Does anyone else have a little problem with the reporting on the New Orleans Saints win? I mean, the basic thrust of the narrative is that the team struggled during their four-game losing streak, but they pulled together and they overcame adversity and they finally got that win they'd been working so hard to achieve. Go teamwork! Yay for overcoming adversity! Hurrah for working hard!
...but I will admit, I'd like at least one person over at ESPN to point out that the "adversity" they overcame was entirely self-inflicted, that it was a punishment for cheating their way to a Superbowl win (and not just any kind of cheating, but the dirtiest cheating imaginable in any sport, deliberately injuring your opponent to prevent them from being able to compete against you) and that frankly, the fact that it was hard for them to win games means that the punishment is working exactly as intended. If anything, the way they reacted to winning tells me it wasn't enough of a punishment--if they're seeing it as a triumph that the NFL's disciplinary actions weren't enough to stop them from winning games, then they're clearly not engaging in the kind of introspection that should come to you after finding out that your teammates were out there trying very hard to inflict permanent injury on people because a trophy was more important to them than a living human being's health.
If I was Drew Brees, I don't know that I'd want my coach to be there for my big day. I'd be profoundly ambivalent about putting on a Saints uniform after the way it was tarnished by the actions of Gregg Williams and the Saints defense. I don't know that I'd go so far as to apologize for winning, but I wouldn't be comfortable portraying it as some sort of great triumph of the human spirit, either. The Saints were 0-4 because they deserved to be 0-4, not just through the quality of their play but due to the quality of their character as an organization, and I'm a little surprised that this is being so quickly forgotten in the rush to celebrate their achievements.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Thursday, October 04, 2012
My Thoughts On the Debate
Or at least, the debate until I switched it off because frankly, Mitt Romney makes every sane human being in America want to punch him every time he opens his mouth. Seriously, I'd worry about him getting us into wars not because he's hired a bunch of belligerent neocon Bush rejects as his foreign policy advisors, but because Mother Teresa would haul off and slap that man silly if she was stuck in an elevator with him for five minutes. (And yes, I'm aware Mother Teresa is dead. This does not change my opinion.)
Basically, I think that the news media is saying that Romney won the debate because they have to say Romney won the debate. The alternative is, "Gee, Mitt really seemed like a transparent liar and a jackass, and failed to defend any of his policies coherently while throwing out the same tired attacks that have failed to stick against Obama this entire campaign. Let's face it, he's toast. Wanna spend the next five weeks talking about this fall's hot movies?" Everyone in the news media, left or right, has a vested interest in selling the narrative that this is a tense, exciting race and you should remain riveted to (INSERT CHANNEL HERE) for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. If Romney's dead in the water, it's not exciting.
That said, the overall narrative of the pundits is correct. Obama didn't really blow up on Mitt. Why? Because it's not what he does. Barack Obama is not a fiery tongue-lasher of a politician who "lets the other guy have it". I know that's what a lot of liberals wanted. Because I'm a liberal, and like many other liberals, I'd really like to see someone ask Mitt how he can stand up there lying, day in and day out, shifting positions with the wind, saying whatever he thinks people want to hear while secretly holding almost half the nation in utter contempt, and not at any point feel shame in it all. But Obama doesn't do that. Obama is all about remaining calm, letting the other guy lose his cool, and then demolishing him with the facts.
And that's what he did. The narrative today, in the papers and on the news, is that Romney might have seemed tough and pressed the attack, but that he lied openly and blatantly and frequently. (He was clocked at one provable falsehood every 1:40.) That's what people are going to remember, not anything specific. Well, maybe the bit about Mitt Romney wanting to kill Big Bird, but other than that, they're just going to remember that Mitt Romney lied. That Mitt Romney can't help but lie. And that when he wasn't lying, he was saying things like, "I don't have time to get into the specifics. Just trust me." Which would work better if he didn't, you know, lie every two minutes. LITERALLY.
The narrative is that Mitt Romney won the debate, because it's the only narrative that fits the media's desire for a close race. But I can't imagine that people watched that debate and came out of it thinking better of Romney. And I suspect that in a few days, the polls will bear me out on that.
Basically, I think that the news media is saying that Romney won the debate because they have to say Romney won the debate. The alternative is, "Gee, Mitt really seemed like a transparent liar and a jackass, and failed to defend any of his policies coherently while throwing out the same tired attacks that have failed to stick against Obama this entire campaign. Let's face it, he's toast. Wanna spend the next five weeks talking about this fall's hot movies?" Everyone in the news media, left or right, has a vested interest in selling the narrative that this is a tense, exciting race and you should remain riveted to (INSERT CHANNEL HERE) for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. If Romney's dead in the water, it's not exciting.
That said, the overall narrative of the pundits is correct. Obama didn't really blow up on Mitt. Why? Because it's not what he does. Barack Obama is not a fiery tongue-lasher of a politician who "lets the other guy have it". I know that's what a lot of liberals wanted. Because I'm a liberal, and like many other liberals, I'd really like to see someone ask Mitt how he can stand up there lying, day in and day out, shifting positions with the wind, saying whatever he thinks people want to hear while secretly holding almost half the nation in utter contempt, and not at any point feel shame in it all. But Obama doesn't do that. Obama is all about remaining calm, letting the other guy lose his cool, and then demolishing him with the facts.
And that's what he did. The narrative today, in the papers and on the news, is that Romney might have seemed tough and pressed the attack, but that he lied openly and blatantly and frequently. (He was clocked at one provable falsehood every 1:40.) That's what people are going to remember, not anything specific. Well, maybe the bit about Mitt Romney wanting to kill Big Bird, but other than that, they're just going to remember that Mitt Romney lied. That Mitt Romney can't help but lie. And that when he wasn't lying, he was saying things like, "I don't have time to get into the specifics. Just trust me." Which would work better if he didn't, you know, lie every two minutes. LITERALLY.
The narrative is that Mitt Romney won the debate, because it's the only narrative that fits the media's desire for a close race. But I can't imagine that people watched that debate and came out of it thinking better of Romney. And I suspect that in a few days, the polls will bear me out on that.
Monday, October 01, 2012
The Two Big Mistakes 'Revolution' Made
(Caveat and Disclaimer: I haven't really watched the series. Everything I've seen and heard about it has made it look like it was pretty aggressively mismanaged, and frankly I'm three to five seasons behind on the shows I actually like. (One of the few upsides of the impending closure of 'City of Heroes' is that I will finally catch up on leisure activities that don't involve Paragon City, RI, or the islands just three miles off the coast thereof in international waters.) Frankly, if a series looks lousy and sounds lousy and everyone says it's lousy, I'm not about to go watch it just so that I can verify it's lousy. So if you want to complain that I hate a show I haven't even seen yet, you're absolutely right. By the same token, I'm pretty sure that stove is cool. Go put your hand on it to be sure, though.)
So what are the two mistakes that 'Revolution' made? Well, everyone's agreed on what seems to be the big one, which actually isn't the big one relative to the truly huge mistake they made but is, on an empirical level, a pretty big mistake. They didn't define how the "no technology works" rule works. Not the rationale for it--let's face it, most science fiction relies on a fairy-chess style, "Well, what if someone could invent a faster-than-light drive?" or "What if you made a drug that stopped the aging process?" type of question. The actual physics of "What if electricity stopped powering electrical devices?" is never going to make sense.
But they needed to create an internally consistent set of rules for it. As it is, everyone's running around with crossbows except for the people who have black-powder guns and things have reverted to a medieval level of technology despite the fact that the 19th century worked pretty well electricity-free and and and...there needed to be a, "This is what the effect is and what it does, and that rules out A, B, and C but not D, E, and F." Because human beings are tremendously freaking inventive rules lawyers, and one of the first things we do when we find out something doesn't do what we want it to is we start engineering ways around it. Fifteen years of "no electricity" would lead to some pretty ingenious solutions, but we don't see those. Everyone's just given up and started using swords and bows instead of steam and clockwork.
And that's the second, much bigger sin. They jumped ahead fifteen years. The most important event to happen to the human race in a century at minimum, and they said, "Nah, let's just skip past that so everything can look all overgrown and people can run around with swords in the ruins, looking for the Lost Secret that will bring back The World That Was." Which is the plot of every goddamn post-apocalypse story out there ever. The loss of electricity has been reduced from "a fascinating change in human society" to "this story's MacGuffin to explain why humanity is reduced to a pre-industrial dystopia where heroes fight evil tyrants while looking for the lost secret that will restore the old order." This is the freaking plot of 'Warrior of the Lost World', 'Robot Holocaust', and 'Teenage Caveman'. It should not be the plot of your big-budget prime-time TV series.
The story should start the night the power went out...and stay there. It should follow characters who are trying to restore communications between cities in the absence of telegraphs and telephones, characters who are trying to keep food safe to store without refridgerators. It should follow the government's attempts to keep order without any way of broadcasting to the nation, and people who are re-learning how to light with gas and heat with steam. It should be about the tension of not knowing who will succeed, those who are trying to rebuild the world or those who are taking advantage of its collapse. It should be something we've never seen before, not 'The Postman' with the serial numbers filed off.
Ultimately, I think this explains the tepid response to the series better than the absurdity of its premise alone. It's bad enough that it has an absurd premise, but making a show with a premise that absurd only to utterly ignore it in favor of the pseudo-Hunger Games aesthetic you're more interested in writing is criminally annoying.
So what are the two mistakes that 'Revolution' made? Well, everyone's agreed on what seems to be the big one, which actually isn't the big one relative to the truly huge mistake they made but is, on an empirical level, a pretty big mistake. They didn't define how the "no technology works" rule works. Not the rationale for it--let's face it, most science fiction relies on a fairy-chess style, "Well, what if someone could invent a faster-than-light drive?" or "What if you made a drug that stopped the aging process?" type of question. The actual physics of "What if electricity stopped powering electrical devices?" is never going to make sense.
