areas inhabited by humankind. With the last few strongholds of humanity about to fall, the decision is made to evacuate Earth completely. The resources of the remaining population are devoted to creating ships that can hold the survivors for as long as it takes for the zombies to die off. Robotic killing machines are sent out into the wastelands to humanely exterminate the infected, as humanity leaves the world of its birth forever.
2546: A robotic probe is sent back to Earth to determine whether the planet is fit for humanity once more. What it discovers is a terrifying dystopia where the zombie virus has mutated yet again; the zombie survivors have retained their intelligence, and now rule the Earth. Humanity is kept in "breeding pits", enslaved for life and used either for food, or transformed into consumers of human flesh. The robots have all been overwhelmed, save for one. One last hope for the enslaved and exiled humanity, one last hero for the human race...
WALL-E, Zombie Hunter.
...oh, come on. You'd pay to see it.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Why Smallville Is Not Doctor Who
It's been a while since I've watched an episode of Smallville; I haven't actually checked, because I don't care that much about the show, but I think the last episode I watched in its entirety was the third or fourth episode of Season One. But when I heard that the last episode would be airing on Friday night, I felt that there'd be a certain poetic symmetry in watching only the first(-ish) and the last episodes. Plus, given the reputation that the series has gotten over the last ten years, I figured that I'd be onto something good by skipping the ten seasons of hinting, teasing and stalling and getting straight to his transformation into Superman.
You may now laugh.
As it turned out, even the grand, huge, epic "finale" to Smallville was an exercise in drawing out the thin gruel of a story it had been subsisting on for the last decade. Everything was about not changing, about not surprising, about giving its viewers as close to the same experience as they could get without violating the show's mandate of demonstrating how Clark Kent became Superman. There were reset buttons a-plenty, retcons and reappearances, and massive dodges (I someday want to explain to television writers that legally, you're married when you sign the marriage certificate. Failure to say, "I do" means diddly-squat in the eyes of the law.) And in the end, we never really even got to see Superman; there were a few CGI sequences with the character shown from a distance, but in the end, they were driven by the need to keep things the way they'd always been. "No tights, no flights," the unbreakable rule of the series.
And then, the next night, I watched "The Doctor's Wife". And while I won't spoil anything, because the episode is very wonderful, very surprising, and many people probably haven't seen it yet, I will say that it is the epitome of everything that Doctor Who is and everything that Smallville isn't. Instead of being an "epic game-changer" that really doesn't change anything, not even really the things it's obligated to change...this was a normal, everyday, stand-alone non-arc episode that just happened to transform everything you thought you knew about forty-eight years of the series. And it did it almost casually.
Doctor Who is, and always has been like that. It's never been afraid to reinvent itself, not even after forty-eight years. It's a bold, inventive show that has no boundaries, no self-imposed rules, and no orthodoxies to uphold. That's why it attracted a writer of the caliber of Neil Gaiman, whereas Smallville has had to content itself with Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb. That's why it's still going and why I don't think it'll ever stop. Because it's a show that can do anything...and one that will do anything.
You may now laugh.
As it turned out, even the grand, huge, epic "finale" to Smallville was an exercise in drawing out the thin gruel of a story it had been subsisting on for the last decade. Everything was about not changing, about not surprising, about giving its viewers as close to the same experience as they could get without violating the show's mandate of demonstrating how Clark Kent became Superman. There were reset buttons a-plenty, retcons and reappearances, and massive dodges (I someday want to explain to television writers that legally, you're married when you sign the marriage certificate. Failure to say, "I do" means diddly-squat in the eyes of the law.) And in the end, we never really even got to see Superman; there were a few CGI sequences with the character shown from a distance, but in the end, they were driven by the need to keep things the way they'd always been. "No tights, no flights," the unbreakable rule of the series.
And then, the next night, I watched "The Doctor's Wife". And while I won't spoil anything, because the episode is very wonderful, very surprising, and many people probably haven't seen it yet, I will say that it is the epitome of everything that Doctor Who is and everything that Smallville isn't. Instead of being an "epic game-changer" that really doesn't change anything, not even really the things it's obligated to change...this was a normal, everyday, stand-alone non-arc episode that just happened to transform everything you thought you knew about forty-eight years of the series. And it did it almost casually.
Doctor Who is, and always has been like that. It's never been afraid to reinvent itself, not even after forty-eight years. It's a bold, inventive show that has no boundaries, no self-imposed rules, and no orthodoxies to uphold. That's why it attracted a writer of the caliber of Neil Gaiman, whereas Smallville has had to content itself with Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb. That's why it's still going and why I don't think it'll ever stop. Because it's a show that can do anything...and one that will do anything.
Monday, May 09, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, Finale
Technically, it's the last two episodes crammed together in a not-at-all-blatantly obvious fashion, no siree! Much like Riding With Death and the Master Ninja series, CBS has seamlessly blended these two episodes into a two-hour extravaganza so brilliantly that you can't even see the join! (I suspect it was somewhere around the Pit Stop at the halfway point, but that could just be crazy talk.)
In any event, at the start of the first epis...er, first half of the episode, the four remaining teams (Flight Time/Big Easy, Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory, Jen/Kisha) are still in Switzerland. They all head to the airport to get their flights to Rio de Janeiro, and the Globetrotters luck into a flight that seems like it will give them (and Zev/Justin, who were tagging along with them) a seven hour head start over the other two teams. This good fortune lasts until Mallory asks Flight Time, "Did you find anything better?", at which point his eyes widen like he's just seen an oncoming train, his mouth hangs open for a long moment, and he finally says, "Um, no! We were looking to see what y'all got!" Unsurprisingly, his devastating poker face fails to fool Mallory's razor-keen intellect, and soon all four teams are booked on the same flight.
Once they get to Rio, a little taxi roulette and a trolley schedule give the other three teams a half-hour lead over the Globetrotters, which is pretty much entirely eaten up for Zev and Justin when they choose Zev to do a dancing challenge. I'm not going to say he has the worst rhythm of anyone ever on the Race, because I know better, but his lack of dancing skills combined with his social disorder lead him to a) get through the challenge very slowly, and b) slap one of his instructors on the ass, which made me wish she'd have returned the favor on the back of his head. Mallory and Jen cruise through the challenge looking like they had a lot of fun, though.
Then everyone gets fifteen minutes of body waxing. For some, this meant they came out perfectly smooth. For Zev and Justin, it just meant that the waxers managed to get the first couple of layers of fur off. (The timer elapsed before they could get the machetes and flamethrowers to really slash and burn.) After that, three of the teams did the drink-mixing half of the Detour, while Zev and Justin basically said, "Nah, we don't want to be in the Final Three anyway!" and went to go sell bikinis on a beach. Because nothing works like having two white guys, one of whom has a social disorder, wander up and say to random bikini-wearing women, "Hi! Take that off and pay us money to model one of ours!" Needless to say, the first half ends with Zev and Justin getting eliminated. Honestly, they only had one or two genuinely bad legs this time around, but when they were the 10th and 11th, that was all that mattered.
The second epis...er, half...begins with the teams heading back to Miami for the final leg of the Race. There's a lot of chatting, recapping (pffh...recapping...like anyone could make that interesting...) and general catching-up to get people excited for the final trek to the Finish Line...and then Gary and Mallory get a genuinely incompetent taxi driver and don't even see another racer until the last challenge. So this is pretty much a two-team race, here. (For the record, I agree with everybody else who said, "Gary and Mallory should have realized how bad their driver was very early on and ditched him for another instead of sticking with him until it was too late to make up the time." But hindsight is 20/20.)
The other two teams face two Road Blocks in a row (one of those little "gotchas" I appreciate, because it means that teams who strategize all the way through the Race to make sure that their strongest Racer gets the last Road Block wind up having to put their weaker half in for the very last one) and a challenge that was annoying due to wind and weather and the need to be super-attentive to detail. No Detour, though. Come to think of it, there wasn't one last season, either. Maybe they just want to make sure everyone has to do the exact same challenges for the final leg. (That also seems to be the motivation for the obvious bunching for the final leg.)
Then finally, in one of the nastiest final tasks I can remember, they have a seven-mile bike ride to the Finish Line. It's close--the Globetrotters actually have Jen and Kisha in sight as they trek across Seven-Mile Bridge--but in the end, Jen and Kisha become the second all-female team to win the Amazing Race. (Which should, by the way, shut everyone up who claimed that Nat and Kat won by beating a "weak field of Racers"; Jen and Kisha beat several teams that finished in the Final Three on previous Races, and were one of only two all-female teams this time out. And frankly, I think if this Final Three had been put on Nat and Kat's race along with them, they would still have beaten out all five of the other teams. But that's unprovable.)
And that's it for another season of the Amazing Race! As always, I'm looking forward to the next one.
In any event, at the start of the first epis...er, first half of the episode, the four remaining teams (Flight Time/Big Easy, Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory, Jen/Kisha) are still in Switzerland. They all head to the airport to get their flights to Rio de Janeiro, and the Globetrotters luck into a flight that seems like it will give them (and Zev/Justin, who were tagging along with them) a seven hour head start over the other two teams. This good fortune lasts until Mallory asks Flight Time, "Did you find anything better?", at which point his eyes widen like he's just seen an oncoming train, his mouth hangs open for a long moment, and he finally says, "Um, no! We were looking to see what y'all got!" Unsurprisingly, his devastating poker face fails to fool Mallory's razor-keen intellect, and soon all four teams are booked on the same flight.
Once they get to Rio, a little taxi roulette and a trolley schedule give the other three teams a half-hour lead over the Globetrotters, which is pretty much entirely eaten up for Zev and Justin when they choose Zev to do a dancing challenge. I'm not going to say he has the worst rhythm of anyone ever on the Race, because I know better, but his lack of dancing skills combined with his social disorder lead him to a) get through the challenge very slowly, and b) slap one of his instructors on the ass, which made me wish she'd have returned the favor on the back of his head. Mallory and Jen cruise through the challenge looking like they had a lot of fun, though.
Then everyone gets fifteen minutes of body waxing. For some, this meant they came out perfectly smooth. For Zev and Justin, it just meant that the waxers managed to get the first couple of layers of fur off. (The timer elapsed before they could get the machetes and flamethrowers to really slash and burn.) After that, three of the teams did the drink-mixing half of the Detour, while Zev and Justin basically said, "Nah, we don't want to be in the Final Three anyway!" and went to go sell bikinis on a beach. Because nothing works like having two white guys, one of whom has a social disorder, wander up and say to random bikini-wearing women, "Hi! Take that off and pay us money to model one of ours!" Needless to say, the first half ends with Zev and Justin getting eliminated. Honestly, they only had one or two genuinely bad legs this time around, but when they were the 10th and 11th, that was all that mattered.
The second epis...er, half...begins with the teams heading back to Miami for the final leg of the Race. There's a lot of chatting, recapping (pffh...recapping...like anyone could make that interesting...) and general catching-up to get people excited for the final trek to the Finish Line...and then Gary and Mallory get a genuinely incompetent taxi driver and don't even see another racer until the last challenge. So this is pretty much a two-team race, here. (For the record, I agree with everybody else who said, "Gary and Mallory should have realized how bad their driver was very early on and ditched him for another instead of sticking with him until it was too late to make up the time." But hindsight is 20/20.)
The other two teams face two Road Blocks in a row (one of those little "gotchas" I appreciate, because it means that teams who strategize all the way through the Race to make sure that their strongest Racer gets the last Road Block wind up having to put their weaker half in for the very last one) and a challenge that was annoying due to wind and weather and the need to be super-attentive to detail. No Detour, though. Come to think of it, there wasn't one last season, either. Maybe they just want to make sure everyone has to do the exact same challenges for the final leg. (That also seems to be the motivation for the obvious bunching for the final leg.)
Then finally, in one of the nastiest final tasks I can remember, they have a seven-mile bike ride to the Finish Line. It's close--the Globetrotters actually have Jen and Kisha in sight as they trek across Seven-Mile Bridge--but in the end, Jen and Kisha become the second all-female team to win the Amazing Race. (Which should, by the way, shut everyone up who claimed that Nat and Kat won by beating a "weak field of Racers"; Jen and Kisha beat several teams that finished in the Final Three on previous Races, and were one of only two all-female teams this time out. And frankly, I think if this Final Three had been put on Nat and Kat's race along with them, they would still have beaten out all five of the other teams. But that's unprovable.)
And that's it for another season of the Amazing Race! As always, I'm looking forward to the next one.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Why Syndrome Makes the Perfect Nemesis
I've been watching The Incredibles a lot lately; this has something to do with the fact that my daughter comes home from preschool with the words, "Can I watch The Incredibles?" practically bursting from her lips. It's actually displaced Toy Story 2 from the top of her "never sick of watching" list, which I didn't think was ever going to happen. So I've seen it on a near-daily basis, something that's afforded me a few opportunities to think about what Brad Bird was saying with the movie.