But they needed to create an internally consistent set of rules for it. As it is, everyone's running around with crossbows except for the people who have black-powder guns and things have reverted to a medieval level of technology despite the fact that the 19th century worked pretty well electricity-free and and and...there needed to be a, "This is what the effect is and what it does, and that rules out A, B, and C but not D, E, and F." Because human beings are tremendously freaking inventive rules lawyers, and one of the first things we do when we find out something doesn't do what we want it to is we start engineering ways around it. Fifteen years of "no electricity" would lead to some pretty ingenious solutions, but we don't see those. Everyone's just given up and started using swords and bows instead of steam and clockwork.
And that's the second, much bigger sin. They jumped ahead fifteen years. The most important event to happen to the human race in a century at minimum, and they said, "Nah, let's just skip past that so everything can look all overgrown and people can run around with swords in the ruins, looking for the Lost Secret that will bring back The World That Was." Which is the plot of every goddamn post-apocalypse story out there ever. The loss of electricity has been reduced from "a fascinating change in human society" to "this story's MacGuffin to explain why humanity is reduced to a pre-industrial dystopia where heroes fight evil tyrants while looking for the lost secret that will restore the old order." This is the freaking plot of 'Warrior of the Lost World', 'Robot Holocaust', and 'Teenage Caveman'. It should not be the plot of your big-budget prime-time TV series.
The story should start the night the power went out...and stay there. It should follow characters who are trying to restore communications between cities in the absence of telegraphs and telephones, characters who are trying to keep food safe to store without refridgerators. It should follow the government's attempts to keep order without any way of broadcasting to the nation, and people who are re-learning how to light with gas and heat with steam. It should be about the tension of not knowing who will succeed, those who are trying to rebuild the world or those who are taking advantage of its collapse. It should be something we've never seen before, not 'The Postman' with the serial numbers filed off.
Ultimately, I think this explains the tepid response to the series better than the absurdity of its premise alone. It's bad enough that it has an absurd premise, but making a show with a premise that absurd only to utterly ignore it in favor of the pseudo-Hunger Games aesthetic you're more interested in writing is criminally annoying.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Side Project Announcement!
I wanted to let everyone know that in addition to this blog and my posts at MightyGodKing, I will also be posting irregularly to a blog I'm co-writing with my wonderful wife. This will be a sequential tour of my personal favorite era of Doctor Who, the novels published during the so-called "Wilderness Years" between the end of the old series and the beginning of the new. (One of the surprises that may come up is that the end of the old series and the beginning of the new doesn't come quite when you'd think it would...)
The blog is available here, and I invite you all to wander by when you have a moment. It'll encourage us to keep going with what is, ultimately, a Herculean labor...albeit a labor of love. Whether you loved the New Adventures, or whether you just kind of heard that there was a series of books out there and want to know more, stop on by!
The blog is available here, and I invite you all to wander by when you have a moment. It'll encourage us to keep going with what is, ultimately, a Herculean labor...albeit a labor of love. Whether you loved the New Adventures, or whether you just kind of heard that there was a series of books out there and want to know more, stop on by!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Self-Taught Superheroes, Part Eighteen
I know I've mentioned this before, but comic books did not actually provide a very good guide to how my life was going to be when I got super-powers. Especially when it came to meeting other superheroes. In the comics, it's so common it's got an entry on TV Tropes all to itself; when two heroes meet for the first time, the first thing they do is assume the other one is a villain and start pounding.
In real life, it totally doesn't work that way. First, none of us are stupid. We did kind of notice a whole bunch of unconscious guards, and an even larger number of freed prisoners who didn't look especially menaced. Even in the heat of battle, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the weird-looking guy in the junkshop armor and the woman whose hands were shimmering with unearthly light might have been responsible for that.
Second, none of us are stupid. When you run into a room and see someone who's obviously got superpowers, and you don't know what they are, the last thing you want to do is just start punching. What if their super-power is they have acid sweat, or that they can make you feel all the pain inflicted on them, or their bodies are actually portals into the Dimension of Angry Telepathic Frogs? You look pretty stupid, is what. (And ouchy. Stupid I can handle, but ouchy less so.) Superheroes fight like cats do, lots of sizing each other up and trying to look like someone you shouldn't mess with and deep down, in the back of your mind where you hope it doesn't show, calculating your odds of getting your butt kicked and wondering whether you should just run away.
So that was pretty much how we met Shining Dragon Fist and Neutrino Man. Not that either one of them was called that, then.
"I'm Captain Light," Josh said. "You might have heard of me." It was almost funny, watching him meet other superheroes. He was totally different from the way he talked to me. He lowered his voice a little, stood up straighter...he didn't actually add "citizen" to the end of all his sentences, but you could imagine him doing it with a straight face. (Well, with as straight a face as you already had. When I said 'almost funny', I really meant 'I was trying so hard not to bust out into giggles that my face got flushed.' Which is actually really weird looking on someone with light green skin. But I digress.) He finished up with, "We're here to rescue you."
Shu bowed low. "I am Shu Mai, the Shining Fist of the Celestial Dragon of the North Wind. We are most deeply gracious for your assistance, and I offer my own humble skills in return."
"I'm um, Kevin." Kevin waved. (In case it wasn't obvious, he wasn't Neutrino Man then.) "Am I supposed to have a cool name? I mean, I could probably think of one if you need one, but I really don't want to start thinking of this as a career choice or anything. I'm just trying to help out."
John Q. Public smiled. "Helping out is like shingles, my man. You get it once, it gets into your system and you're stuck with it for life." He looked over at Lord Raptor, who was just beginning to get those shifty eyes that suggested he was wondering if we were distracted enough not to notice him sneaking away. "Too bad it works both ways."
And of course, that left it to me to be the practical one. "Um, hate to break up the introductions, but there's still a lot of bad guys. How many prisoners are there, and do we have a way to get them out of here?"
"No," said Lord Raptor. "You don't." His eyes were doing a mile-a-minute shifty, now, but his voice was calm and confident. "My men are disorganized at the moment, but that won't last forever. If you leave this base, I can guarantee you the automatic defenses will cut your prisoners down before they've gone fifty feet. Even if you disable them, you couldn't possibly stop all of my Raptor transports from killing them from the air. You're outnumbered, outgunned, and frankly outclassed. Your best bet is to surrender now."
"Spoken like a man with a lot to lose," John replied, charging up his stolen rifle. "Do we need to go over the whole question of your courage?"
"Yes," Lord Raptor snarled back. "We do. Because I guarantee you, my men will settle the score. Seventy-two people, Mister 'Public'. You will not get them out of here alive. You have my personal word that dead or alive, I will ensure that those fatalities are on your conscience. I'm not without mercy, of course. If you surrender, I will arrange for an exile in another dimension once we've solved the problem of powering the portals. Not the most comfortable of fates, but better than your current dilemma."
John glared back. "You think that we're just going to hop into one of your portals and leave the Earth to--"
"Oh!" Kevin cried out. "Oh, oh, I think-- Yes, if we just-- Oh, this is so clever..." He suddenly became aware of everyone staring at him. "Sorry. I just figured out how to get everyone out of here. Us included. The portal chamber, where I came from. I hacked into their computer system and sealed off the route between there and here, I didn't want to have to fight anybody I didn't have to. We can get back there without running into any guards. Then we just have to set the portal to a destination here on Earth, somewhere safe, and we can herd everyone through!"
"I thought the portals couldn't be sustained that long," Josh replied. "How are we going to get them going without a power source?"
"We've got a power source," Kevin said, his face alight with excitement. "You!"
TO BE CONTINUED...
In real life, it totally doesn't work that way. First, none of us are stupid. We did kind of notice a whole bunch of unconscious guards, and an even larger number of freed prisoners who didn't look especially menaced. Even in the heat of battle, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the weird-looking guy in the junkshop armor and the woman whose hands were shimmering with unearthly light might have been responsible for that.
Second, none of us are stupid. When you run into a room and see someone who's obviously got superpowers, and you don't know what they are, the last thing you want to do is just start punching. What if their super-power is they have acid sweat, or that they can make you feel all the pain inflicted on them, or their bodies are actually portals into the Dimension of Angry Telepathic Frogs? You look pretty stupid, is what. (And ouchy. Stupid I can handle, but ouchy less so.) Superheroes fight like cats do, lots of sizing each other up and trying to look like someone you shouldn't mess with and deep down, in the back of your mind where you hope it doesn't show, calculating your odds of getting your butt kicked and wondering whether you should just run away.
So that was pretty much how we met Shining Dragon Fist and Neutrino Man. Not that either one of them was called that, then.
"I'm Captain Light," Josh said. "You might have heard of me." It was almost funny, watching him meet other superheroes. He was totally different from the way he talked to me. He lowered his voice a little, stood up straighter...he didn't actually add "citizen" to the end of all his sentences, but you could imagine him doing it with a straight face. (Well, with as straight a face as you already had. When I said 'almost funny', I really meant 'I was trying so hard not to bust out into giggles that my face got flushed.' Which is actually really weird looking on someone with light green skin. But I digress.) He finished up with, "We're here to rescue you."
Shu bowed low. "I am Shu Mai, the Shining Fist of the Celestial Dragon of the North Wind. We are most deeply gracious for your assistance, and I offer my own humble skills in return."
"I'm um, Kevin." Kevin waved. (In case it wasn't obvious, he wasn't Neutrino Man then.) "Am I supposed to have a cool name? I mean, I could probably think of one if you need one, but I really don't want to start thinking of this as a career choice or anything. I'm just trying to help out."
John Q. Public smiled. "Helping out is like shingles, my man. You get it once, it gets into your system and you're stuck with it for life." He looked over at Lord Raptor, who was just beginning to get those shifty eyes that suggested he was wondering if we were distracted enough not to notice him sneaking away. "Too bad it works both ways."
And of course, that left it to me to be the practical one. "Um, hate to break up the introductions, but there's still a lot of bad guys. How many prisoners are there, and do we have a way to get them out of here?"
"No," said Lord Raptor. "You don't." His eyes were doing a mile-a-minute shifty, now, but his voice was calm and confident. "My men are disorganized at the moment, but that won't last forever. If you leave this base, I can guarantee you the automatic defenses will cut your prisoners down before they've gone fifty feet. Even if you disable them, you couldn't possibly stop all of my Raptor transports from killing them from the air. You're outnumbered, outgunned, and frankly outclassed. Your best bet is to surrender now."
"Spoken like a man with a lot to lose," John replied, charging up his stolen rifle. "Do we need to go over the whole question of your courage?"
"Yes," Lord Raptor snarled back. "We do. Because I guarantee you, my men will settle the score. Seventy-two people, Mister 'Public'. You will not get them out of here alive. You have my personal word that dead or alive, I will ensure that those fatalities are on your conscience. I'm not without mercy, of course. If you surrender, I will arrange for an exile in another dimension once we've solved the problem of powering the portals. Not the most comfortable of fates, but better than your current dilemma."
John glared back. "You think that we're just going to hop into one of your portals and leave the Earth to--"
"Oh!" Kevin cried out. "Oh, oh, I think-- Yes, if we just-- Oh, this is so clever..." He suddenly became aware of everyone staring at him. "Sorry. I just figured out how to get everyone out of here. Us included. The portal chamber, where I came from. I hacked into their computer system and sealed off the route between there and here, I didn't want to have to fight anybody I didn't have to. We can get back there without running into any guards. Then we just have to set the portal to a destination here on Earth, somewhere safe, and we can herd everyone through!"
"I thought the portals couldn't be sustained that long," Josh replied. "How are we going to get them going without a power source?"
"We've got a power source," Kevin said, his face alight with excitement. "You!"
TO BE CONTINUED...
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
You're A Mean One...
I suspect, at this point, everyone has heard about the video of Mitt Romney explaining how he thinks 47% of Americans are happy to depend on government for everything they need, how they think they're entitled to food and shelter, and how they would never vote for a Republican because they know Republicans are going to force them to stand on their own two feet. (No, I'm serious. He really said this. The whole video isn't released yet, so I'm still hoping for some juicy details on his Horcruxes.)
I listened to it, and I read about it, and I talked about it...and one person made a comment that suddenly made the entire campaign make a lot more sense. This commenter (on Andrew Sullivan's article on the whole mess) said that this was the first time they'd heard Romney sound comfortable and natural the entire campaign, that his awkwardness and stiffness disappeared when he started talking about how nearly half the country are parasites and leeches.
And that's when it hit me...that's why Mitt Romney seems awkward. That explains the forced grin, the leaden jokes, the quarter-hearted attempts at connecting with people on his campaign stops. It's not that he doesn't know how to deal with people, it's that he hates them. As soon as the behavior was placed into context, I recognized it instantly. We've all had to spend time around someone we really disliked, in a situation where we had to be polite with them for one reason or another. And when we do, we behave with that same stiff formality and over-rehearsed politeness. We even crack the half-hearted jokes. And deep down, what we're really thinking is, "God, I cannot wait to get away from these idiots/jackasses/insert epithet here."
I even realized that I recognized the smile. In 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas', when the Grinch has to lie to Cindy-Lou Who (who was no more than two), he gave her a sickly, pathetic imitation of a natural grin before telling her that he was only stealing her Christmas tree to fix it. THAT GRIN IS MITT ROMNEY'S SMILE. Tell me I'm wrong, here.
Thankfully, Mittster Grinch doesn't seem likely to steal this Christmas. Although, if Obama wins and someone retaliates by breaking into my house on Christmas Eve and stealing all the roast beast, I know who I'm telling the cops to investigate.
I listened to it, and I read about it, and I talked about it...and one person made a comment that suddenly made the entire campaign make a lot more sense. This commenter (on Andrew Sullivan's article on the whole mess) said that this was the first time they'd heard Romney sound comfortable and natural the entire campaign, that his awkwardness and stiffness disappeared when he started talking about how nearly half the country are parasites and leeches.
And that's when it hit me...that's why Mitt Romney seems awkward. That explains the forced grin, the leaden jokes, the quarter-hearted attempts at connecting with people on his campaign stops. It's not that he doesn't know how to deal with people, it's that he hates them. As soon as the behavior was placed into context, I recognized it instantly. We've all had to spend time around someone we really disliked, in a situation where we had to be polite with them for one reason or another. And when we do, we behave with that same stiff formality and over-rehearsed politeness. We even crack the half-hearted jokes. And deep down, what we're really thinking is, "God, I cannot wait to get away from these idiots/jackasses/insert epithet here."
I even realized that I recognized the smile. In 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas', when the Grinch has to lie to Cindy-Lou Who (who was no more than two), he gave her a sickly, pathetic imitation of a natural grin before telling her that he was only stealing her Christmas tree to fix it. THAT GRIN IS MITT ROMNEY'S SMILE. Tell me I'm wrong, here.
Thankfully, Mittster Grinch doesn't seem likely to steal this Christmas. Although, if Obama wins and someone retaliates by breaking into my house on Christmas Eve and stealing all the roast beast, I know who I'm telling the cops to investigate.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Silence Vs Weeping Angel
I keep seeing this one all over the Internet as an example of one of those "immovable object meeting irresistible force" paradoxes, so I thought I should address it here.
This really wouldn't last long.
If the Weeping Angel and the Silence looked at each other, the Weeping Angel would be frozen in place until the Silence looked away. At that point, the Weeping Angel can move, and it can still see the Silence, so it wouldn't forget the Silence. It'd just charge up to it and zap it back in time 80 years or so.
At that point, it would perhaps wonder why it felt so full, but it wouldn't be much of a contest.
This really wouldn't last long.
If the Weeping Angel and the Silence looked at each other, the Weeping Angel would be frozen in place until the Silence looked away. At that point, the Weeping Angel can move, and it can still see the Silence, so it wouldn't forget the Silence. It'd just charge up to it and zap it back in time 80 years or so.
At that point, it would perhaps wonder why it felt so full, but it wouldn't be much of a contest.
Monday, September 10, 2012
When the Bully Squeals
Has anyone else noticed a major reversal of roles in this year's Presidential campaign?
I mean, normally by this point, we'd have seen at least one prominent Democrat going on 'Meet the Press' (or equivalent program) to decry the Republican's unethical "dirty tricks", and their talking-head counterpart from across the aisle delivering a message of "hey, everybody does it, it's just part of campaigning, and if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen." It's been a ritual from 1980 ("welfare queens") to 1988 ("Willie Horton") to 2000 ("invented the Internet"...or, if you're paying attention as early as the primaries, "illegitimate black baby") to 2004 ("Swift Boat") to 2008 ("secret Muslim"). But this time, it's the Republicans who are shocked--shocked, I say!--that the other side isn't conducting themselves with proper decorum. They're upset that their candidate's finances, previous political decisions, and career are campaign issues, when everyone knows that the focus should be on the other guy. Unsurprisingly, that's not been much of a persuasive argument, but why is it happening?
I think that for one thing, this is the first time in a long while that the Republicans have put forward a really bad candidate. This isn't to say that they haven't put forward poor Presidents before...one of the ugly things about democracy is that it takes different skillsets to run for office than to actually govern, and not everyone has both...but Reagan and the Bushes were savvy campaigners. They knew how to turn on the charisma in front of the cameras, they knew how to set and frame a narrative, and they knew how to deflect attention from their shortcomings. Romney...doesn't have that. His attempts to be charming come off as awkward and stilted, his efforts at framing a narrative (Obama's not the person to help America out of the hole created by the Mystery Person Between Clinton and Obama Who Was Probably A Democrat Or Something) sound like shrill appeals to racism and stupidity, and his response to questions like, "Why didn't you thank the troops at your convention?" was, "I wanted to talk about important things instead." This man is fundamentally inept at the basic business of getting into office.
And that's a real problem, because the other thing is that for all his "nice guy" image, Barack Obama is a very ruthless campaigner. He's excellent at framing a narrative (his treatment of McCain in 2008 is the kind of thing they should write textbooks about. Not only did his criticisms of McCain as "erratic" ring true, they also prevented McCain from making any kind of game-changing decision in the later stages of the campaign.) He's very personable. And yes, he's very good at getting the media trained on Romney's tax returns instead of the unemployment rate (assuming, of course, that you blame Obama for that and not the Mystery Person That Republicans Pretend Never Existed.)
And that, I think, is why you're seeing such howls of protest from the Republicans. Because after years of socking the other guy in the balls whenever the ref isn't looking, their candidate just walked into the ring and said, "By the way, I'd just like to announce that I'm not wearing a cup!" They're vulnerable and someone's actually taking advantage of it, and they're finding out pretty quick that they can dish it out, but they can't take it. And speaking as a lifelong Democrat...it's just part of campaigning, and if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen.