One of the things that's interested me is the way that Syndrome, Mr. Incredible, and Dash all seem to have different surface motivations, but the same basic underlying drive. Mr. Incredible, of course, insists that he's being genuinely altruistic; he feels bitter about the public reaction to superheroes (which is actually a matter for another post, because the idea of "superheroes getting sued into retirement" is kind of a handwave, to be honest, but I'm digressing here) and wants nothing more than to go back to the way things were.
Syndrome, on the other hand, is bitter and resentful about the lack of emotional support from Mr. Incredible when he was younger. He wants to show Mr. Incredible that he's a better hero, and that if he'd been allowed to be Incrediboy, he would have been a huge asset to the cause of good--to prove that Mr. Incredible was wrong to dismiss his gifts.
And Dash? He just wants to show off. He wants the world to acknowledge his specialness, and to receive the adulation he feels he deserves for his amazing abilities. Which is a little childish, but then again, he's ten. When he grows up...
...he'll wind up either like Mr. Incredible or Syndrome. Because underneath their surface motivations, that's exactly what they want too. Bob Parr doesn't want to save people anonymously, just because they need saving; he does do that over the course of the movie, but only because he can't go out as Mr. Incredible anymore. He only really comes to life when he's wearing his super-suit, performing amazing feats for an admiring audience (even if that audience is just Mirage and her mysterious benefactor.) Deep down, he really wants things to be the way they were when the world looked upon him with quiet awe and adulation.
Syndrome, of course, makes a second career out of self-justification in the movie. Looking at his actions, he's a pathetic, needy child who needs everyone to praise him for his gifts. As Mr. Incredible points out, he's killing real heroes in order to create a fake villain that people will praise him for stopping. While he claims that he's doing it all for Mr. Incredible, there's never been anything to stop him from using or selling his inventions to make the world a better place; it's just that doing so won't give him the emotional rush that comes from crowds cheering his name. Deep down, he and Mr. Incredible are two sides of the same coin, which is why he makes such a perfect nemesis. (And thus I make good on the implicit promise in the title...)
The real hero of the film, of course, is Elastigirl. She's the only one who can put aside her costume easily, because she wasn't ever in it for the glory; she was a superhero when the world needed one, and only when the world needed one. She's tried to pass along to her kids the belief that it's what the world wants ("the world wants us to fit in") and not selfish personal needs that are important; nonetheless, when her family needs Elastigirl, she proves to be easily the most competent of all of them.
One of the things that's interested me is the way that Syndrome, Mr. Incredible, and Dash all seem to have different surface motivations, but the same basic underlying drive. Mr. Incredible, of course, insists that he's being genuinely altruistic; he feels bitter about the public reaction to superheroes (which is actually a matter for another post, because the idea of "superheroes getting sued into retirement" is kind of a handwave, to be honest, but I'm digressing here) and wants nothing more than to go back to the way things were.
Syndrome, on the other hand, is bitter and resentful about the lack of emotional support from Mr. Incredible when he was younger. He wants to show Mr. Incredible that he's a better hero, and that if he'd been allowed to be Incrediboy, he would have been a huge asset to the cause of good--to prove that Mr. Incredible was wrong to dismiss his gifts.
And Dash? He just wants to show off. He wants the world to acknowledge his specialness, and to receive the adulation he feels he deserves for his amazing abilities. Which is a little childish, but then again, he's ten. When he grows up...
...he'll wind up either like Mr. Incredible or Syndrome. Because underneath their surface motivations, that's exactly what they want too. Bob Parr doesn't want to save people anonymously, just because they need saving; he does do that over the course of the movie, but only because he can't go out as Mr. Incredible anymore. He only really comes to life when he's wearing his super-suit, performing amazing feats for an admiring audience (even if that audience is just Mirage and her mysterious benefactor.) Deep down, he really wants things to be the way they were when the world looked upon him with quiet awe and adulation.
Syndrome, of course, makes a second career out of self-justification in the movie. Looking at his actions, he's a pathetic, needy child who needs everyone to praise him for his gifts. As Mr. Incredible points out, he's killing real heroes in order to create a fake villain that people will praise him for stopping. While he claims that he's doing it all for Mr. Incredible, there's never been anything to stop him from using or selling his inventions to make the world a better place; it's just that doing so won't give him the emotional rush that comes from crowds cheering his name. Deep down, he and Mr. Incredible are two sides of the same coin, which is why he makes such a perfect nemesis. (And thus I make good on the implicit promise in the title...)
The real hero of the film, of course, is Elastigirl. She's the only one who can put aside her costume easily, because she wasn't ever in it for the glory; she was a superhero when the world needed one, and only when the world needed one. She's tried to pass along to her kids the belief that it's what the world wants ("the world wants us to fit in") and not selfish personal needs that are important; nonetheless, when her family needs Elastigirl, she proves to be easily the most competent of all of them.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-10
Famous director Akira Kurosawa once directed a film called "Rashomon", based on a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa about the death of a samurai. The film makes an important point about the ambiguity of memory; even the most seemingly clear-cut situations can never be truly known, and all our attempts to bring order out of chaos by assembling events into a narrative are doomed from the beginning.
This will be important later. But for now, we start off in Switzerland, with our five teams setting out to a helipad for some good old-fashioned "hours of operation" bunching. Once that's out of the way, we start off with a Detour that involves trekking out into the trackless wastes of the Swiss Alps to rescue stranded tourists. (Or, more accurately, involves tourists trekking out to rescue actors/mannequins.) One option, Search, involves finding a buried mannequin and digging them up, while the other one, Rescue, involves one Racer lowering the other into a crevasse to "rescue" a probably very bored Swiss person.
Three teams (Kent/Vyxsin, Jen/Kisha, Flight Time/Big Easy) do Rescue. It's fairly easy, despite the editors' valiant attempts to recut Kent's whining into some sort of an actual crisis. It should be noted here that this is pretty much the point where killer fatigue and the arduous nature of the Race combine to boost Kent's natural whininess to intolerable levels. He's been getting gradually worse all season long, but this is the episode where it all goes off the rails and he hits "Perfect Storm" levels of general obnoxious whinging. He can't even put on his own hood when it gets windy.
The other two teams (Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory) do Search...which proves to be longer and more difficult, to the point where I started to wonder if Zev and Justin weren't going to need to be rescued while they searched. Both teams managed to save their mannequin, though...if you don't count the tiny, insignificant fact that they broke him in half while "saving" him. This puts them at a major disadvantage when they get to the Road Block.
Which is another Travelocity-themed challenge (we usually get about one per season.) This time, they have to make a giant painted chocolate Roaming Gnome, using two molds that each team has one of their Racers paint, freeze, fill with chocolate, freeze again by putting in a snowbank, then split open to reveal the creepy misshapen parody of a human being within. Once they've done all that, they get a clue and a non-chocolate gnome, which they then take on foot to the Pit Stop.
This is where the Rashomon stuff comes in. Because the molds aren't labeled, the shelves in the freezers aren't labeled, and everyone is working at a frantic pace to get their gnomes painted. And one of the Racers, Flight Time, looks up at one point to find that what he thought was his gnome-half is actually Vyxsin's. Or, from his point of view, what Vyxsin thinks is her half is actually his. There ensues what could be the most confusing sequence in Race history; even the audience isn't clear on what happened to which gnome, at least judging by the Television Without Pity forum. All we know is that neither Flight Time nor Vyxsin got a penalty, so whatever happened, neither one took work that didn't belong to them. It seems pretty clear that Vyxsin put her work on the bottom shelf precisely so that she would know which one was hers, too. Beyond that, the universe simply does not allow us to know what happened. Narrative fractures and decoheres, and all we can be sure of is that both Big Easy and Kent were being whiny dicks to each other in accusing each other's teammates of theft.
We can also be clear that Kent and Vyxsin didn't read their clue carefully enough, because they took a taxi to the Pit Stop. (Still managing to arrive in third, impressively. Apparently some of the other teams are good runners.) Despite the fact that he was holding the clue when they got into the taxi, and that Vyxsin said repeatedly that something wasn't right about the situation when they passed other teams that were on foot, Kent insists for the entire half-hour that this is all Vyxsin's fault for not reading the clue carefully enough and that she's dragging him down with her negative attitude. That's right--the man who literally had to be carried through a Detour like a six-month-old is telling the woman who dragged his ass along that she's holding him back. This marks the official point where everyone in the world started rooting for their elimination simply so that Vyxsin could tell him to fuck off and never see him again.
And everyone got their wish. The half-hour penalty elapses, giving Gary and Mallory and Zev and Justin time to get to the Pit Stop while Kent is still explaining that he's being positive by blaming everything on his teammate. They're eliminated, and next week it looks like the last four teams go off to Brazil, then the last three teams go to the Florida Keys in a double-sized season finale!
Which will, of course, be broken up into two normal-sized episodes for subsequent syndication. But c'est la vie!
This will be important later. But for now, we start off in Switzerland, with our five teams setting out to a helipad for some good old-fashioned "hours of operation" bunching. Once that's out of the way, we start off with a Detour that involves trekking out into the trackless wastes of the Swiss Alps to rescue stranded tourists. (Or, more accurately, involves tourists trekking out to rescue actors/mannequins.) One option, Search, involves finding a buried mannequin and digging them up, while the other one, Rescue, involves one Racer lowering the other into a crevasse to "rescue" a probably very bored Swiss person.
Three teams (Kent/Vyxsin, Jen/Kisha, Flight Time/Big Easy) do Rescue. It's fairly easy, despite the editors' valiant attempts to recut Kent's whining into some sort of an actual crisis. It should be noted here that this is pretty much the point where killer fatigue and the arduous nature of the Race combine to boost Kent's natural whininess to intolerable levels. He's been getting gradually worse all season long, but this is the episode where it all goes off the rails and he hits "Perfect Storm" levels of general obnoxious whinging. He can't even put on his own hood when it gets windy.
The other two teams (Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory) do Search...which proves to be longer and more difficult, to the point where I started to wonder if Zev and Justin weren't going to need to be rescued while they searched. Both teams managed to save their mannequin, though...if you don't count the tiny, insignificant fact that they broke him in half while "saving" him. This puts them at a major disadvantage when they get to the Road Block.
Which is another Travelocity-themed challenge (we usually get about one per season.) This time, they have to make a giant painted chocolate Roaming Gnome, using two molds that each team has one of their Racers paint, freeze, fill with chocolate, freeze again by putting in a snowbank, then split open to reveal the creepy misshapen parody of a human being within. Once they've done all that, they get a clue and a non-chocolate gnome, which they then take on foot to the Pit Stop.
This is where the Rashomon stuff comes in. Because the molds aren't labeled, the shelves in the freezers aren't labeled, and everyone is working at a frantic pace to get their gnomes painted. And one of the Racers, Flight Time, looks up at one point to find that what he thought was his gnome-half is actually Vyxsin's. Or, from his point of view, what Vyxsin thinks is her half is actually his. There ensues what could be the most confusing sequence in Race history; even the audience isn't clear on what happened to which gnome, at least judging by the Television Without Pity forum. All we know is that neither Flight Time nor Vyxsin got a penalty, so whatever happened, neither one took work that didn't belong to them. It seems pretty clear that Vyxsin put her work on the bottom shelf precisely so that she would know which one was hers, too. Beyond that, the universe simply does not allow us to know what happened. Narrative fractures and decoheres, and all we can be sure of is that both Big Easy and Kent were being whiny dicks to each other in accusing each other's teammates of theft.
We can also be clear that Kent and Vyxsin didn't read their clue carefully enough, because they took a taxi to the Pit Stop. (Still managing to arrive in third, impressively. Apparently some of the other teams are good runners.) Despite the fact that he was holding the clue when they got into the taxi, and that Vyxsin said repeatedly that something wasn't right about the situation when they passed other teams that were on foot, Kent insists for the entire half-hour that this is all Vyxsin's fault for not reading the clue carefully enough and that she's dragging him down with her negative attitude. That's right--the man who literally had to be carried through a Detour like a six-month-old is telling the woman who dragged his ass along that she's holding him back. This marks the official point where everyone in the world started rooting for their elimination simply so that Vyxsin could tell him to fuck off and never see him again.
And everyone got their wish. The half-hour penalty elapses, giving Gary and Mallory and Zev and Justin time to get to the Pit Stop while Kent is still explaining that he's being positive by blaming everything on his teammate. They're eliminated, and next week it looks like the last four teams go off to Brazil, then the last three teams go to the Florida Keys in a double-sized season finale!
Which will, of course, be broken up into two normal-sized episodes for subsequent syndication. But c'est la vie!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Possibly Contentious Buffy/Angel Question of the Day
Would Spike have been a better character if they'd moved him to "Angel" right away with Season One, rather than waiting for Season Five?
My logic for asking is this: Spike's character began as a foil for Angel, an unrepentant (and in fact, downright gleeful) vampire who contrasts with Angel's "I am so tormented over my former evil and I has a soul now and it hurts hurts hurts!" demeanor. The twist at the end of Season Two works because Spike is so unrepentantly sadistic and evil--once Angel loses his soul, he becomes so utterly mad and destructive that even Spike has to change sides. If Spike thinks you've gone too far, you've gone too far.
But instead of making him a recurring foil and comic-relief figure in "Angel", they kept him in "Buffy" for the next four seasons, where he slowly transformed from a contrast to Angel into an Angel wannabe. He stopped being threatening to the Scoobies, then he became their ally, then he fell in love with Buffy, then he got back his soul. By the end of Season Seven, he was basically a blond version of Angel in Season Three.
Then he went over to "Angel", where they quickly realized that having a blond Angel and a dark and spiky-haired Angel was one Angel too many, so they had to go to great lengths to suddenly and wrenchingly turn Spike back into Spike. Which seems like a lot of work to go through, hence the question: Would they have been better off putting him in "Angel" right from the get-go, thus keeping the character more consistent and avoiding the pitfalls of giving him a soul, a chip, et cetera?
I'm leaning vaguely towards yes-ish, but I'm mostly interested in what others have to say.
My logic for asking is this: Spike's character began as a foil for Angel, an unrepentant (and in fact, downright gleeful) vampire who contrasts with Angel's "I am so tormented over my former evil and I has a soul now and it hurts hurts hurts!" demeanor. The twist at the end of Season Two works because Spike is so unrepentantly sadistic and evil--once Angel loses his soul, he becomes so utterly mad and destructive that even Spike has to change sides. If Spike thinks you've gone too far, you've gone too far.
But instead of making him a recurring foil and comic-relief figure in "Angel", they kept him in "Buffy" for the next four seasons, where he slowly transformed from a contrast to Angel into an Angel wannabe. He stopped being threatening to the Scoobies, then he became their ally, then he fell in love with Buffy, then he got back his soul. By the end of Season Seven, he was basically a blond version of Angel in Season Three.
Then he went over to "Angel", where they quickly realized that having a blond Angel and a dark and spiky-haired Angel was one Angel too many, so they had to go to great lengths to suddenly and wrenchingly turn Spike back into Spike. Which seems like a lot of work to go through, hence the question: Would they have been better off putting him in "Angel" right from the get-go, thus keeping the character more consistent and avoiding the pitfalls of giving him a soul, a chip, et cetera?
I'm leaning vaguely towards yes-ish, but I'm mostly interested in what others have to say.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-9
Last time, we had six teams left on the Amazing Race. This time, we have...still six, because of a timely non-elimination leg that saved Gary and Mallory. Everyone seems pretty aware that they're not going to get that lucky again--I (and presumably all the Racers at this point) expect that it's going to be the last NEL of this Race, which is good because we've had three episodes where nobody got eliminated and I want blood. Blood! BLOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
With that in mind, the six remaining teams left Austria and headed to Lichtenstein, home of the undead sorcerer...no, wait. There are no actual liches in Lichtenstein, are there? Dang. Just when you think they've found the coolest location for the Race...oh well. They head to the tiny little postage-stamp country of Lichtenstein for the next leg. How small? Well, let's find out! All six teams must measure the western border of Lichtenstein as their Road Block, riding motorized bicycles and measuring the distance on their odometers. Correctly navigate the 22 km course, you get the next clue. Screw up, and you go 22 km back to start and then 22 km back to the end and guess again.
As you can imagine, getting this one wrong is Very Bad. And it's around here where we say to ourselves, "What's the one problem that otherwise super-competent team Jet and Cord have had this season? Oh, right. Navigation." Sure enough, as we watch everyone navigate the course, we see Jet getting lost somewhere in the tiny country of Lichtenstein. And although he can't get too lost in a country that's actually smaller than some Oklahoma ranches, this is one case where precision pays.
"Ah," you say, "but what about the other teams? Surely someone is going to help him out by screwing up just as bad?" This is where the bit that left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth comes in...Zev and Justin, who get it right, pass on the information to the Globetrotters (specifically Flight Time, if I recall correctly) who then lets Gary know. So of the six teams, only three got it right the first time (Vyxsin and Kisha both did it without help, although Kisha had her guess confirmed before submitting it), but only one had to do the course over. This seems a trifle unfair to me. There's no rule against it, there's nothing that says that other teams can't do a little kingmaking by getting rid of a team that's been almost supernaturally good at breezing through Detours and Road Blocks, but it still leaves me with some uncomfortable "what ifs" in a show that doesn't normally have them.
But the Cowboys made a good effort at catching up. They might have hit the Detour well after everybody else (probably an hour or so behind, given that it was a roughly 10-mile course and the Velosolex they used, while capable of high speeds, was probably being ridden at about 20 mph for safety's sake)...but man, did they catch up fast. The Detour was a choice between delivering luggage and eating an entire pot of cheese fondue, and they knuckled down and ran luggage around town like nobody's business.
Unfortunately, everyone had an hour's head start. Zev and Justin took the cheese (they were the only one, hence the old saying, "the cheese stands alone") and muscled through it in about an hour, with only one bout of vomiting. (Also legal, also leaving a bad taste in one's mouth, but for entirely different reasons.) Kent and Vyxsin did luggage and we saw again that Vyxsin is way more determined, way better suited to the physical challenges, and way less patient with her partner than her last time on the Race. At one point, she tells Kent to get on the empty luggage cart and literally drags him back to the checkpoint. That's right, after years of jokes about one partner carrying another, it's finally happened for real.
Oh, and at the end of the Detour right before the Pit Stop, there's a Double U-Turn. This is a brutal place to put a U-Turn; since it's right before the Pit Stop (not that the Racers knew, but...) anyone who gets U-Turned is pretty much left in the dust. There's nowhere left on the leg to make up the time. That's why they made it a Double-U-Turn; a single one would be like a sign saying, "Who do you want eliminated?"
Unfortunately for the Cowboys, the first four teams didn't use that U-Turn. Vyxsin and Kent couldn't, because you can only U-Turn once per race and they'd already used theirs to FUBAR the Cheerleaders, and the other three teams who got there early (Gary/Mallory, Jen/Kisha, Zev/Justin) decided that as long as they were doing okay, they weren't going to piss anyone else off by U-Turning them. Which meant that when the Globetrotters got to the checkpoint, mere minutes ahead of the Cowboys (well, at least that's how it was edited to look--they might have been further behind, but the Globetrotters did screw up the luggage task and had to deliver an extra two bags...) they knew exactly what to do. Put the game out of reach by slapping the Cowboys' picture up there.
So sure enough, the Cowboys arrived to see that they were DOA. They went back, had a nice, leisurely meal of cheese fondue, and checked in for their inevitable Philimination. Which is tough for them, since they mainly got eliminated because nobody wanted to help them the one time they needed it, but then again, maybe those people just had gay friends. (Yes, I went there.) And honestly, at this stage of the Race there are no "good" eliminations. Everyone goes out hurting.
Five teams left, next week is Switzerland, and apparently Kent gets into an argument with a guy big enough to use him as a toothpick. Good luck, Kent!
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
With that in mind, the six remaining teams left Austria and headed to Lichtenstein, home of the undead sorcerer...no, wait. There are no actual liches in Lichtenstein, are there? Dang. Just when you think they've found the coolest location for the Race...oh well. They head to the tiny little postage-stamp country of Lichtenstein for the next leg. How small? Well, let's find out! All six teams must measure the western border of Lichtenstein as their Road Block, riding motorized bicycles and measuring the distance on their odometers. Correctly navigate the 22 km course, you get the next clue. Screw up, and you go 22 km back to start and then 22 km back to the end and guess again.
As you can imagine, getting this one wrong is Very Bad. And it's around here where we say to ourselves, "What's the one problem that otherwise super-competent team Jet and Cord have had this season? Oh, right. Navigation." Sure enough, as we watch everyone navigate the course, we see Jet getting lost somewhere in the tiny country of Lichtenstein. And although he can't get too lost in a country that's actually smaller than some Oklahoma ranches, this is one case where precision pays.
"Ah," you say, "but what about the other teams? Surely someone is going to help him out by screwing up just as bad?" This is where the bit that left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth comes in...Zev and Justin, who get it right, pass on the information to the Globetrotters (specifically Flight Time, if I recall correctly) who then lets Gary know. So of the six teams, only three got it right the first time (Vyxsin and Kisha both did it without help, although Kisha had her guess confirmed before submitting it), but only one had to do the course over. This seems a trifle unfair to me. There's no rule against it, there's nothing that says that other teams can't do a little kingmaking by getting rid of a team that's been almost supernaturally good at breezing through Detours and Road Blocks, but it still leaves me with some uncomfortable "what ifs" in a show that doesn't normally have them.
But the Cowboys made a good effort at catching up. They might have hit the Detour well after everybody else (probably an hour or so behind, given that it was a roughly 10-mile course and the Velosolex they used, while capable of high speeds, was probably being ridden at about 20 mph for safety's sake)...but man, did they catch up fast. The Detour was a choice between delivering luggage and eating an entire pot of cheese fondue, and they knuckled down and ran luggage around town like nobody's business.
Unfortunately, everyone had an hour's head start. Zev and Justin took the cheese (they were the only one, hence the old saying, "the cheese stands alone") and muscled through it in about an hour, with only one bout of vomiting. (Also legal, also leaving a bad taste in one's mouth, but for entirely different reasons.) Kent and Vyxsin did luggage and we saw again that Vyxsin is way more determined, way better suited to the physical challenges, and way less patient with her partner than her last time on the Race. At one point, she tells Kent to get on the empty luggage cart and literally drags him back to the checkpoint. That's right, after years of jokes about one partner carrying another, it's finally happened for real.
Oh, and at the end of the Detour right before the Pit Stop, there's a Double U-Turn. This is a brutal place to put a U-Turn; since it's right before the Pit Stop (not that the Racers knew, but...) anyone who gets U-Turned is pretty much left in the dust. There's nowhere left on the leg to make up the time. That's why they made it a Double-U-Turn; a single one would be like a sign saying, "Who do you want eliminated?"
Unfortunately for the Cowboys, the first four teams didn't use that U-Turn. Vyxsin and Kent couldn't, because you can only U-Turn once per race and they'd already used theirs to FUBAR the Cheerleaders, and the other three teams who got there early (Gary/Mallory, Jen/Kisha, Zev/Justin) decided that as long as they were doing okay, they weren't going to piss anyone else off by U-Turning them. Which meant that when the Globetrotters got to the checkpoint, mere minutes ahead of the Cowboys (well, at least that's how it was edited to look--they might have been further behind, but the Globetrotters did screw up the luggage task and had to deliver an extra two bags...) they knew exactly what to do. Put the game out of reach by slapping the Cowboys' picture up there.
So sure enough, the Cowboys arrived to see that they were DOA. They went back, had a nice, leisurely meal of cheese fondue, and checked in for their inevitable Philimination. Which is tough for them, since they mainly got eliminated because nobody wanted to help them the one time they needed it, but then again, maybe those people just had gay friends. (Yes, I went there.) And honestly, at this stage of the Race there are no "good" eliminations. Everyone goes out hurting.
Five teams left, next week is Switzerland, and apparently Kent gets into an argument with a guy big enough to use him as a toothpick. Good luck, Kent!
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Brief Clarification
When River says, "I've never seen you looking so young," (in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead), she's not referring to the physical age of his current incarnation. She's referring to the youthful, carefree demeanor he has about him--a demeanor she'll never see in him again, because this is the only time he ever meets her that he doesn't know, to the exact second, when she's going to die.
Please stop pointing out that Matt Smith is younger than David Tennant, because that is missing the point.
Please stop pointing out that Matt Smith is younger than David Tennant, because that is missing the point.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Staking Out a Bold Position
It's Star Wars. It's just Star Wars, people. Yes, it was re-released as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but 28 Days Later was re-released as 29 Days Later when they put it back in theaters with the alternate endings and nobody calls it that. The standard naming convention for motion pictures is to call them by the title they were originally released under, then mention any alternate titles below that for means of convenience (such as Braindead, also released under the title Dead Alive.) Obsessively correcting everyone with, "Actually, it's A New Hope" isn't just pedantic and obnoxious, it's incorrect.
Star Wars. Ask for it by name.
Star Wars. Ask for it by name.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-8
We're down to...six teams, now? Wow. It's starting to get pretty easy to keep track of people, now that we've winnowed away almost half the field. In any event, those six teams started off in India, but now need to go to Vienna, Austria, where a Ford Focus commercial is waiting for them. Jet and Cord once again decide to spot all the other teams a head-start, this time by a half-hour, as they pick a different flight in the hopes that one or more people will miss a connection and give them an advantage. Instead, they hit Austria a half-hour behind everyone. Guys? Not that I actually want you to win, given your attitude towards gay people, but you are reaching that point in the Race where those are elimination mistakes instead of charmingly doofy mistakes.