I mean, normally by this point, we'd have seen at least one prominent Democrat going on 'Meet the Press' (or equivalent program) to decry the Republican's unethical "dirty tricks", and their talking-head counterpart from across the aisle delivering a message of "hey, everybody does it, it's just part of campaigning, and if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen." It's been a ritual from 1980 ("welfare queens") to 1988 ("Willie Horton") to 2000 ("invented the Internet"...or, if you're paying attention as early as the primaries, "illegitimate black baby") to 2004 ("Swift Boat") to 2008 ("secret Muslim"). But this time, it's the Republicans who are shocked--shocked, I say!--that the other side isn't conducting themselves with proper decorum. They're upset that their candidate's finances, previous political decisions, and career are campaign issues, when everyone knows that the focus should be on the other guy. Unsurprisingly, that's not been much of a persuasive argument, but why is it happening?
I think that for one thing, this is the first time in a long while that the Republicans have put forward a really bad candidate. This isn't to say that they haven't put forward poor Presidents before...one of the ugly things about democracy is that it takes different skillsets to run for office than to actually govern, and not everyone has both...but Reagan and the Bushes were savvy campaigners. They knew how to turn on the charisma in front of the cameras, they knew how to set and frame a narrative, and they knew how to deflect attention from their shortcomings. Romney...doesn't have that. His attempts to be charming come off as awkward and stilted, his efforts at framing a narrative (Obama's not the person to help America out of the hole created by the Mystery Person Between Clinton and Obama Who Was Probably A Democrat Or Something) sound like shrill appeals to racism and stupidity, and his response to questions like, "Why didn't you thank the troops at your convention?" was, "I wanted to talk about important things instead." This man is fundamentally inept at the basic business of getting into office.
And that's a real problem, because the other thing is that for all his "nice guy" image, Barack Obama is a very ruthless campaigner. He's excellent at framing a narrative (his treatment of McCain in 2008 is the kind of thing they should write textbooks about. Not only did his criticisms of McCain as "erratic" ring true, they also prevented McCain from making any kind of game-changing decision in the later stages of the campaign.) He's very personable. And yes, he's very good at getting the media trained on Romney's tax returns instead of the unemployment rate (assuming, of course, that you blame Obama for that and not the Mystery Person That Republicans Pretend Never Existed.)
And that, I think, is why you're seeing such howls of protest from the Republicans. Because after years of socking the other guy in the balls whenever the ref isn't looking, their candidate just walked into the ring and said, "By the way, I'd just like to announce that I'm not wearing a cup!" They're vulnerable and someone's actually taking advantage of it, and they're finding out pretty quick that they can dish it out, but they can't take it. And speaking as a lifelong Democrat...it's just part of campaigning, and if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
How Big Is Too Big?
Hi all! Sorry I went incommunicado for a while, but I went pretty much directly from one of those "two-day intensive courses" (I'm now certified in USPAP, though! For those of you who know what that means...) to preparation for DragonCon to DragonCon to recovering from DragonCon. That left very little time for blogging, especially as I didn't bring my laptop on the trip.
For those of you who've never been to DragonCon, it's one of the larger conventions out there, although still a pretty distant second from San Diego Comic-Con. In 2011, it drew 46,000, and it's only getting bigger. When I went for the first time, back in 2001, it was probably closer to 20,000. Needless to say, that's a pretty big gang of people crowded into one convention. And yet, it'll probably be even larger next year. Is that a good thing?
On the one hand, it's still fun. Every year, a bigger draw means more people doing cosplay, more money coming in to attract more and bigger guests, more parties, and more friends coming. Capping membership cuts people out of the experience, no matter how the cap is handled (first come first serve, lottery, et cetera.) Who wants to be the one person in your group of friends who doesn't get to go? On the other hand, expansion can't be continued indefinitely. Already, the logistics of simple day-to-day operations during the con are becoming virtually insoluble problems; elevator capacity is at its limits 24/7 for the entirety of the con, walkways are congested to potentially dangerous levels (the fire marshall for Atlanta is practically on a first-name basis with the DragonCon organizers, except that they probably only address each other in four-letter words) and lines stretch around the block for practically every panel. Moving the con from one hotel to five does reduce congestion to some extent, but there still tends to be a "hub" mentality centered on the Hyatt (the original site of the con), and lateral expansion produces its own set of challenges, as you now have to walk a block and a half between panels that don't get spaced any further out in time.
Ultimately, a decision is going to have to be made to cap membership...and I suspect that the con organizers might be nearing that point. If it gets up into the 80,000 range or higher, just walking around the con is going to become a logistical nightmare, let alone things like getting food, sleeping, and oh yes that business of actually enjoying yourself at the convention. It's the kind of decision that I'm glad I don't have to make, because no matter how you slice it, someone's going to be unhappy. But I'd be surprised if they can go five years without having to put a limit on the number of badges they can sell at the rate they're expanding. SDCC has already had to cap its attendance, and while they don't have the ability to expand laterally from the convention center like DragonCon, that kind of expansion can't go on forever.
I'll be kind of sad, I think, when it gets to the point that I can't go every year because I missed my chance. But lucky for me, there's always another convention out there, I wonder if registration is open yet for CONvergence?
For those of you who've never been to DragonCon, it's one of the larger conventions out there, although still a pretty distant second from San Diego Comic-Con. In 2011, it drew 46,000, and it's only getting bigger. When I went for the first time, back in 2001, it was probably closer to 20,000. Needless to say, that's a pretty big gang of people crowded into one convention. And yet, it'll probably be even larger next year. Is that a good thing?
On the one hand, it's still fun. Every year, a bigger draw means more people doing cosplay, more money coming in to attract more and bigger guests, more parties, and more friends coming. Capping membership cuts people out of the experience, no matter how the cap is handled (first come first serve, lottery, et cetera.) Who wants to be the one person in your group of friends who doesn't get to go? On the other hand, expansion can't be continued indefinitely. Already, the logistics of simple day-to-day operations during the con are becoming virtually insoluble problems; elevator capacity is at its limits 24/7 for the entirety of the con, walkways are congested to potentially dangerous levels (the fire marshall for Atlanta is practically on a first-name basis with the DragonCon organizers, except that they probably only address each other in four-letter words) and lines stretch around the block for practically every panel. Moving the con from one hotel to five does reduce congestion to some extent, but there still tends to be a "hub" mentality centered on the Hyatt (the original site of the con), and lateral expansion produces its own set of challenges, as you now have to walk a block and a half between panels that don't get spaced any further out in time.
Ultimately, a decision is going to have to be made to cap membership...and I suspect that the con organizers might be nearing that point. If it gets up into the 80,000 range or higher, just walking around the con is going to become a logistical nightmare, let alone things like getting food, sleeping, and oh yes that business of actually enjoying yourself at the convention. It's the kind of decision that I'm glad I don't have to make, because no matter how you slice it, someone's going to be unhappy. But I'd be surprised if they can go five years without having to put a limit on the number of badges they can sell at the rate they're expanding. SDCC has already had to cap its attendance, and while they don't have the ability to expand laterally from the convention center like DragonCon, that kind of expansion can't go on forever.
I'll be kind of sad, I think, when it gets to the point that I can't go every year because I missed my chance. But lucky for me, there's always another convention out there, I wonder if registration is open yet for CONvergence?
Monday, August 20, 2012
Voter ID Laws Made Simple
To understand the voter ID laws currently being proposed and implemented in many states, it's important to first understand the problem: Voter fraud. Voter fraud is, essentially, any effort to rig the election in order to make sure it doesn't represent an accurate total of votes from the citizens of the country in question, usually to the benefit of the fraudster.
Voter fraud takes two basic forms. The first is the casting of additional ballots for one candidate that are not legitimate, inflating the total number of votes for that candidate to give them an edge. (Known as "stuffing the ballot-box" in some circles, as the oldest and most primitive form of the practice involved literally shoving fake ballots into the boxes used for counting.)
The second is the denial or destruction of legitimate votes cast for one's opposition, in order to artificially deflate the vote totals against the fraudster and give them an edge. Sometimes this is done through literal destruction or shredding of ballots, but most often it takes the form of erecting a (literal or metaphorical) fraudulent barrier to voting. For example, a fraudster might circulate a flyer among their opponent's supporters stating an incorrect time or place for polling, hoping to fool those supporters out of casting legitimate votes.
Currently, Republicans are claiming that the best way to prevent voter fraud of the first type (illegal additional ballots cast) is to erect a (metaphorical) barrier to voting, in the form of stringent requirements for voter ID. These requirements are estimated to prevent somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand times as many legitimate votes from being cast as they will stop illegitimate votes from going through. (Depending on which estimates are used. Some estimates suggest that the number may be as high as thirty thousand, not three thousand.) Coincidentally, these legitimate ballots generally belong to demographic groups that vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
So to make it very simple: Republicans are currently insisting it's better to commit voter fraud 30,000 times over in ways that benefit them than to stand by and allow 10 cases of voter fraud that may benefit their opponents...or them.
What's complicated is why anyone believes these crooks anymore.
Voter fraud takes two basic forms. The first is the casting of additional ballots for one candidate that are not legitimate, inflating the total number of votes for that candidate to give them an edge. (Known as "stuffing the ballot-box" in some circles, as the oldest and most primitive form of the practice involved literally shoving fake ballots into the boxes used for counting.)
The second is the denial or destruction of legitimate votes cast for one's opposition, in order to artificially deflate the vote totals against the fraudster and give them an edge. Sometimes this is done through literal destruction or shredding of ballots, but most often it takes the form of erecting a (literal or metaphorical) fraudulent barrier to voting. For example, a fraudster might circulate a flyer among their opponent's supporters stating an incorrect time or place for polling, hoping to fool those supporters out of casting legitimate votes.