The teams all get to Vienna, where they each get a brand new Ford Focus to drive, and are instructed to use its easy touch-screen system to get the next clue. This backfires slightly on Ford, as we then get a scene of Gary mildly swearing as he tries to figure out how to make the easy touch-screen system work. But eventually he figures it out, and all the teams head to an Austrian castle!
...where they get a book, which they're instructed to deliver to a library via Ford Focus. Is it just me, or is the product placement a little bit more intrusive this season? Other than the "lifetime supply of 7-Up" from Season 16, I can't think of another time they've been this much in your face with the sponsor's stuff. (Oh, and the prize for this week is a Ford Focus for each Racer...which isn't a lifetime supply, unless the Ford Focus is an amazingly reliable car. Or an unbelievable deathtrap.)
In any event, at the library, we finally ditch the Ford Focus to do the Detour. One option is to deliver a couch from the Freud Museum to the University of Vienna (presumably without a single Freudian slip.) The other option is to eat a lot of schnitzel and baked potatoes and chocolate cake. Not one, not two, but three teams forget the cardinal rule of the Amazing Race: The better the food in the eating challenge, the nastier the catch in the challenge has to be. In this case, it's a timed eating challenge. All three teams fail, giving everyone else (in specific, the Cowboys) a chance to catch up.
Everyone delivers their couches--and surprisingly, the Goths do so amidst much bitching at each other. Their relationship this time out is very different, and a lot less supportive. (Rumor has it that they aren't actually dating anymore, just pretending to for purposes of the show. I obviously don't know, but they're not acting very much like a couple. Except in the sense that Nick and Vicki acted like a couple.) Then it's back to the Ford Focus, to go to the Road Block! (I was half-expecting the couches to be delivered via the spacious cargo room of the Ford Focus!)
Unfortunately for Gary and Mallory, who got passed by the Cowboys, the Road Block turns out to be one of those simple, mechanistic, takes-everybody-about-the-same-amount-of-time tasks. Fortunately, this turns out to be the season's first official non-elimination leg. (At least, fortunately as far as I'm concerned. I know there are people who can't stand Mallory's squealing excitement, but I think she's sweet.) And next week, we're off to Switzerland to see if they can catch up!
The teams all get to Vienna, where they each get a brand new Ford Focus to drive, and are instructed to use its easy touch-screen system to get the next clue. This backfires slightly on Ford, as we then get a scene of Gary mildly swearing as he tries to figure out how to make the easy touch-screen system work. But eventually he figures it out, and all the teams head to an Austrian castle!
...where they get a book, which they're instructed to deliver to a library via Ford Focus. Is it just me, or is the product placement a little bit more intrusive this season? Other than the "lifetime supply of 7-Up" from Season 16, I can't think of another time they've been this much in your face with the sponsor's stuff. (Oh, and the prize for this week is a Ford Focus for each Racer...which isn't a lifetime supply, unless the Ford Focus is an amazingly reliable car. Or an unbelievable deathtrap.)
In any event, at the library, we finally ditch the Ford Focus to do the Detour. One option is to deliver a couch from the Freud Museum to the University of Vienna (presumably without a single Freudian slip.) The other option is to eat a lot of schnitzel and baked potatoes and chocolate cake. Not one, not two, but three teams forget the cardinal rule of the Amazing Race: The better the food in the eating challenge, the nastier the catch in the challenge has to be. In this case, it's a timed eating challenge. All three teams fail, giving everyone else (in specific, the Cowboys) a chance to catch up.
Everyone delivers their couches--and surprisingly, the Goths do so amidst much bitching at each other. Their relationship this time out is very different, and a lot less supportive. (Rumor has it that they aren't actually dating anymore, just pretending to for purposes of the show. I obviously don't know, but they're not acting very much like a couple. Except in the sense that Nick and Vicki acted like a couple.) Then it's back to the Ford Focus, to go to the Road Block! (I was half-expecting the couches to be delivered via the spacious cargo room of the Ford Focus!)
Unfortunately for Gary and Mallory, who got passed by the Cowboys, the Road Block turns out to be one of those simple, mechanistic, takes-everybody-about-the-same-amount-of-time tasks. Fortunately, this turns out to be the season's first official non-elimination leg. (At least, fortunately as far as I'm concerned. I know there are people who can't stand Mallory's squealing excitement, but I think she's sweet.) And next week, we're off to Switzerland to see if they can catch up!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
We Need a New Word
The other day, I got to thinking about South Africa. I don't even remember what prompted it, but it popped into mind (oh, wait! I do know what prompted it! The radio was playing Lionel Ritchie's song "All Night Long", and thanks to a childhood thoroughly corrupted by MAD Magazine, their South Africa-themed parody "All-White Song" popped into mind. Never let it be said that I am too deep and somber a thinker for a casual pop-culture blog.)
In any event, I thought about Apartheid, and was reminded of Reagan's stance against the boycott of South Africa. And it occurred to me that it was, in its own perverse way, a very courageous stance to take. I mean, by the 1980s, pretty much everybody had come around to the idea that state-supported racism was a Bad Thing...some more reluctantly than others, of course...but the idea to publicly stand up and say, "I support a governmental policy of institutional bigotry against all comers!" was one that took a lot of guts.
And Paul Ryan, the representative from Wisconsin, is showing a similar degree of courage. It takes real guts to stand up and say, "I don't care who's against it--I'm going to loot the public treasury and leave America's elderly to die like dogs, and I'm funneling the proceeds to my millionaire cronies!" Most people would balk at that kind of stance, hedge on it to some degree at least, but not Ryan. He's boldly going forward with a plan despite the vast, principled opposition of over 80% of the voting public.
I propose that we coin the phrase "immoral courage" for this sort of behavior, a counterpart to the more commonly recognized "moral courage". It is rare, in this day and age, to find someone who is willing to be unabashedly, unrepentantly evil despite the very real risk of political and personal consequences for their actions, and such courage needs to be recognized.
Not applauded, of course. Just recognized.
In any event, I thought about Apartheid, and was reminded of Reagan's stance against the boycott of South Africa. And it occurred to me that it was, in its own perverse way, a very courageous stance to take. I mean, by the 1980s, pretty much everybody had come around to the idea that state-supported racism was a Bad Thing...some more reluctantly than others, of course...but the idea to publicly stand up and say, "I support a governmental policy of institutional bigotry against all comers!" was one that took a lot of guts.
And Paul Ryan, the representative from Wisconsin, is showing a similar degree of courage. It takes real guts to stand up and say, "I don't care who's against it--I'm going to loot the public treasury and leave America's elderly to die like dogs, and I'm funneling the proceeds to my millionaire cronies!" Most people would balk at that kind of stance, hedge on it to some degree at least, but not Ryan. He's boldly going forward with a plan despite the vast, principled opposition of over 80% of the voting public.
I propose that we coin the phrase "immoral courage" for this sort of behavior, a counterpart to the more commonly recognized "moral courage". It is rare, in this day and age, to find someone who is willing to be unabashedly, unrepentantly evil despite the very real risk of political and personal consequences for their actions, and such courage needs to be recognized.
Not applauded, of course. Just recognized.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-7
And after a two-week delay, we get going again! (I mean "we" as in the viewers, natch. I don't think they actually made the Racers sit down and wait for the Country Music Awards to finish. Actually, this episode was live-tweeted by Phil himself, as @PhilKeoghan, and he said it takes about 23 days for the Racers to go around the world. Um, suck it, Jules Verne?)
This time, we started with a little airport drama--Jet and Cord didn't ask the right questions at the ticket counter, and wound up on a flight an hour later than all the other teams. Ordinarily, this would be a cause for concern, except that a) I'm not really rooting for the Cowboys, because they were apparently the recipient of favorable editing their first time around that covered for their homophobic tendencies, and b) even if I were, I wouldn't be that concerned because they do have a tendency to make up whatever time they lose in navigational ineptitude by being that much better at the tasks than everyone else.
And sure enough, they made up their mistake in the Road Block (a fairly standard needle-in-a-haystack challenge where the teams had to find specific people in a crowd.) Ron, meanwhile, tanked it very seriously, coming out of the Road Block in dead last. But surely nobody else could make that many screw-ups, right?
Well, it was actually kind of close. Because while Kent and Vyxsin are by no means inept, they are not communicating and co-operating nearly as well as they did on their first run. Vyxsin has less patience with Kent (it does seem to be common knowledge that they're not dating anymore, despite what the show says) and Kent seems to have less enthusiasm for the Race. The two of them are making more mistakes, and handling their mistakes less well--that said, Vyxsin's decision to jump into the Ganges rather than continue going down the river the wrong direction was pretty gutsy.
(Oh, and there was a Detour involving buffalo manure. This was about the only interesting thing about it.)
In the end, though, Ron and Christina couldn't psychically convince the other teams to make enough mistakes to catch up after the disastrous Road Block, and they were duly eliminated. This does not break my heart. While Ron wasn't as bad as I heard he was the first time he was on the Race, he certainly wasn't that good. Unfortunately, the only thing we'll continue to see of them is their faces on the credits, which is my least favorite thing about them--Christina's smile is so fixed and wide, it looks like she's been replaced by an Auton duplicate of herself or something.
Next week, Kent and Vyxsin yell at each other some more, and Gary and Mallory eat a lot. Oh, and they're in Austria. I've always liked the European legs of the Race, so this should be fun.
This time, we started with a little airport drama--Jet and Cord didn't ask the right questions at the ticket counter, and wound up on a flight an hour later than all the other teams. Ordinarily, this would be a cause for concern, except that a) I'm not really rooting for the Cowboys, because they were apparently the recipient of favorable editing their first time around that covered for their homophobic tendencies, and b) even if I were, I wouldn't be that concerned because they do have a tendency to make up whatever time they lose in navigational ineptitude by being that much better at the tasks than everyone else.
And sure enough, they made up their mistake in the Road Block (a fairly standard needle-in-a-haystack challenge where the teams had to find specific people in a crowd.) Ron, meanwhile, tanked it very seriously, coming out of the Road Block in dead last. But surely nobody else could make that many screw-ups, right?
Well, it was actually kind of close. Because while Kent and Vyxsin are by no means inept, they are not communicating and co-operating nearly as well as they did on their first run. Vyxsin has less patience with Kent (it does seem to be common knowledge that they're not dating anymore, despite what the show says) and Kent seems to have less enthusiasm for the Race. The two of them are making more mistakes, and handling their mistakes less well--that said, Vyxsin's decision to jump into the Ganges rather than continue going down the river the wrong direction was pretty gutsy.
(Oh, and there was a Detour involving buffalo manure. This was about the only interesting thing about it.)
In the end, though, Ron and Christina couldn't psychically convince the other teams to make enough mistakes to catch up after the disastrous Road Block, and they were duly eliminated. This does not break my heart. While Ron wasn't as bad as I heard he was the first time he was on the Race, he certainly wasn't that good. Unfortunately, the only thing we'll continue to see of them is their faces on the credits, which is my least favorite thing about them--Christina's smile is so fixed and wide, it looks like she's been replaced by an Auton duplicate of herself or something.
Next week, Kent and Vyxsin yell at each other some more, and Gary and Mallory eat a lot. Oh, and they're in Austria. I've always liked the European legs of the Race, so this should be fun.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Hipster Zombie Only Listens To Singers That Are Dead
Leaping onto the "Hipster Ariel" trend (I'm no expert at image modifying, but you get the idea):
And for those who want to do it themselves:
And for those who want to do it themselves:
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Half-Hearted Song Parodies Still Count, Right?
I'll probably come back to this at some point to do the other verses, but I'm concerned that if I don't post the beginning now while I can still remember it, I'll forget that part too. So...
Way out in outer space, so far away from here,
On a far-off distant planet past the Sense-O-Sphere,
In a tiny little igloo made of ice and wood,
There lived an alien name of Johnny B Ood,
And he never ever learned to read and write so well,
But his telepathy song was just as clear as a bell.
Go go! Go, Johnny go! Go! Go...Johnny B Ood!
Way out in outer space, so far away from here,
On a far-off distant planet past the Sense-O-Sphere,
In a tiny little igloo made of ice and wood,
There lived an alien name of Johnny B Ood,
And he never ever learned to read and write so well,
But his telepathy song was just as clear as a bell.
Go go! Go, Johnny go! Go! Go...Johnny B Ood!
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Things I Miss: UHF
Not the movie. I own that. No, I miss UHF TV stations. They're still around, of course, but they're not the same as they were when I was a kid. Back before UPN and the WB and the CW (which is, like, the WB and UPN combined like Voltron, right?) there were only three networks (four, counting PBS)...but something like nine channels in any given area as you flipped through the VHF and UHF dials. Which meant that you had, at any given time, four or five channels that weren't network affiliates to anyone.
Pretty much all those networks showed the same thing: Re-runs of old television shows and cheap movies well past their theatrical prime. This was back before first-run syndicated shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation", when the shows you were more likely to see on a UHF station were things like "Perry Mason", "F Troop", and...well, okay, "Voltron". Because old Japanese cartoons were cheap, too. The days were filled with a surprisingly random selection of TV shows, the evenings were reserved for movies that, in a pre-video era, you probably hadn't seen and wouldn't mind watching. It was sort of like being in a room with someone else's streaming Netflix subscription.
Which was fun in and of itself (in a way that has obviously been far surpassed by today's five hundred channels of cable, DVDs of virtually every single TV series and most movies, and streaming online videos)...but the best part was the way that these old UHF stations distinguished themselves from their competitors. They didn't have original programming, they didn't have original movies, all they had was a library of old stuff that was virtually indistinguishable from everyone else's...and a group of underpaid, bored people with video cameras.
This was a recipe for awesome.
The advertisements were usually great; one of our local stations, Channel 41 (which only came in grainy, staticky, and vertical-hold challenged) called themselves "TV Heaven" and suggested that they were where good television shows went when they died. Another had ads for "Star Trek" re-runs where they advertised the Amazing "Bones" McCoy! "He's an escalator!" "I'm a doctor, not an escalator!" "He's a diplomat!" "I'm a doctor, not a diplomat!" "And he can even shuttle traffic to the moon!" "What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor!" What they lacked in steak, they made up in sizzle. And it was fun.
And when it came to movies...some people claim that comics are the truly American art form, but I think that horror hosts are almost more American than comic books. Whether Vampira, Svengoolie, Ghoulardi or Elvira, they treated classic horror movies with the mix of love and amusement they deserved. And I, of course, feel privileged as hell to have been a viewer of the ultimate evolution of the horror host phenomenon, the one-season wonder that made it good on a national scale, "Mystery Science Theater 3000". (Lucky me, right?)
It's cheesy, it's silly, and arguably everything about these networks is better now...but part of me feels like TV stations used to have more personality when that's all they had to work with. I liked these old UHF stations that ran things on the cheap, and part of me still misses them.
Pretty much all those networks showed the same thing: Re-runs of old television shows and cheap movies well past their theatrical prime. This was back before first-run syndicated shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation", when the shows you were more likely to see on a UHF station were things like "Perry Mason", "F Troop", and...well, okay, "Voltron". Because old Japanese cartoons were cheap, too. The days were filled with a surprisingly random selection of TV shows, the evenings were reserved for movies that, in a pre-video era, you probably hadn't seen and wouldn't mind watching. It was sort of like being in a room with someone else's streaming Netflix subscription.
Which was fun in and of itself (in a way that has obviously been far surpassed by today's five hundred channels of cable, DVDs of virtually every single TV series and most movies, and streaming online videos)...but the best part was the way that these old UHF stations distinguished themselves from their competitors. They didn't have original programming, they didn't have original movies, all they had was a library of old stuff that was virtually indistinguishable from everyone else's...and a group of underpaid, bored people with video cameras.
This was a recipe for awesome.
The advertisements were usually great; one of our local stations, Channel 41 (which only came in grainy, staticky, and vertical-hold challenged) called themselves "TV Heaven" and suggested that they were where good television shows went when they died. Another had ads for "Star Trek" re-runs where they advertised the Amazing "Bones" McCoy! "He's an escalator!" "I'm a doctor, not an escalator!" "He's a diplomat!" "I'm a doctor, not a diplomat!" "And he can even shuttle traffic to the moon!" "What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor!" What they lacked in steak, they made up in sizzle. And it was fun.
And when it came to movies...some people claim that comics are the truly American art form, but I think that horror hosts are almost more American than comic books. Whether Vampira, Svengoolie, Ghoulardi or Elvira, they treated classic horror movies with the mix of love and amusement they deserved. And I, of course, feel privileged as hell to have been a viewer of the ultimate evolution of the horror host phenomenon, the one-season wonder that made it good on a national scale, "Mystery Science Theater 3000". (Lucky me, right?)
It's cheesy, it's silly, and arguably everything about these networks is better now...but part of me feels like TV stations used to have more personality when that's all they had to work with. I liked these old UHF stations that ran things on the cheap, and part of me still misses them.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Rural Kentucky Begins "That Boy Ain't Right" Awareness Month
Disassociated Press, KY
Once again, rural Kentucky has announced that April is "That Boy Ain't Right" Awareness Month. "Although the number of incidences of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome have once again decreased, we still have a number of children in rural Kentucky that, for whatever reason, ain't right in the head," said Big Jim Crenshaw, chief of the Not Right In the Head Research Institute. "We hope to raise awareness of this serious condition, and explain the treatment options to parents of boys that aren't right in the head."
While it was once common nationwide to see boys and girls who simply weren't right in the head, the number of cases has gone down at approximately the same rate as the rise in cases of autism, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, Asperger's syndrome, separation anxiety disorder, Tourette Syndrome, and similar other behavioral disorders. Only a few pockets of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome remain in the United States; tragically, most of these areas suffer from a lack of qualified mental health professionals, making it even harder to diagnose and treat children who aren't right in the head.
Symptoms of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome vary widely, but can include screaming fits, dull stupors, biting, never having been that bright, exposing themselves in public, or simply daydreaming about a life outside of the misery and deprivation of rural Kentucky, one where all the houses have electricity and running water and nobody beats them up at school for liking poetry.
Says Big Jim, "We try to remind parents that contrary to established medical consensus, recent findings have shown that most cases of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome can't be cured by whupping the crazy out of 'em. We've been studying the effectiveness of exorcism, but in the meanwhile, we recommend that you just try to be patient and don't get too close to Billy Wilkins, 'cause he's a biter. Oh, and don't give sugar to little Susie. Not unless you want to stay up until 4 AM with her."
Once again, rural Kentucky has announced that April is "That Boy Ain't Right" Awareness Month. "Although the number of incidences of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome have once again decreased, we still have a number of children in rural Kentucky that, for whatever reason, ain't right in the head," said Big Jim Crenshaw, chief of the Not Right In the Head Research Institute. "We hope to raise awareness of this serious condition, and explain the treatment options to parents of boys that aren't right in the head."
While it was once common nationwide to see boys and girls who simply weren't right in the head, the number of cases has gone down at approximately the same rate as the rise in cases of autism, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, Asperger's syndrome, separation anxiety disorder, Tourette Syndrome, and similar other behavioral disorders. Only a few pockets of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome remain in the United States; tragically, most of these areas suffer from a lack of qualified mental health professionals, making it even harder to diagnose and treat children who aren't right in the head.
Symptoms of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome vary widely, but can include screaming fits, dull stupors, biting, never having been that bright, exposing themselves in public, or simply daydreaming about a life outside of the misery and deprivation of rural Kentucky, one where all the houses have electricity and running water and nobody beats them up at school for liking poetry.
Says Big Jim, "We try to remind parents that contrary to established medical consensus, recent findings have shown that most cases of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome can't be cured by whupping the crazy out of 'em. We've been studying the effectiveness of exorcism, but in the meanwhile, we recommend that you just try to be patient and don't get too close to Billy Wilkins, 'cause he's a biter. Oh, and don't give sugar to little Susie. Not unless you want to stay up until 4 AM with her."
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-6
Okay, I lied. This is the kind of leg that must be hard for the editors to make look interesting.
On the one hand, I thought it was a very well-designed Road Block. It was a needle in a haystack challenge, but one that didn't rely purely on chance--the racers could, if they had paid attention back in China and remembered the taste, scent, and color of the tea they had drunk the previous day, solve it very quickly and easily (as Ron did. Yes, I know, Ron is not completely useless! We are all equally amazed here, including Christina.) But if they just swigged down the tea and ran for the plane, and they didn't remember what it tasted like, well...they were going to be drinking tea until they cried. Literally.
At that point, it really just came down to "Is this a NEL/double leg?" Because the Detour was not hard enough to give the last-place team a chance to catch up, and that meant that unless it was a NEL, Margie and Luke were screwed. And we found out that it wasn't a double leg pretty early on, and we haven't seen any plan NELs this season. So we spent a whole lot of time suspecting strongly that Margie and Luke were screwed.
At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the final three will be Zev/Justin, Jet/Cord, and Gary/Mallory. All three have been running strong races leg after leg, and while it does take just one bad leg to put you out of the running (as with last season, where Gary/Mallory just got epically lost and washed out), they don't seem to be prone to that. Whereas everyone else has been kind of trying to come in "not last", it seems, which only works as a strategy for so long.
Next week, no Race, which means no Race recap. But in two weeks, more Race! And Zev apparently gets annoyed by loud noises. Oooh.
On the one hand, I thought it was a very well-designed Road Block. It was a needle in a haystack challenge, but one that didn't rely purely on chance--the racers could, if they had paid attention back in China and remembered the taste, scent, and color of the tea they had drunk the previous day, solve it very quickly and easily (as Ron did. Yes, I know, Ron is not completely useless! We are all equally amazed here, including Christina.) But if they just swigged down the tea and ran for the plane, and they didn't remember what it tasted like, well...they were going to be drinking tea until they cried. Literally.
At that point, it really just came down to "Is this a NEL/double leg?" Because the Detour was not hard enough to give the last-place team a chance to catch up, and that meant that unless it was a NEL, Margie and Luke were screwed. And we found out that it wasn't a double leg pretty early on, and we haven't seen any plan NELs this season. So we spent a whole lot of time suspecting strongly that Margie and Luke were screwed.
At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the final three will be Zev/Justin, Jet/Cord, and Gary/Mallory. All three have been running strong races leg after leg, and while it does take just one bad leg to put you out of the running (as with last season, where Gary/Mallory just got epically lost and washed out), they don't seem to be prone to that. Whereas everyone else has been kind of trying to come in "not last", it seems, which only works as a strategy for so long.
Next week, no Race, which means no Race recap. But in two weeks, more Race! And Zev apparently gets annoyed by loud noises. Oooh.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
I Do Not Make Friends Easily
Recently, in my capacity as guest commentator on Mightygodking.com, I posted a review of the novel Ravenous that was, to put it lightly, not positive. In the comments section, an author named Steven Spruill took issue with my opinion of the novel, suggesting in no uncertain terms that my lack of enjoyment of the novel was due to my inexperience with the written form, and that Professional Authors such as himself knew better about its quality. A lively discussion ensued from there.
(It should be noted that the actual author of the novel, Ray Garton, has not involved himself in the discussion, presumably being far too classy to get into a dust-up with every person who gives his books a bad review. One rule I've learned, over a decade or so of reading and writing in a medium that allows fans and creators an unprecedented opportunity to interact, is that it is never a good idea to respond to a bad review in any way other than saying, "Thanks for your feedback." You will not convince people that your book is better than the reviewer says it is, but you will convince them that you are petty, small-minded, and unpleasant.)
(And for the record, no, this is not my opinion of Steven Spruill. I think he's possibly being a bit overzealous in defense of his friend, and his attempts to throw his weight around as a Professional Author are faintly pathetic, but I don't think he's a bad person or anything. He just has a few lessons to learn about how far your reputation will take you in Internet discussions, and I think he's learning them now.)
But one thing he said did have weight, and I wanted to address it here. He pointed out that it was unfair of me to call Ray Garton an "inept" author, based solely on a single novel out of the sixty-plus that Garton has had published. In this, at least, he is absolutely right; it is unfair to judge Garton's talent on the basis of one novel. The only answer I can give is: Life isn't fair.
I don't mean that in a trite, dismissive way; I mean it in the sense that the reader of a story is not in any way obligated to the author of a story. In fact, it's the exact opposite; the author is asking for the reader's time and (frequently) money, and is obligated to the reader to provide an experience that is worth that time and money. Authors don't get to put a little note in the front of the book that says, "Look, this one is actually an old manuscript of mine that the publisher dusted off once I got famous, but it's really not my best work, so don't expect too much out of it." They don't get to sit down and tell the reader before he/she starts reading, "Oh, this one? Man, I totally locked up on the last forty pages. But deadline was already two weeks ago when I got to that point, and so I just pushed through and got something down on the page and called it good. Really sorry, but it's going to disappoint the hell out of you." They do not have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a second chance--heck, they don't really have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a first chance. Every opportunity to impress a reader is a precious gift, and should be treated as such.
(It should be noted that the actual author of the novel, Ray Garton, has not involved himself in the discussion, presumably being far too classy to get into a dust-up with every person who gives his books a bad review. One rule I've learned, over a decade or so of reading and writing in a medium that allows fans and creators an unprecedented opportunity to interact, is that it is never a good idea to respond to a bad review in any way other than saying, "Thanks for your feedback." You will not convince people that your book is better than the reviewer says it is, but you will convince them that you are petty, small-minded, and unpleasant.)
(And for the record, no, this is not my opinion of Steven Spruill. I think he's possibly being a bit overzealous in defense of his friend, and his attempts to throw his weight around as a Professional Author are faintly pathetic, but I don't think he's a bad person or anything. He just has a few lessons to learn about how far your reputation will take you in Internet discussions, and I think he's learning them now.)