Currently, Republicans are claiming that the best way to prevent voter fraud of the first type (illegal additional ballots cast) is to erect a (metaphorical) barrier to voting, in the form of stringent requirements for voter ID. These requirements are estimated to prevent somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand times as many legitimate votes from being cast as they will stop illegitimate votes from going through. (Depending on which estimates are used. Some estimates suggest that the number may be as high as thirty thousand, not three thousand.) Coincidentally, these legitimate ballots generally belong to demographic groups that vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
So to make it very simple: Republicans are currently insisting it's better to commit voter fraud 30,000 times over in ways that benefit them than to stand by and allow 10 cases of voter fraud that may benefit their opponents...or them.
What's complicated is why anyone believes these crooks anymore.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Dalek Vs. Jedi
I was asked about this a day or two ago, in my (apparent) capacity as expert on both Daleks and Jedi...and while it may be egotistical of me, I thought that people might be interested in my response. In a battle between a Dalek and a Jedi, who would win?
The specific question I was asked to weigh in on at first was, "Would a Dalek be affected by a Jedi's telekinesis?" This seems like a pretty good place to start, as telekinesis is one of the best weapons in a Jedi's arsenal. (Which brings up the question of why they never use it in lightsaber duels, but I'm willing to handwave that away with the assumption that equally matched Jedi either keep each other too busy with lightsaber attacks for either to bring to mind the requisite TK focus, or equally matched Jedi can block each other's telekinesis through some sort of non-visually-discernable means. I bring this up to demonstrate that I can BS with the best of them.)
The answer, I felt, is that yes, Daleks are somewhat vulnerable to Jedi telekinesis. Not totally--I think a Dalek's armor/force field, generally demonstrated to be proof against most projectile weapons, is too tough to be crushed or warped by a Jedi's telekinetic powers. Likewise, Jedi abilities have never been shown to be able to work through solid objects, so the Kaled mutant inside is probably safe from having its life-support tubes yanked out or something similar. But could a Jedi knock a Dalek over, or spoil its aim by moving the gunstick around? Yes.
Which is probably a good thing, because Dalek weaponry is generally portrayed as being not a cutting beam or a projectile, but a packet of energy that "detonates" on contact, creating a disruptive (or possibly explosive) effect that scrambles internal organs and bursts cells. In other words, the Jedi tactic of batting aside blaster bolts would be about as effective as using a baseball bat to deflect a Molotov cocktail. The first Jedi to fight the first Dalek would probably be in for a nasty surprise.
The second one, though, would probably fare better. Telekinesis could keep the Dalek's gunstick pointing in the wrong direction (or spin the Dalek's middle section around to face away) long enough for the Jedi to get into lightsaber range...and lightsabers, traditionally speaking, have been shown to be able to cut through anything. (We could argue the strength of the force-field at the lightsaber's core versus the strength of the force-field surrounding the Dalek (as exhibited in 'Doomsday', natch) but it'd be a moot point. There's not enough evidence to judge, and writerly fiat would trump real-world physics here.) So basically, the Jedi could slice up the Dalek like a layer cake, albeit a large one with a very hideous exotic dancer inside.
So the answer is ultimately "yes". After a particularly hideous casualty to serve as a tactical lesson, a Jedi could take on a Dalek. The only problem is...there's very rarely just "a" Dalek. The Dalek philosophy tends to be, "Why send in a Dalek when you can send in two thousand Daleks to do the same job?" They're also not shy on using strategies that involve expendable Dalek troops. So after the first few Daleks bite it, the Daleks are either going to attack in numbers too massive for the Jedi to deal with, or they're just going to start self-destructing whenever a Jedi gets close to them and banking on the fact that they have more Daleks than the Jedi do Jedi. ("Jedi Do Jedi" is, of course, a fanfilm that Lucas came down pretty hard on with the cease and desists.)
If you want, you can factor in the Jedi Mind Trick, but let's face it--the Jedi Mind Trick never works in the big fights. In 'Feng Shui' terms, it succeeds against unnamed characters only. Random Dalek that you have to distract so that you can sneak past? Weak-willed. Angry Dalek exploding six inches away from you? Bad news for the Jedi.
Ultimately, I think that the Daleks would win through overwhelming force, which is pretty much did in the Jedi order last time, too. Be fun to watch, though.
The specific question I was asked to weigh in on at first was, "Would a Dalek be affected by a Jedi's telekinesis?" This seems like a pretty good place to start, as telekinesis is one of the best weapons in a Jedi's arsenal. (Which brings up the question of why they never use it in lightsaber duels, but I'm willing to handwave that away with the assumption that equally matched Jedi either keep each other too busy with lightsaber attacks for either to bring to mind the requisite TK focus, or equally matched Jedi can block each other's telekinesis through some sort of non-visually-discernable means. I bring this up to demonstrate that I can BS with the best of them.)
The answer, I felt, is that yes, Daleks are somewhat vulnerable to Jedi telekinesis. Not totally--I think a Dalek's armor/force field, generally demonstrated to be proof against most projectile weapons, is too tough to be crushed or warped by a Jedi's telekinetic powers. Likewise, Jedi abilities have never been shown to be able to work through solid objects, so the Kaled mutant inside is probably safe from having its life-support tubes yanked out or something similar. But could a Jedi knock a Dalek over, or spoil its aim by moving the gunstick around? Yes.
Which is probably a good thing, because Dalek weaponry is generally portrayed as being not a cutting beam or a projectile, but a packet of energy that "detonates" on contact, creating a disruptive (or possibly explosive) effect that scrambles internal organs and bursts cells. In other words, the Jedi tactic of batting aside blaster bolts would be about as effective as using a baseball bat to deflect a Molotov cocktail. The first Jedi to fight the first Dalek would probably be in for a nasty surprise.
The second one, though, would probably fare better. Telekinesis could keep the Dalek's gunstick pointing in the wrong direction (or spin the Dalek's middle section around to face away) long enough for the Jedi to get into lightsaber range...and lightsabers, traditionally speaking, have been shown to be able to cut through anything. (We could argue the strength of the force-field at the lightsaber's core versus the strength of the force-field surrounding the Dalek (as exhibited in 'Doomsday', natch) but it'd be a moot point. There's not enough evidence to judge, and writerly fiat would trump real-world physics here.) So basically, the Jedi could slice up the Dalek like a layer cake, albeit a large one with a very hideous exotic dancer inside.
So the answer is ultimately "yes". After a particularly hideous casualty to serve as a tactical lesson, a Jedi could take on a Dalek. The only problem is...there's very rarely just "a" Dalek. The Dalek philosophy tends to be, "Why send in a Dalek when you can send in two thousand Daleks to do the same job?" They're also not shy on using strategies that involve expendable Dalek troops. So after the first few Daleks bite it, the Daleks are either going to attack in numbers too massive for the Jedi to deal with, or they're just going to start self-destructing whenever a Jedi gets close to them and banking on the fact that they have more Daleks than the Jedi do Jedi. ("Jedi Do Jedi" is, of course, a fanfilm that Lucas came down pretty hard on with the cease and desists.)
If you want, you can factor in the Jedi Mind Trick, but let's face it--the Jedi Mind Trick never works in the big fights. In 'Feng Shui' terms, it succeeds against unnamed characters only. Random Dalek that you have to distract so that you can sneak past? Weak-willed. Angry Dalek exploding six inches away from you? Bad news for the Jedi.
Ultimately, I think that the Daleks would win through overwhelming force, which is pretty much did in the Jedi order last time, too. Be fun to watch, though.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Self-Taught Superheroes, Part Seventeen
(Bet you thought I'd forgotten about this, huh?)
It's probably worth noting that this is the point where I have to stop telling you about my dream about the first time we teamed up as superheroes and start just telling you what happened. Because in my dream, after the lights went out, I suddenly realized I was in a haunted house filled with angry telepathic frogs, and that's not really even close to what came next. (I mention it now because it'll explain why I woke up yelling, "Don't crawl down my shirt!" But that's for later.)
In fact, once the lights went out, all we could see was Captain Light. He actually glows when he's using his powers. It's a sort of soft, golden light. It kind of made him a big target, but he didn't mind. He flew into the nearest group of soldiers like a battering ram, sending them scattering like bowling pins. The flashes were almost blinding every time his fists connected--I'm not sure what kind of energy he discharges when he punches, but it packs a wallop. The big war machines weren't moving in on him, either because they were afraid to hit their teammates or because the power failure had affected them too, and those sonic guns that they carried didn't affect him very much.
Meanwhile, that force field curtain that was protecting Lord Raptor had gone down. I made a dash for him--I was having to move a little slow because of the poor light, but I was still faster than any human being alive. I hit him with about 130 pounds of teenage girl while he was still backing away from the table, and he went sprawling. Before I could start laying into him, though, John Q. Public had closed the difference. "Don't beat him up too bad," he said. "He needs to show us where the hostages are."
I nodded, then sprinted over to where Captain Light was wading through the crowd. (I admit, I took about five seconds to kick some heads in on my way. We all help in our own little way.) "Canyoukeepthemdistracted?BecauseI'mgoingtogowiththatJohnQ.Publicguytofindthehostagesandhelpfreethem!" I asked. (For the record, this was officially the first time I forgot that I can talk too fast for other people to understand.)
Captain Light stared at me in mute incomprehension for a moment. "Um..." A guy came charging out of the darkness, wielding something that looked like the offspring of a lightsaber and a naginata. (Did I mention I play D&D?) Captain Light ducked under his thrust and laid him out with an uppercut that left him in a different time-zone. "Whatever you just said, it'll have to wait, okay? You need to find the hostages. I'll hold these guys off."
I think I'm a pretty impressive person for biting my tongue and doing it.