But one thing he said did have weight, and I wanted to address it here. He pointed out that it was unfair of me to call Ray Garton an "inept" author, based solely on a single novel out of the sixty-plus that Garton has had published. In this, at least, he is absolutely right; it is unfair to judge Garton's talent on the basis of one novel. The only answer I can give is: Life isn't fair.
I don't mean that in a trite, dismissive way; I mean it in the sense that the reader of a story is not in any way obligated to the author of a story. In fact, it's the exact opposite; the author is asking for the reader's time and (frequently) money, and is obligated to the reader to provide an experience that is worth that time and money. Authors don't get to put a little note in the front of the book that says, "Look, this one is actually an old manuscript of mine that the publisher dusted off once I got famous, but it's really not my best work, so don't expect too much out of it." They don't get to sit down and tell the reader before he/she starts reading, "Oh, this one? Man, I totally locked up on the last forty pages. But deadline was already two weeks ago when I got to that point, and so I just pushed through and got something down on the page and called it good. Really sorry, but it's going to disappoint the hell out of you." They do not have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a second chance--heck, they don't really have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a first chance. Every opportunity to impress a reader is a precious gift, and should be treated as such.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-5
So when last we left Kent and Vyxsin, they were in last place with a second leg coming up and a missing passport. Could they find their passport? Could they make up the missing time on the second half of the double leg? And who would be penalized for breaking Race rules?
As it turned out, the answers were about as anticlimactic as you can get, at least for the first two questions. Kent and Vyxsin found their fanny pack and made it to the Pit Stop, only to find that they were still racing and that the next "task" involved going to a train station where the producers had arranged for some truly spectacular bunching. And I mean truly spectacular. Even Kent and Vyxsin didn't stand a chance of missing this one.
Don't get me wrong, I think that bunching (the practice of giving teams that are behind a chance to catch up by putting everyone on the same train, plane, bus, boat, et cetera; or arranging hours of operation for the location of the next task so that everyone has to wait for the place to open in order to start the task) is necessary sometimes. If you never bunched, you'd have a situation where the really good teams would wind up with an insurmountable lead by the sixth leg or so, to the point where Phil would have to sub-contract eliminations to a second host while he went on ahead to check in the leading teams. But a double-leg is supposed to be a continuation of the previous leg, an endurance test as well as a chance for teams that are behind to make up ground. Starting every double-leg with "go to the train station/airport and wait fifteen hours" turns something that should be difficult into a glorified non-elimination leg, with the added benefit that the last team doesn't get a Speed Bump. I'm actually pretty disappointed in the way this turned out.
That said, Kent and Vyxsin did earn a thirty-minute penalty for taking the wrong flight. (The rule used to be that your penalty was equal to the time saved by taking alternate means of transport. If that had happened here, Kent and Vyxsin would have jumped forward several places due to penalty.) The producers were at least maintaining the pretense of double-legs being challenging, so instead of serving it during the meaningless Pit Stop, they were informed that it would be waiting for them at the end of the next leg.
After an inconsequential-but-adorable sequence of the teams waiting for the train (they played three-on-three, with a Globetrotter on each team and Jaime and Cara acting as cheerleaders) they moved on to the next destination, all nine at once. They then had a second detour, which was a memory challenge on one side and a lift-and-haul-heavy-things-then-assemble-them challenge on the other side. Oh, and there was a Double U-Turn (also known as "the only fair U-Turn") waiting at the other end of this one.
Surprisingly, it wasn't much of a factor. Perhaps this was because several teams got spectacularly lost between the Detour and the Road Block (the two teams that got U-Turned actually wound up in sixth and seventh, ahead of Zev/Justin and Gary/Mallory--they tried to follow Ron/Christina instead of getting directions themselves, and their cab drivers turned out not to be that good at following.) Perhaps it was because the memory challenge didn't throw many teams; I was assuming we were going to see lots of slow, sad head shakes from the guy with the clues, but most teams seemed to get it fairly quickly.
The Road Block, on the other hand, was a major challenge. It involved assembling a giant 3-D dinosaur puzzle (actual dinosaur size, in fact) and all the teams were working at it when the last team arrived. Said last team was Gary/Mallory, who promptly assessed their odds and said "Screw it, we'd rather use the Express Pass than get eliminated." It was a wise idea; even skipping the Road Block, they still wound up in second. (This is a bad sign, actually; when Gary and Mallory got eliminated last time, it was due to major problems with navigation and not any issues with the tasks. If they got lost twice on this leg, it means they haven't gotten rid of that weakness, and they don't have another Express Pass to help them recover.)
In any event, the dinosaur assembly turned out to be harder than expected, mainly because they were all working off of one picture of the finished product and half the teams didn't do a good job checking their work. When it comes to lifesize puzzles made of very big chunks of heavy wood, the last thing you want to find out is that you put the hips on backwards. Lots of teams had problems, but in the end, it was Jaime and Cara whose problems turned out to be insurmountable. They reached the Pit Stop exhausted, grumpy (Jaime actually said that "things never go our way", which is a pretty impressive statement for a team that finished second in their first race and a respectable ninth in their next attempt) and, of course, last. They were Philiminated, meaning that I'll thankfully never have to see another Jaime-tantrum again.
Next week, India, where Luke seems to be having terrible difficulties with the Road Block. Which means, given my theory on Amazing Race trailers, that they are the one team safe from elimination next week. See you then!
As it turned out, the answers were about as anticlimactic as you can get, at least for the first two questions. Kent and Vyxsin found their fanny pack and made it to the Pit Stop, only to find that they were still racing and that the next "task" involved going to a train station where the producers had arranged for some truly spectacular bunching. And I mean truly spectacular. Even Kent and Vyxsin didn't stand a chance of missing this one.
Don't get me wrong, I think that bunching (the practice of giving teams that are behind a chance to catch up by putting everyone on the same train, plane, bus, boat, et cetera; or arranging hours of operation for the location of the next task so that everyone has to wait for the place to open in order to start the task) is necessary sometimes. If you never bunched, you'd have a situation where the really good teams would wind up with an insurmountable lead by the sixth leg or so, to the point where Phil would have to sub-contract eliminations to a second host while he went on ahead to check in the leading teams. But a double-leg is supposed to be a continuation of the previous leg, an endurance test as well as a chance for teams that are behind to make up ground. Starting every double-leg with "go to the train station/airport and wait fifteen hours" turns something that should be difficult into a glorified non-elimination leg, with the added benefit that the last team doesn't get a Speed Bump. I'm actually pretty disappointed in the way this turned out.
That said, Kent and Vyxsin did earn a thirty-minute penalty for taking the wrong flight. (The rule used to be that your penalty was equal to the time saved by taking alternate means of transport. If that had happened here, Kent and Vyxsin would have jumped forward several places due to penalty.) The producers were at least maintaining the pretense of double-legs being challenging, so instead of serving it during the meaningless Pit Stop, they were informed that it would be waiting for them at the end of the next leg.
After an inconsequential-but-adorable sequence of the teams waiting for the train (they played three-on-three, with a Globetrotter on each team and Jaime and Cara acting as cheerleaders) they moved on to the next destination, all nine at once. They then had a second detour, which was a memory challenge on one side and a lift-and-haul-heavy-things-then-assemble-them challenge on the other side. Oh, and there was a Double U-Turn (also known as "the only fair U-Turn") waiting at the other end of this one.
Surprisingly, it wasn't much of a factor. Perhaps this was because several teams got spectacularly lost between the Detour and the Road Block (the two teams that got U-Turned actually wound up in sixth and seventh, ahead of Zev/Justin and Gary/Mallory--they tried to follow Ron/Christina instead of getting directions themselves, and their cab drivers turned out not to be that good at following.) Perhaps it was because the memory challenge didn't throw many teams; I was assuming we were going to see lots of slow, sad head shakes from the guy with the clues, but most teams seemed to get it fairly quickly.
The Road Block, on the other hand, was a major challenge. It involved assembling a giant 3-D dinosaur puzzle (actual dinosaur size, in fact) and all the teams were working at it when the last team arrived. Said last team was Gary/Mallory, who promptly assessed their odds and said "Screw it, we'd rather use the Express Pass than get eliminated." It was a wise idea; even skipping the Road Block, they still wound up in second. (This is a bad sign, actually; when Gary and Mallory got eliminated last time, it was due to major problems with navigation and not any issues with the tasks. If they got lost twice on this leg, it means they haven't gotten rid of that weakness, and they don't have another Express Pass to help them recover.)
In any event, the dinosaur assembly turned out to be harder than expected, mainly because they were all working off of one picture of the finished product and half the teams didn't do a good job checking their work. When it comes to lifesize puzzles made of very big chunks of heavy wood, the last thing you want to find out is that you put the hips on backwards. Lots of teams had problems, but in the end, it was Jaime and Cara whose problems turned out to be insurmountable. They reached the Pit Stop exhausted, grumpy (Jaime actually said that "things never go our way", which is a pretty impressive statement for a team that finished second in their first race and a respectable ninth in their next attempt) and, of course, last. They were Philiminated, meaning that I'll thankfully never have to see another Jaime-tantrum again.
Next week, India, where Luke seems to be having terrible difficulties with the Road Block. Which means, given my theory on Amazing Race trailers, that they are the one team safe from elimination next week. See you then!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Someday They'll Get the Cybermen Right, Right?
I'm still waiting for a really good Cybermen story on Doctor Who. (On TV, that is. "Spare Parts" got it right on audio, in ways that I'm about to explain.) Oh, sure, we've had lots of stories where the Cybermen show up, and even some where they do somewhat interesting things, but it says a lot that the coolest Cybermen story I can think of is mainly memorable for them getting their butts kicked by the Daleks.
The problem is that nobody really seems to understand what makes the Cybermen work, and I include their creators. The horror of the Cybermen isn't that they're tough, or that they have laser blasters, or that they have a cool catchphrase (which, apart from anything else, they don't. "DELETE!" sounds like the off-brand Dalek knock-offs.) The horror of the Cybermen is that what they do makes perfect sense. They want to convert every human being into a Cyberman because they genuinely know--not just believe, know--that it willl improve their existences, and they will never stop because they know they're right. The horror of the Cybermen isn't, "DELETE DELETE DELETE", it's "You will become like us."
But everyone writes them like big stompy villains who sneer and boast and preen and strut. For bad guys who aren't supposed to have emotions, they certainly seem to get upset a lot whenever anyone challenges their worldview. Instead, they should be calm, remorseless, and entirely certain in the rightness of their attitude. To the Cybermen, human beings are suffering from a mental illness that makes them irrationally attached...to irrationality, ironically enough. These poor people believe that their brain disorder somehow gives their life meaning, and need to be forced to undergo conversion for their own good. It's unfortunate that they can't understand how much better life is with a superior body and none of the distractions of emotion, but they will. Once they undergo the process, they'll understand just how much sense it makes. And then they'll help to convert others.
My idea for a Cybermen story involves a small group of Cybermen setting up shop on a space station, promising that they will not use violence or force, and simply asking people to volunteer for the process--convincing them, through the logic of their position. Yes, being a Cyberman means an end to joy, but it also means an end to fear, an end to rage, an end to misery and suffering and pain and sorrow and all the weaknesses of the flesh. There are some people who would gladly give up their flesh and blood if it just meant the pain would stop.
Their endgame plan, of course, would be to convert the unwilling by force once they had enough recruits. Because deception, while again unfortunate, is sometimes necessary when dealing with the irrational. It's like dealing with a madman, sometimes. But the Cybermen have a cure for that.
The problem is that nobody really seems to understand what makes the Cybermen work, and I include their creators. The horror of the Cybermen isn't that they're tough, or that they have laser blasters, or that they have a cool catchphrase (which, apart from anything else, they don't. "DELETE!" sounds like the off-brand Dalek knock-offs.) The horror of the Cybermen is that what they do makes perfect sense. They want to convert every human being into a Cyberman because they genuinely know--not just believe, know--that it willl improve their existences, and they will never stop because they know they're right. The horror of the Cybermen isn't, "DELETE DELETE DELETE", it's "You will become like us."
But everyone writes them like big stompy villains who sneer and boast and preen and strut. For bad guys who aren't supposed to have emotions, they certainly seem to get upset a lot whenever anyone challenges their worldview. Instead, they should be calm, remorseless, and entirely certain in the rightness of their attitude. To the Cybermen, human beings are suffering from a mental illness that makes them irrationally attached...to irrationality, ironically enough. These poor people believe that their brain disorder somehow gives their life meaning, and need to be forced to undergo conversion for their own good. It's unfortunate that they can't understand how much better life is with a superior body and none of the distractions of emotion, but they will. Once they undergo the process, they'll understand just how much sense it makes. And then they'll help to convert others.
My idea for a Cybermen story involves a small group of Cybermen setting up shop on a space station, promising that they will not use violence or force, and simply asking people to volunteer for the process--convincing them, through the logic of their position. Yes, being a Cyberman means an end to joy, but it also means an end to fear, an end to rage, an end to misery and suffering and pain and sorrow and all the weaknesses of the flesh. There are some people who would gladly give up their flesh and blood if it just meant the pain would stop.
Their endgame plan, of course, would be to convert the unwilling by force once they had enough recruits. Because deception, while again unfortunate, is sometimes necessary when dealing with the irrational. It's like dealing with a madman, sometimes. But the Cybermen have a cure for that.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-4
I suspect this one must have been a difficult one for the editors; it's always tricky when one team gets way behind the others. Do you try to use clever editing techniques in order to make it seem like the lagging team is closer than they are, or do you just go ahead and acknowledge that there's not going to be much suspense in this episode and show how far behind they really are?
In the case of Kent and Vyxsin, the team that pretty much dominated this week's episode, the situation was complicated by some major bunching that kept them at least theoretically in the race long after what should have been sheer, unmitigated disaster. Driving a full three hours in the wrong direction and missing the flight that every single one of the other teams was on should have meant doom, full stop. (Especially since the subsequent flight wasn't for five hours. You do not want to spot everyone else a five-hour lead on the Amazing Race.) But when everyone else has to wait for an 8 AM bus, suddenly some of that lead gets eaten away, and it's worth focusing on the drama of whether or not running one of the worst legs in Race history is enough to get Kent and Vyxsin eliminated.
And it was a spectacular trainwreck of a leg. Vyxsin starts by insisting the theme for the day is "Positive Mental Attitude", then proceeds to get lost, sob into the map, scream at herself, stare into space, sob at the map some more, give up, lose her passport temporarily, and then berate herself a lot more while attempting the Road Block. Kent, meanwhile, has decided that the best way to deal with a partner who's having difficulties is to stare into space and wander around like an automaton, then say to her, "Well, I was just doing what you told me to do." (In case I haven't made it obvious yet, Kent's checking out was just as bad as Vyxsin's freaking out.) Oh, and then he loses his passport for good measure.
Next to all that, everyone else's mistakes seemed like amusing larks. Ron had his bizarre food cravings (I get that he's a fan of the local cuisine and doesn't get to eat Chinese food this authentic very often, but the man was actually stopping on the way to a Detour to smell the fish frying. I think if Christina had one of those toddler leashes for him, she'd have used it.) The Globetrotters didn't know what sign of the Chinese Zodiac they were (they've never gotten bored at a Chinese restaurant?) Mallory screamed, Jen admitted that there's really no way to feel good about yourself after calling a deaf guy a bitch, and the only racers who had any real trouble were Zev and Justin, and even they were way ahead of Kent and Vyxsin by the end.
(Assuming penalties don't come into play. Kent and Vyxsin might get a penalty for not taking the mandatory flight, although to me the penalty should be the five hours they had to wait for the next flight, and Justin might get a penalty for throwing one of his charms in the grass when he found out it was a duplicate, thus making it potentially harder for Vyxsin to find hers. Oh, and Ron and Christina might get a penalty for flinging themselves out of a moving trolley and throwing rocks at a bus to get it to stop instead of going back and taking the bus all the way like the clue said. No, really. They actually did that.)
And then, of course, we find out that the end isn't the end after all. Yes, for the first time in Race history, we get two double legs! (Which has led to some speculation that there will be no non-elimination legs, only double legs. That's a pretty big advantage to the teams at the back--no Speed Bumps!) Which means that Kent and Vyxsin are saved for another week. Even better for them, next week's leg includes a Double U-Turn (the only fair kind, in my opinion--being U-Turned is such a huge disadvantage that the only way to keep it from being "automatically eliminate one team" is to make it a double-team penalty)...and frankly, given how inept Kent and Vyxsin were this week, nobody's going to see them as enough of a threat to U-Turn.
In the case of Kent and Vyxsin, the team that pretty much dominated this week's episode, the situation was complicated by some major bunching that kept them at least theoretically in the race long after what should have been sheer, unmitigated disaster. Driving a full three hours in the wrong direction and missing the flight that every single one of the other teams was on should have meant doom, full stop. (Especially since the subsequent flight wasn't for five hours. You do not want to spot everyone else a five-hour lead on the Amazing Race.) But when everyone else has to wait for an 8 AM bus, suddenly some of that lead gets eaten away, and it's worth focusing on the drama of whether or not running one of the worst legs in Race history is enough to get Kent and Vyxsin eliminated.
And it was a spectacular trainwreck of a leg. Vyxsin starts by insisting the theme for the day is "Positive Mental Attitude", then proceeds to get lost, sob into the map, scream at herself, stare into space, sob at the map some more, give up, lose her passport temporarily, and then berate herself a lot more while attempting the Road Block. Kent, meanwhile, has decided that the best way to deal with a partner who's having difficulties is to stare into space and wander around like an automaton, then say to her, "Well, I was just doing what you told me to do." (In case I haven't made it obvious yet, Kent's checking out was just as bad as Vyxsin's freaking out.) Oh, and then he loses his passport for good measure.
Next to all that, everyone else's mistakes seemed like amusing larks. Ron had his bizarre food cravings (I get that he's a fan of the local cuisine and doesn't get to eat Chinese food this authentic very often, but the man was actually stopping on the way to a Detour to smell the fish frying. I think if Christina had one of those toddler leashes for him, she'd have used it.) The Globetrotters didn't know what sign of the Chinese Zodiac they were (they've never gotten bored at a Chinese restaurant?) Mallory screamed, Jen admitted that there's really no way to feel good about yourself after calling a deaf guy a bitch, and the only racers who had any real trouble were Zev and Justin, and even they were way ahead of Kent and Vyxsin by the end.
(Assuming penalties don't come into play. Kent and Vyxsin might get a penalty for not taking the mandatory flight, although to me the penalty should be the five hours they had to wait for the next flight, and Justin might get a penalty for throwing one of his charms in the grass when he found out it was a duplicate, thus making it potentially harder for Vyxsin to find hers. Oh, and Ron and Christina might get a penalty for flinging themselves out of a moving trolley and throwing rocks at a bus to get it to stop instead of going back and taking the bus all the way like the clue said. No, really. They actually did that.)
And then, of course, we find out that the end isn't the end after all. Yes, for the first time in Race history, we get two double legs! (Which has led to some speculation that there will be no non-elimination legs, only double legs. That's a pretty big advantage to the teams at the back--no Speed Bumps!) Which means that Kent and Vyxsin are saved for another week. Even better for them, next week's leg includes a Double U-Turn (the only fair kind, in my opinion--being U-Turned is such a huge disadvantage that the only way to keep it from being "automatically eliminate one team" is to make it a double-team penalty)...and frankly, given how inept Kent and Vyxsin were this week, nobody's going to see them as enough of a threat to U-Turn.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Boiling It Down
The United States government collects money in the form of taxes, to "pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States". That's a nice, vague, catch-all term, made deliberately vague by a group of men who wanted their government to be flexible enough to adapt to a number of future situations; the general point, though, is that there's a lot of United States, which means there's a lot of taxes and a lot of people who need their general welfare provided for...which means that there's a whole hell of a lot of money that the US collects and spends.
A small group of wealthy private citizens are bribing politicians (predominantly Republicans, although there are certainly a few guilty Democrats) to take a large chunk of that money and hand it over to those wealthy private citizens in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and similar. The politicians then use the resultant budget deficit to justify cutting spending for the purposes that the money was originally collected for--in essence, looting the public treasury with both hands through the use of creative book-keeping. Those wealthy private citizens, in turn, skim off a chunk of the money that the Republicans have embezzled for them and pass it back to the politicians in the form of "campaign contributions", thus completing the circuit and starting the process again.
This is not fiscal responsibility. This is not austerity. This is not good governance. This is a small group of wealthy criminal masterminds who have figured out that if you make the laws, then what you're doing can't be considered illegal. The Republican party has been almost thoroughly co-opted by these crooks, and they are stealing from widows, orphans, the poor and the sick in order to get a cut of the loot. Don't listen to what they say--heck, don't listen to what I say, either. Follow the money, and look at where it goes and who it comes from. Because that's the only thing that really matters.
A small group of wealthy private citizens are bribing politicians (predominantly Republicans, although there are certainly a few guilty Democrats) to take a large chunk of that money and hand it over to those wealthy private citizens in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and similar. The politicians then use the resultant budget deficit to justify cutting spending for the purposes that the money was originally collected for--in essence, looting the public treasury with both hands through the use of creative book-keeping. Those wealthy private citizens, in turn, skim off a chunk of the money that the Republicans have embezzled for them and pass it back to the politicians in the form of "campaign contributions", thus completing the circuit and starting the process again.
This is not fiscal responsibility. This is not austerity. This is not good governance. This is a small group of wealthy criminal masterminds who have figured out that if you make the laws, then what you're doing can't be considered illegal. The Republican party has been almost thoroughly co-opted by these crooks, and they are stealing from widows, orphans, the poor and the sick in order to get a cut of the loot. Don't listen to what they say--heck, don't listen to what I say, either. Follow the money, and look at where it goes and who it comes from. Because that's the only thing that really matters.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-3
Another week, another week of "The Amazing Race"! This time, we're off to Japan...well, eventually we are. The first half-hour of the show this week was really "The Amazing Hang Around Airports and Discuss Strategy". Not that I minded one hundred percent, because it was actually kind of interesting to see some of the strategizing involved in the Race. Basically, for those of you who missed it, the Racers had a choice of two different flights. One had a connecting flight in Hong Kong (not a tight connection, but a connection nonetheless) but got in at 6:00 AM local time. The other was direct, but didn't get in until 6:15. The question was, is it worth risking the complications of a connection for a fifteen-minute lead?
Long story short, no. It wasn't. The "leading" flight got seriously delayed, putting the five teams who tried to get ahead pretty seriously behind for the entire Tokyo leg. Which was a shame, because some of my favorite teams were on that second flight, and I spent a lot of the back half of the episode twitching. (Except for the time I spotted Zev's "Duck Whisperer" T-shirt, which was just pure awesome.) (It's a reference to their first time on the Race, when they had to herd ducks. If I ever go on the Race, I am wearing nothing but obscure geek reference T-shirts. "I'm Bill Pardy" for the million, baby!)
The next big chunk of the episode was, "Who can drive around Japan best?" This was not Jaime and Cara, who actually took the sideview mirror off a local's car. This was not the best team to be involved in a minor traffic fracas, given that the first time she was on the Race, Jaime expressed her frequent anger at people who had the nerve to speak only the language of the country they lived in. So getting into a car accident, even the most minor one, with someone who spoke no English and wouldn't just accept a wad of bills from a strange woman. (Not even one who said, in sing-song, loud, slowly spoken English, "Maybe if we give you some mon-ey?") Oh, this also featured one of the two...interesting editing choices of the episode. Jaime is explaining that they have to stop, "because..." and it cuts ahead to her already out of the car. Now, I'm assuming that they were editing out some sort of technical explanation of the rules on how Racers interact with local laws, but why keep the "because" then? Oh, well.
Finally, we do get to the Road Block, which is one of the "do as I do" variety. Racers performed a little samurai kata, then fired a bow at a target from a very short distance. (While being spun, admittedly, but still a very short distance. If anyone missed, they didn't show it.) They did show lots of people failing the kata, though. Repeatedly. This provided much of the excitement of the episode, giving many teams a big chance to catch back up.
Then they drove to the Detour, a choice between another "do as I do" task (this one involved performing a purity ritual under a freezing waterfall) and a "needle in a haystack" task, which involved rooting around in mud for a small ceramic frog, while being pelted with more mud by locals. Surprisingly, only two teams opted for the freezing waterfall. Yes, I understand, I wouldn't want to have to stand under a waterfall for a full minute in 45-degree water, shouting strange Japanese phrases either. But you know what? There's a little rule I have about the Amazing Race, which is, "If you can do something that's not a 'needle in a haystack' task, don't do the 'needle in a haystack' task." Because sure, you can find the frog quickly and be out of there in five minutes...but you can also spend two, three, four hours rooting around in cold mud until you get hypothermia and have to stop, and then another team passes you by and gets the frog. Hypothetically speaking.
Still, since just about everyone did the frog task, it wasn't such a big deal. Zev and Justin took first, the Globetrotters would have taken third but for an after-the-fact penalty involving them accidentally taking another racer's stuff...which resulted in the second interesting editing choice. See, when the Globetrotters checked in, the Race judges didn't know they'd done it. So they didn't have to wait out a penalty, as rule-breakers usually do. Instead, Ron and Christina showed up at the Pit Stop complaining about the Globetrotters, and Phil announced that he would give them a half-hour penalty as a result, putting Ron and Christina into third. Or, at least, he seemed to...but we don't see his face while he's making this announcement, and Ron and Christina are distinctly unmoved by their good fortune. Almost as if he actually told them he'd look into it, and the decision to penalize them was made afterwards and dubbed in. Could it be?