I regrouped with John Q. Public, and the two of us manhandled Lord Raptor to the door. Captain Light stayed about ten steps behind us, giving enough light for us to see while still keeping himself between the bulk of the troops and the exit. John and I did our part to make sure that anyone unlucky enough to be in our way found out that the six-foot tall glowing guy wasn't the only dangerous thing in the room. (Go Team Small and Feisty! Well, okay, John's about five-eleven, but "Go Team People Who Don't Glow!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Once we were in the corridors, things got easier. Captain Light was able to hold the soldiers back a lot better when they were in a smaller space, and things were clearly way too disorganized for them to circle round. (We found out later that Neutrino Man had made a device that was jamming their comlinks. I think the lesson here is never give a fully-equipped lab to a person who's way smarter than you are and being held against your will. Thirteen percent of superhero origins would not happen if bad guys just followed that simple rule.
Lord Raptor didn't give us any trouble, surprisingly enough. He had this slightly shellshocked look on his face, and he just pointed mutely down hallways when prompted. I think, looking back, that it was probably a mix of legitimate panic and confusion (for a guy with so many contingency plans he had them numbered and lettered, a lot of stuff was getting out of control) and him biding his time until his soldiers could get the power back up and regain the advantage through sheer force of numbers. Besides, we were taking him to the hostages...and the hostages were under heavy guard, by his own express instructions. All we could possibly be doing was taking him closer and closer to his own reinforcements.
He must have gotten a pretty nasty shock when we burst into the holding cells and found a bunch of unconscious guards, and two other superheroes.
TO BE CONTINUED...
It's probably worth noting that this is the point where I have to stop telling you about my dream about the first time we teamed up as superheroes and start just telling you what happened. Because in my dream, after the lights went out, I suddenly realized I was in a haunted house filled with angry telepathic frogs, and that's not really even close to what came next. (I mention it now because it'll explain why I woke up yelling, "Don't crawl down my shirt!" But that's for later.)
In fact, once the lights went out, all we could see was Captain Light. He actually glows when he's using his powers. It's a sort of soft, golden light. It kind of made him a big target, but he didn't mind. He flew into the nearest group of soldiers like a battering ram, sending them scattering like bowling pins. The flashes were almost blinding every time his fists connected--I'm not sure what kind of energy he discharges when he punches, but it packs a wallop. The big war machines weren't moving in on him, either because they were afraid to hit their teammates or because the power failure had affected them too, and those sonic guns that they carried didn't affect him very much.
Meanwhile, that force field curtain that was protecting Lord Raptor had gone down. I made a dash for him--I was having to move a little slow because of the poor light, but I was still faster than any human being alive. I hit him with about 130 pounds of teenage girl while he was still backing away from the table, and he went sprawling. Before I could start laying into him, though, John Q. Public had closed the difference. "Don't beat him up too bad," he said. "He needs to show us where the hostages are."
I nodded, then sprinted over to where Captain Light was wading through the crowd. (I admit, I took about five seconds to kick some heads in on my way. We all help in our own little way.) "Canyoukeepthemdistracted?BecauseI'mgoingtogowiththatJohnQ.Publicguytofindthehostagesandhelpfreethem!" I asked. (For the record, this was officially the first time I forgot that I can talk too fast for other people to understand.)
Captain Light stared at me in mute incomprehension for a moment. "Um..." A guy came charging out of the darkness, wielding something that looked like the offspring of a lightsaber and a naginata. (Did I mention I play D&D?) Captain Light ducked under his thrust and laid him out with an uppercut that left him in a different time-zone. "Whatever you just said, it'll have to wait, okay? You need to find the hostages. I'll hold these guys off."
I think I'm a pretty impressive person for biting my tongue and doing it.
I regrouped with John Q. Public, and the two of us manhandled Lord Raptor to the door. Captain Light stayed about ten steps behind us, giving enough light for us to see while still keeping himself between the bulk of the troops and the exit. John and I did our part to make sure that anyone unlucky enough to be in our way found out that the six-foot tall glowing guy wasn't the only dangerous thing in the room. (Go Team Small and Feisty! Well, okay, John's about five-eleven, but "Go Team People Who Don't Glow!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Once we were in the corridors, things got easier. Captain Light was able to hold the soldiers back a lot better when they were in a smaller space, and things were clearly way too disorganized for them to circle round. (We found out later that Neutrino Man had made a device that was jamming their comlinks. I think the lesson here is never give a fully-equipped lab to a person who's way smarter than you are and being held against your will. Thirteen percent of superhero origins would not happen if bad guys just followed that simple rule.
Lord Raptor didn't give us any trouble, surprisingly enough. He had this slightly shellshocked look on his face, and he just pointed mutely down hallways when prompted. I think, looking back, that it was probably a mix of legitimate panic and confusion (for a guy with so many contingency plans he had them numbered and lettered, a lot of stuff was getting out of control) and him biding his time until his soldiers could get the power back up and regain the advantage through sheer force of numbers. Besides, we were taking him to the hostages...and the hostages were under heavy guard, by his own express instructions. All we could possibly be doing was taking him closer and closer to his own reinforcements.
He must have gotten a pretty nasty shock when we burst into the holding cells and found a bunch of unconscious guards, and two other superheroes.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Friday, August 10, 2012
Confessions of a Comic-Book Refugee
I've had a shocking realization creep up on me over the last year or so. It really began to hit me during CONvergence, the sci-fi con I attended in July, but it's been slowly building ever since about 2007. I've been trying to deny it for a long time, but I think it's about time I admitted it.
I don't think I'm a comic book fan anymore.
It's weird to say that, given that I'm currently reading 'The Essential Hulk, Volume 6', having just polished off 'The Essential Captain America, Volume 5', and looking forward to the next Marvel movie...but I mean it in the sense of "following the events of the Marvel and DC Universe on a regular or even semi-regular basis." I'm sure I'll still read individual comic books--the medium isn't dead to me--but I can't imagine going back to Marvel or DC anymore. Even if I had the kind of unlimited finances that you'd need to buy the endless cat's cradle of crossovers and tie-ins and "summer events", I don't care anymore. I don't even want to know anymore, because hearing about DC's new zero issues or Earth-Two or AvX just makes me kind of sad and achy, like hearing about a friend you used to know who's in jail for dealing heroin and is HIV-positive. When I talk to comics fans about comics, I find that I just don't have a common interest with them anymore. And I'll admit, I never thought that would happen.
I think it started, as I said, back in 2007. I'd been in and out of the hobby for a while, starting back in 2002; I'd made the jump from floppies to trades, and it's only when you're not hitting the store every week to get the new fix that you step back and realize how much you're buying out of habit. When you evaluate each series in terms of, "Do I want a whole other book of this?", you find that the answer is "no" a whole lot more often than it was when you were just buying 32 more pages. I bought less and less until I was buying pretty much nothing for a year or two. And once you're not visiting the store every week, it's like comics become invisible to you. When I did go into a comics store, I didn't even know what was popular. The sad truth of comics marketing is that it's far easier to leave the hobby right now than it is to rejoin it.
...and then, in 2005, I found myself drawn back into the weekly grind. It started with morbid curiosity--I went for a visit to my local comics store, just to see what was happening, and wound up buying an issue of 'Infinite Crisis' just to convince myself that they were really doing it. That turned into the seeds of an idea for a book on the crossover phenomenon, from 'Crisis' to 'Crisis' in DC and 'Secret War' to 'Civil War' at Marvel...and while I was researching the book, I got back into the habit of buying. And following. I picked up all the 'Civil War' tie-ins, followed the follow-ups, read '52', and started in on 'Countdown' and 'World War Hulk'...
And then one day it hit me. This was all really terrible, and I was spending all my money on it. Marvel had gone from a crossover where the Scarlet Witch was the villain to one where the Scarlet Witch was the villain again to one where Iron Man was the villain (or Captain America, as Mark Millar unconvincingly insisted) to one where the Hulk was the villain. The heroes were all acting like villains and the villains were all acting like villains, to the point where I didn't actually like anyone I was reading about. Meanwhile, 'Countdown' was infamously terrible, and 'Amazons Attack' was notoriously inept as well. I could not imagine enjoying any of this stuff anymore.
And so I stopped buying it. But I still followed it all. Wikipedia, Newsarama, CBR...I still paid attention, even as I wrote endlessly about classic comics on this blog and realized I derived more enjoyment from comics written decades before my birth than I could ever get from the current crop of stories. Every time I read about a new crossover, a new event, a new reboot or preboot or softboot or retcon or prestconbootventover, it just made me irritated.
And then, at CONvergence, at a panel on the DC reboot, it finally hit me. I didn't care anymore. I didn't even care about it enough for it to anger me, unless it was right there in front of me. I was in the room, but all I could think about was how I had nothing to say to these people. We weren't speaking a common language, because I wasn't buying or reading or interested in any of the stuff they were talking about. Even the good books by creators I liked (like Paul Cornell) didn't interest me. The friend had died in prison, I'd sent a condolence card to the family, and I had moved on. 'Avengers vs. X-Men'? 'Marvel Now'? Just the corpse twitching in a lifelike manner.
And on the flip side...there were the movies. I have found myself eagerly devouring casting news, announcements of new projects, trailers and set photos and rumors. The apathy and vague depression that I feel when I hear about Marvel's comics stands in even starker contrast compared to my excitement and sheer joy over the films. I'm still a super-hero fan, just as much as ever. Maybe even more so. But there are other places for me to get that fix, ones that don't involve pointless misogyny and flailing desperation and endless, pathetic attempts to seem "mature" by rehashing themes that felt warmed over 25 years ago. (And in some cases not just themes, DC, I'm looking right at you and your 'Before Watchmen'...)