In the end, it's Mike and Mel who get the hypothermia instead of the frog, and Jaime and Cara who slip by them to avoid elimination. I'm sad, because Mike and Mel are genuinely class acts (and Phil clearly agrees...he doesn't choose favorites, but you can usually tell from his body language who he's having fun talking to and who makes his job more of a job than usual)...but on the other hand, I did not expect Mel to get far at seventy. The Race is intensely physical, and even a fit, athletic seventy-year-old is going to have trouble with that.
So now we're at nine. Next week, China, and what promises to be an epic tantrum from Ron!
Long story short, no. It wasn't. The "leading" flight got seriously delayed, putting the five teams who tried to get ahead pretty seriously behind for the entire Tokyo leg. Which was a shame, because some of my favorite teams were on that second flight, and I spent a lot of the back half of the episode twitching. (Except for the time I spotted Zev's "Duck Whisperer" T-shirt, which was just pure awesome.) (It's a reference to their first time on the Race, when they had to herd ducks. If I ever go on the Race, I am wearing nothing but obscure geek reference T-shirts. "I'm Bill Pardy" for the million, baby!)
The next big chunk of the episode was, "Who can drive around Japan best?" This was not Jaime and Cara, who actually took the sideview mirror off a local's car. This was not the best team to be involved in a minor traffic fracas, given that the first time she was on the Race, Jaime expressed her frequent anger at people who had the nerve to speak only the language of the country they lived in. So getting into a car accident, even the most minor one, with someone who spoke no English and wouldn't just accept a wad of bills from a strange woman. (Not even one who said, in sing-song, loud, slowly spoken English, "Maybe if we give you some mon-ey?") Oh, this also featured one of the two...interesting editing choices of the episode. Jaime is explaining that they have to stop, "because..." and it cuts ahead to her already out of the car. Now, I'm assuming that they were editing out some sort of technical explanation of the rules on how Racers interact with local laws, but why keep the "because" then? Oh, well.
Finally, we do get to the Road Block, which is one of the "do as I do" variety. Racers performed a little samurai kata, then fired a bow at a target from a very short distance. (While being spun, admittedly, but still a very short distance. If anyone missed, they didn't show it.) They did show lots of people failing the kata, though. Repeatedly. This provided much of the excitement of the episode, giving many teams a big chance to catch back up.
Then they drove to the Detour, a choice between another "do as I do" task (this one involved performing a purity ritual under a freezing waterfall) and a "needle in a haystack" task, which involved rooting around in mud for a small ceramic frog, while being pelted with more mud by locals. Surprisingly, only two teams opted for the freezing waterfall. Yes, I understand, I wouldn't want to have to stand under a waterfall for a full minute in 45-degree water, shouting strange Japanese phrases either. But you know what? There's a little rule I have about the Amazing Race, which is, "If you can do something that's not a 'needle in a haystack' task, don't do the 'needle in a haystack' task." Because sure, you can find the frog quickly and be out of there in five minutes...but you can also spend two, three, four hours rooting around in cold mud until you get hypothermia and have to stop, and then another team passes you by and gets the frog. Hypothetically speaking.
Still, since just about everyone did the frog task, it wasn't such a big deal. Zev and Justin took first, the Globetrotters would have taken third but for an after-the-fact penalty involving them accidentally taking another racer's stuff...which resulted in the second interesting editing choice. See, when the Globetrotters checked in, the Race judges didn't know they'd done it. So they didn't have to wait out a penalty, as rule-breakers usually do. Instead, Ron and Christina showed up at the Pit Stop complaining about the Globetrotters, and Phil announced that he would give them a half-hour penalty as a result, putting Ron and Christina into third. Or, at least, he seemed to...but we don't see his face while he's making this announcement, and Ron and Christina are distinctly unmoved by their good fortune. Almost as if he actually told them he'd look into it, and the decision to penalize them was made afterwards and dubbed in. Could it be?
In the end, it's Mike and Mel who get the hypothermia instead of the frog, and Jaime and Cara who slip by them to avoid elimination. I'm sad, because Mike and Mel are genuinely class acts (and Phil clearly agrees...he doesn't choose favorites, but you can usually tell from his body language who he's having fun talking to and who makes his job more of a job than usual)...but on the other hand, I did not expect Mel to get far at seventy. The Race is intensely physical, and even a fit, athletic seventy-year-old is going to have trouble with that.
So now we're at nine. Next week, China, and what promises to be an epic tantrum from Ron!
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Probably Unfair CNN Post
As I mentioned on mightygodking, I've been watching a lot of CNN at work lately. (While working--it's not like I just sneak off to the breakroom and veg out all day.) They've been covering the Libya situation, and while I can appreciate that there's a case to be made for intervention, I gotta say, it really does seem like CNN is pushing like hell for the USA to go to war ASAP.
Which makes a certain amount of sense. Let's face it, CNN made its rep off of Desert Storm, and they're probably best known for their determined, courageous war reporting. To CNN, a war might mean dead soldiers, tragedy, and the failure of everything fine and noble about the human spirit, but it also means ratings, Emmys, and the very real possibility that one of their reporters will become a sex symbol as he bravely reports from inside Tripoli as the bombs fall. And that's a trade I feel like CNN will take any day.
I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, but when you hear their tones of voice as they talk about "establishing a no-fly zone", or "arming the Libyan rebels"...they almost sound eager. It's a little creepy, especially for an outfit that prides itself on its non-partisan, non-agenda'd reporting. Democrat, Republican, the important thing at CNN seems to be, "So when are you going to start the shootin' match?"
Which makes a certain amount of sense. Let's face it, CNN made its rep off of Desert Storm, and they're probably best known for their determined, courageous war reporting. To CNN, a war might mean dead soldiers, tragedy, and the failure of everything fine and noble about the human spirit, but it also means ratings, Emmys, and the very real possibility that one of their reporters will become a sex symbol as he bravely reports from inside Tripoli as the bombs fall. And that's a trade I feel like CNN will take any day.
I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, but when you hear their tones of voice as they talk about "establishing a no-fly zone", or "arming the Libyan rebels"...they almost sound eager. It's a little creepy, especially for an outfit that prides itself on its non-partisan, non-agenda'd reporting. Democrat, Republican, the important thing at CNN seems to be, "So when are you going to start the shootin' match?"
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-2
Sorry for the lack of a Thursday post, but I got sick with a fast-moving virus Thursday morning which I'm just now recovering from. While I was too sick to write, move, or do much beyond sit on the couch and play "Plants Vs. Zombies" (my Tree of Wisdom is almost 600 feet tall!) I decided I'd devote the Monday post to the current season of "The Amazing Race" while it's in season, because a) I like the show and like talking about it, b) it means I have to only think of one vaguely clever thing a week, and c) why not? (Those of you offering up, "Because I don't care about 'The Amazing Race'" as an answer to c) can be comforted with the knowledge that there will still be one post a week that is not Race-related.) The post will be a mix of recap, discussion, and snark, blended according to mood.
I discussed the first episode on Mightygodking last week, and it left off with a big cliffhanger: The teams checked in at the Pit Stop had already discovered that they were on a double-leg, so they had to keep racing with no chance to rest! And Jet and Cord, the only team who hadn't yet made it to the Pit Stop, were falling further and further behind as the Road Block continued to stump them!
And this episode, we see that the next challenge...was to find the place to sign up for the charter flight that left the next morning. I have to say, I was really disappointed, and not just because I'm rooting against Jet and Cord because they're homophobic idjits. After a first episode that established quite well that this Race was going to be tougher and more grueling than usual, due to all the seasoned Racers, bunching them all up again essentially turned the double-leg into a non-elimination leg, rescuing Jet and Cord from a spectacular foul-up without even the penalty of a Speed Bump.
The Detour did somewhat make up for it, though, being a well-designed choice between a fiddly detail-oriented task that would take a while and reward staying calm under pressure...and something that sounded kind of icky, and could be tricky, but could also be completed very quickly for those willing to try it. (Which was exactly one team, and them only because they had to. But hey.) Pretty much everything we'd already seen of these teams was on display again; Ron and Christina bickered non-stop, Flight Time and Big Easy took everything in good humor, Jaime and Cara got frustrated easily with people who weren't helpful even though said people weren't there to be helpful to begin with, et cetera et cetera.
After the Detour, we had a very good navigation task--I like that the destination was expressed in the form of highlighting elements on the Periodic Table and forcing the Racers to figure it out. Of course, nowadays that just means stopping a passerby and asking to borrow their smartphone for a moment, but let's face it, that's the world these days. It's just about impossible to keep the Racers away from the Internet, and honestly, I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. Without the Internet and sympathetic passers-by, about half the teams would wind up standing around for hours, arguing about whether or not Hg stood for Hydrogen. Which yes, does separate the men and women from the boys and girls, but makes for boring television.
Oh, and they all had to find the intersection while wearing kangaroo costumes. Probably didn't make it that much more challenging, but a lot more amusing.
Then it was just a race to the Pit Stop, and despite my hopes that we'd see a swift exit for Ron and Christina (well, Ron, at least; Christina could stay, but Ron was being rude not just to his own daughter but to Mallory to boot) ...it was Amanda and Kris who made the exit. So basically the U-Turn again proves to be fatal, which is why they should use the Double-U-Turn from last season instead. As it is, the presence of a U-Turn almost removes all the suspense from an episode.
On the one hand, it's a bummer that Perfectly Nice Couple Amanda and Kris went home while there are at least four teams (Jet and Cord, Ron and Christina, Kisha and Jen, Jaime and Cara) that I'm actively rooting against. On the other hand, I can at least take some comfort that none of the teams I'm actively rooting for (Margie and Luke, Flight Time and Big Easy, Kent and Vyxsin, Mel and Mike) went out, especially given that Mel still looks like he's about to collapse in a heap at any second.
Next week, Jaime and Cara appear to run someone over. Presumably, Jaime will get out of the car and berate them for slowing her down. And then berate them again for not screaming in English.
I discussed the first episode on Mightygodking last week, and it left off with a big cliffhanger: The teams checked in at the Pit Stop had already discovered that they were on a double-leg, so they had to keep racing with no chance to rest! And Jet and Cord, the only team who hadn't yet made it to the Pit Stop, were falling further and further behind as the Road Block continued to stump them!
And this episode, we see that the next challenge...was to find the place to sign up for the charter flight that left the next morning. I have to say, I was really disappointed, and not just because I'm rooting against Jet and Cord because they're homophobic idjits. After a first episode that established quite well that this Race was going to be tougher and more grueling than usual, due to all the seasoned Racers, bunching them all up again essentially turned the double-leg into a non-elimination leg, rescuing Jet and Cord from a spectacular foul-up without even the penalty of a Speed Bump.
The Detour did somewhat make up for it, though, being a well-designed choice between a fiddly detail-oriented task that would take a while and reward staying calm under pressure...and something that sounded kind of icky, and could be tricky, but could also be completed very quickly for those willing to try it. (Which was exactly one team, and them only because they had to. But hey.) Pretty much everything we'd already seen of these teams was on display again; Ron and Christina bickered non-stop, Flight Time and Big Easy took everything in good humor, Jaime and Cara got frustrated easily with people who weren't helpful even though said people weren't there to be helpful to begin with, et cetera et cetera.
After the Detour, we had a very good navigation task--I like that the destination was expressed in the form of highlighting elements on the Periodic Table and forcing the Racers to figure it out. Of course, nowadays that just means stopping a passerby and asking to borrow their smartphone for a moment, but let's face it, that's the world these days. It's just about impossible to keep the Racers away from the Internet, and honestly, I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. Without the Internet and sympathetic passers-by, about half the teams would wind up standing around for hours, arguing about whether or not Hg stood for Hydrogen. Which yes, does separate the men and women from the boys and girls, but makes for boring television.
Oh, and they all had to find the intersection while wearing kangaroo costumes. Probably didn't make it that much more challenging, but a lot more amusing.
Then it was just a race to the Pit Stop, and despite my hopes that we'd see a swift exit for Ron and Christina (well, Ron, at least; Christina could stay, but Ron was being rude not just to his own daughter but to Mallory to boot) ...it was Amanda and Kris who made the exit. So basically the U-Turn again proves to be fatal, which is why they should use the Double-U-Turn from last season instead. As it is, the presence of a U-Turn almost removes all the suspense from an episode.
On the one hand, it's a bummer that Perfectly Nice Couple Amanda and Kris went home while there are at least four teams (Jet and Cord, Ron and Christina, Kisha and Jen, Jaime and Cara) that I'm actively rooting against. On the other hand, I can at least take some comfort that none of the teams I'm actively rooting for (Margie and Luke, Flight Time and Big Easy, Kent and Vyxsin, Mel and Mike) went out, especially given that Mel still looks like he's about to collapse in a heap at any second.
Next week, Jaime and Cara appear to run someone over. Presumably, Jaime will get out of the car and berate them for slowing her down. And then berate them again for not screaming in English.
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