I'm now a refugee from the world of comics, taking up a new home in the world of movies and TV shows and reprints about the characters I love. It's kind of a relief to get that off my chest. I hope that those of you who are still comics fans won't think less of me for not being able to get excited about your hobby anymore. And I hope those of you who share this feeling will join me over here, where we're all eagerly awaiting 'Cap 2' and 'Iron Man 3' and 'Ant-Man' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy'...and where we're all hoping that someday, DC will get its act together and give us something to love the same way.
I used to be a comics fan. And while I still love a lot of individual comics...I don't think I am anymore.
I don't think I'm a comic book fan anymore.
It's weird to say that, given that I'm currently reading 'The Essential Hulk, Volume 6', having just polished off 'The Essential Captain America, Volume 5', and looking forward to the next Marvel movie...but I mean it in the sense of "following the events of the Marvel and DC Universe on a regular or even semi-regular basis." I'm sure I'll still read individual comic books--the medium isn't dead to me--but I can't imagine going back to Marvel or DC anymore. Even if I had the kind of unlimited finances that you'd need to buy the endless cat's cradle of crossovers and tie-ins and "summer events", I don't care anymore. I don't even want to know anymore, because hearing about DC's new zero issues or Earth-Two or AvX just makes me kind of sad and achy, like hearing about a friend you used to know who's in jail for dealing heroin and is HIV-positive. When I talk to comics fans about comics, I find that I just don't have a common interest with them anymore. And I'll admit, I never thought that would happen.
I think it started, as I said, back in 2007. I'd been in and out of the hobby for a while, starting back in 2002; I'd made the jump from floppies to trades, and it's only when you're not hitting the store every week to get the new fix that you step back and realize how much you're buying out of habit. When you evaluate each series in terms of, "Do I want a whole other book of this?", you find that the answer is "no" a whole lot more often than it was when you were just buying 32 more pages. I bought less and less until I was buying pretty much nothing for a year or two. And once you're not visiting the store every week, it's like comics become invisible to you. When I did go into a comics store, I didn't even know what was popular. The sad truth of comics marketing is that it's far easier to leave the hobby right now than it is to rejoin it.
...and then, in 2005, I found myself drawn back into the weekly grind. It started with morbid curiosity--I went for a visit to my local comics store, just to see what was happening, and wound up buying an issue of 'Infinite Crisis' just to convince myself that they were really doing it. That turned into the seeds of an idea for a book on the crossover phenomenon, from 'Crisis' to 'Crisis' in DC and 'Secret War' to 'Civil War' at Marvel...and while I was researching the book, I got back into the habit of buying. And following. I picked up all the 'Civil War' tie-ins, followed the follow-ups, read '52', and started in on 'Countdown' and 'World War Hulk'...
And then one day it hit me. This was all really terrible, and I was spending all my money on it. Marvel had gone from a crossover where the Scarlet Witch was the villain to one where the Scarlet Witch was the villain again to one where Iron Man was the villain (or Captain America, as Mark Millar unconvincingly insisted) to one where the Hulk was the villain. The heroes were all acting like villains and the villains were all acting like villains, to the point where I didn't actually like anyone I was reading about. Meanwhile, 'Countdown' was infamously terrible, and 'Amazons Attack' was notoriously inept as well. I could not imagine enjoying any of this stuff anymore.
And so I stopped buying it. But I still followed it all. Wikipedia, Newsarama, CBR...I still paid attention, even as I wrote endlessly about classic comics on this blog and realized I derived more enjoyment from comics written decades before my birth than I could ever get from the current crop of stories. Every time I read about a new crossover, a new event, a new reboot or preboot or softboot or retcon or prestconbootventover, it just made me irritated.
And then, at CONvergence, at a panel on the DC reboot, it finally hit me. I didn't care anymore. I didn't even care about it enough for it to anger me, unless it was right there in front of me. I was in the room, but all I could think about was how I had nothing to say to these people. We weren't speaking a common language, because I wasn't buying or reading or interested in any of the stuff they were talking about. Even the good books by creators I liked (like Paul Cornell) didn't interest me. The friend had died in prison, I'd sent a condolence card to the family, and I had moved on. 'Avengers vs. X-Men'? 'Marvel Now'? Just the corpse twitching in a lifelike manner.
And on the flip side...there were the movies. I have found myself eagerly devouring casting news, announcements of new projects, trailers and set photos and rumors. The apathy and vague depression that I feel when I hear about Marvel's comics stands in even starker contrast compared to my excitement and sheer joy over the films. I'm still a super-hero fan, just as much as ever. Maybe even more so. But there are other places for me to get that fix, ones that don't involve pointless misogyny and flailing desperation and endless, pathetic attempts to seem "mature" by rehashing themes that felt warmed over 25 years ago. (And in some cases not just themes, DC, I'm looking right at you and your 'Before Watchmen'...)
I'm now a refugee from the world of comics, taking up a new home in the world of movies and TV shows and reprints about the characters I love. It's kind of a relief to get that off my chest. I hope that those of you who are still comics fans won't think less of me for not being able to get excited about your hobby anymore. And I hope those of you who share this feeling will join me over here, where we're all eagerly awaiting 'Cap 2' and 'Iron Man 3' and 'Ant-Man' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy'...and where we're all hoping that someday, DC will get its act together and give us something to love the same way.
I used to be a comics fan. And while I still love a lot of individual comics...I don't think I am anymore.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
How To Finally Make a Hulk Movie Work
If there's anyone out there who doesn't think that 'The Incredible Hulk' was the weakest of the "Marvel Universe" cycle of movies, I haven't heard from them. The consensus seems to be that while it wasn't a failure like the previous, disastrous Ang Lee 'Hulk', it's certainly nothing like the show-stopping success enjoyed by two Iron Man movies, Thor, and Captain America...and that 'The Avengers' showed a possible blueprint for how to make a Hulk film work. But in an ensemble film where just about everything worked, what is it specifically that made the Hulk click in a way that he hadn't in two previous films? What did Joss Whedon do right that Ang Lee and Louis Leterrier did wrong?
The answer is simple. The Hulk spoke.
Technically, he sorta spoke in all three of his film appearances. In Ang Lee's 'Hulk', during one of the film's weird, incoherent dream sequence-y things, he said, "Puny humans," while in 'The Incredible Hulk', he shouted "Hulk smash!" at the film's climax. That's roughly the same amount of dialogue he had in 'Avengers'. But in 'Avengers', he had one of the film's most memorable, laugh-out-loud, stand-up-and-cheer lines: "Puny god," spoken after treating Loki like a particularly maladjusted toddler treats a Betsy-Wetsy doll, showed the Hulk's actual personality in a way we never saw in the previous films. It showed that the Hulk isn't just a mindless force of nature, he's a person. He has his own way of looking at the world. And while he's frequently terrifying, as a being that powerful can be, he's actually just a big dumb goofy kid inside sometimes.
The comics have been embarrassed about the Hulk's goofiness for ages. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, although Peter David's decade-long run is certainly a place to start. He famously only used the Hulk's stylized "Hulk smash puny humans!" style of dialogue that Roy Thomas invented in a very limited capacity, and usually for comic effect to contrast it with the erudite and sarcastic Hulk he was more interested in writing. And while that worked for Peter David, it's worth noting that many of his "dumb Hulk" lines were also drop-dead funny, including the awesome comment made by the green Hulk in Banner's body: "Hulk's butt hurts!" Let's face it--Hulkspeak is freaking hilarious, and it's not by accident. It's meant to sound silly. It's meant to make the Hulk a little bit sympathetic, which is needed given that he's a brute and a monster.
The films we've gotten have refused to do that. They've been obviously trying to avoid embracing the silliness inherent in the Hulk's character, and it's hard to make a film work when your director refuses to stand behind its own central idea. (Notably, Ang Lee never lets the character be called "Hulk" onscreen. That takes being ashamed of your comic-book roots to new heights.) What's needed is a film that lets the Hulk be silly and sympathetic, while never letting us forget that he's dangerous and powerful. A film where the Hulk punches the giant flying dragon-worm...and then shoulder-punches Thor clean off-camera because he's in a bad mood. It needs to be funny as well as serious, something that the previous two attempts didn't even go for.
In short, the Hulk needs to talk. And he needs to talk goofy. If you can't get behind that, scrap your draft script and go back to the computer, Mister Screenwriter.
The answer is simple. The Hulk spoke.
Technically, he sorta spoke in all three of his film appearances. In Ang Lee's 'Hulk', during one of the film's weird, incoherent dream sequence-y things, he said, "Puny humans," while in 'The Incredible Hulk', he shouted "Hulk smash!" at the film's climax. That's roughly the same amount of dialogue he had in 'Avengers'. But in 'Avengers', he had one of the film's most memorable, laugh-out-loud, stand-up-and-cheer lines: "Puny god," spoken after treating Loki like a particularly maladjusted toddler treats a Betsy-Wetsy doll, showed the Hulk's actual personality in a way we never saw in the previous films. It showed that the Hulk isn't just a mindless force of nature, he's a person. He has his own way of looking at the world. And while he's frequently terrifying, as a being that powerful can be, he's actually just a big dumb goofy kid inside sometimes.
The comics have been embarrassed about the Hulk's goofiness for ages. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, although Peter David's decade-long run is certainly a place to start. He famously only used the Hulk's stylized "Hulk smash puny humans!" style of dialogue that Roy Thomas invented in a very limited capacity, and usually for comic effect to contrast it with the erudite and sarcastic Hulk he was more interested in writing. And while that worked for Peter David, it's worth noting that many of his "dumb Hulk" lines were also drop-dead funny, including the awesome comment made by the green Hulk in Banner's body: "Hulk's butt hurts!" Let's face it--Hulkspeak is freaking hilarious, and it's not by accident. It's meant to sound silly. It's meant to make the Hulk a little bit sympathetic, which is needed given that he's a brute and a monster.
The films we've gotten have refused to do that. They've been obviously trying to avoid embracing the silliness inherent in the Hulk's character, and it's hard to make a film work when your director refuses to stand behind its own central idea. (Notably, Ang Lee never lets the character be called "Hulk" onscreen. That takes being ashamed of your comic-book roots to new heights.) What's needed is a film that lets the Hulk be silly and sympathetic, while never letting us forget that he's dangerous and powerful. A film where the Hulk punches the giant flying dragon-worm...and then shoulder-punches Thor clean off-camera because he's in a bad mood. It needs to be funny as well as serious, something that the previous two attempts didn't even go for.
In short, the Hulk needs to talk. And he needs to talk goofy. If you can't get behind that, scrap your draft script and go back to the computer, Mister Screenwriter.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Coming Soon
[SCREEN FADES IN ON A PICTURE OF FOREST--SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA, OR PERHAPS WEST VIRGINIA. NEAR SUNSET, WITH SOFT, GOLDEN LIGHTING. QUIET, INSPIRATIONAL STRING MUSIC PLAYS.]
NARRATOR (ADULT MAN, WITH MELLOW SOUTHERN ACCENT--SOMEONE LIKE MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, OR MAYBE WOODY HARRELSON. OR CHANNING TATUM, HE'S BIG RIGHT NOW, ISN'T HE? OR IS HE NOT SOUTHERN? MAYBE WE'RE THINKING OF SOMEONE ELSE. ANYWAY...): It wasn't easy, growing up near the mines...
[CUT TO A SCENE OF A YOUNGISH MAN OUTSIDE A RAMSHACKLE HOME, WEARING A SUIT AND GLASSES--CLEARLY AN INTELLECTUAL. HE'S TALKING TO A TWELVE-YEAR OLD BOY WHO LOOKS RAGGEDY, BUT ADORABLE.]
MAN: Where's your father, son?
BOY: Don't have no pa, sir.
MAN (LOOKING SOLEMN): Then where's your mother?
BOY (LOOKING VAGUELY ASHAMED): Workin'.
[CUT TO THE FOREST. MORE OF THE REALLY PRETTY GOLDEN LIGHT.]
NARRATOR: Felt like sometimes, I didn't have a friend in the world.
[THE BOY RUNS THROUGH THE FOREST, LEAPING OVER STUMPS AND ROCKS. HIS FACE IS FILLED WITH A FURY HE CANNOT EXPRESS SAVE THROUGH MOTION. SUDDENLY, HE TRIPS OVER A ROCK AND SPILLS HEADLONG, FALLING DOWN A SLOPE TO COME UP RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE END OF A HOLLOW, ROTTED LOG. HIS EYES WIDEN IN FEAR AS HE SEES WHAT'S INSIDE.]
NARRATOR: But that was before I met Little Bub.
[A BABY WOLVERINE CRAWLS OUT OF THE HOLLOW LOG, NUZZLING AGAINST THE BOY AS IF TO SAY, "FEED ME?"]
CAPTION: In a town without hope...
[THE BOY RUNNING AGAIN, ONLY THIS TIME WITH THE WOLVERINE AT HIS SIDE. IT'S NOTICEABLY LARGER, AND THE BOY LOOKS TO HAVE A WILD GRIN ON HIS FACE.]
CAPTION: Sometimes love...is where you make it.
[CUT TO THE MAN, TALKING TO A WOMAN WHO LOOKS WEARY AND CYNICAL, YET STILL HOT. CAN WE MAYBE GET SCARLETT JOHANSSONN, PUT HER IN A GRANDMA DRESS?]
MAN: I am just trying to help you.
WOMAN (OBVIOUSLY THE BOY'S MOTHER): Well, you can't. This isn't a place where things like that happen, so don't come asking! Because I don't!
[CUT TO THE BOY, BEING PUSHED AROUND BY BULLIES. SUDDENLY, THE WOLVERINE BITES ONE OF THEM COMICALLY ON THE BUTT.]
BULLY: YeeeeeOWWWW!
[CUT TO THE MOM, CLEARLY TERRIFIED AND FURIOUS.]
MOM: You stay away from that wolverine, you hear me, boy?!
BOY: But he's my only friend!
[CUT TO THE BOY RUNNING AGAIN, THIS TIME IN THE FOREST IN THE NIGHTTIME. HE'S NERVOUS NOW, BUT THE WOLVERINE IS RUNNING ALONGSIDE HIM.]
NARRATOR: I guess you could say I became a man, that summer.
[CUT TO BOY, KISSING A GIRL FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE WOLVERINE IS PLAYING AT THEIR FEET.]
NARRATOR: The summer I found...
TITLE CARD: THE WOLVERINE.
CAPTION: When you can't believe in anyone else...believe in your heart.
........admit it. This is what you all think of when you hear that title, isn't it?
NARRATOR (ADULT MAN, WITH MELLOW SOUTHERN ACCENT--SOMEONE LIKE MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, OR MAYBE WOODY HARRELSON. OR CHANNING TATUM, HE'S BIG RIGHT NOW, ISN'T HE? OR IS HE NOT SOUTHERN? MAYBE WE'RE THINKING OF SOMEONE ELSE. ANYWAY...): It wasn't easy, growing up near the mines...
[CUT TO A SCENE OF A YOUNGISH MAN OUTSIDE A RAMSHACKLE HOME, WEARING A SUIT AND GLASSES--CLEARLY AN INTELLECTUAL. HE'S TALKING TO A TWELVE-YEAR OLD BOY WHO LOOKS RAGGEDY, BUT ADORABLE.]
MAN: Where's your father, son?
BOY: Don't have no pa, sir.
MAN (LOOKING SOLEMN): Then where's your mother?
BOY (LOOKING VAGUELY ASHAMED): Workin'.
[CUT TO THE FOREST. MORE OF THE REALLY PRETTY GOLDEN LIGHT.]
NARRATOR: Felt like sometimes, I didn't have a friend in the world.
[THE BOY RUNS THROUGH THE FOREST, LEAPING OVER STUMPS AND ROCKS. HIS FACE IS FILLED WITH A FURY HE CANNOT EXPRESS SAVE THROUGH MOTION. SUDDENLY, HE TRIPS OVER A ROCK AND SPILLS HEADLONG, FALLING DOWN A SLOPE TO COME UP RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE END OF A HOLLOW, ROTTED LOG. HIS EYES WIDEN IN FEAR AS HE SEES WHAT'S INSIDE.]
NARRATOR: But that was before I met Little Bub.
[A BABY WOLVERINE CRAWLS OUT OF THE HOLLOW LOG, NUZZLING AGAINST THE BOY AS IF TO SAY, "FEED ME?"]
CAPTION: In a town without hope...
[THE BOY RUNNING AGAIN, ONLY THIS TIME WITH THE WOLVERINE AT HIS SIDE. IT'S NOTICEABLY LARGER, AND THE BOY LOOKS TO HAVE A WILD GRIN ON HIS FACE.]
CAPTION: Sometimes love...is where you make it.
[CUT TO THE MAN, TALKING TO A WOMAN WHO LOOKS WEARY AND CYNICAL, YET STILL HOT. CAN WE MAYBE GET SCARLETT JOHANSSONN, PUT HER IN A GRANDMA DRESS?]
MAN: I am just trying to help you.
WOMAN (OBVIOUSLY THE BOY'S MOTHER): Well, you can't. This isn't a place where things like that happen, so don't come asking! Because I don't!
[CUT TO THE BOY, BEING PUSHED AROUND BY BULLIES. SUDDENLY, THE WOLVERINE BITES ONE OF THEM COMICALLY ON THE BUTT.]
BULLY: YeeeeeOWWWW!
[CUT TO THE MOM, CLEARLY TERRIFIED AND FURIOUS.]
MOM: You stay away from that wolverine, you hear me, boy?!
BOY: But he's my only friend!
[CUT TO THE BOY RUNNING AGAIN, THIS TIME IN THE FOREST IN THE NIGHTTIME. HE'S NERVOUS NOW, BUT THE WOLVERINE IS RUNNING ALONGSIDE HIM.]
NARRATOR: I guess you could say I became a man, that summer.
[CUT TO BOY, KISSING A GIRL FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE WOLVERINE IS PLAYING AT THEIR FEET.]
NARRATOR: The summer I found...
TITLE CARD: THE WOLVERINE.
CAPTION: When you can't believe in anyone else...believe in your heart.
........admit it. This is what you all think of when you hear that title, isn't it?
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Romney Logic
So as I am to understand it, the Israeli standard of living is much higher than the Palestinian standard of living, due to their "superior culture". Romney looks at the Palestinians, whose country is under occupation and whose trade has been interdicted by the Israeli government (to be fair, the reason that the Israelis try to make sure that the Palestinians don't have any money is the not-unreasonable fear that the Palestinians will spend it all on bombs and guns that they'll use to kill the Israelis. Which is why international diplomacy is so complicated.)
Unless you're Mitt Romney, of course. Then it's not complicated at all. The Israelis have a superior culture, so they live better.
Has anyone ever asked him if that means, by extension, that the Nazis had an even more superior culture? After all, I'm pretty sure that if you compare the standards of living of Nazi party members to German Jews in 1942, you'd find an even vaster disparity in income and standard of living. And many of those surviving Jews went on to be among the earliest Israeli settlers. I think someone should check in with Mitt and see if the syllogism holds for him.
Actually, on second thought, I think that'd be a very bad idea. He might tell us.
Unless you're Mitt Romney, of course. Then it's not complicated at all. The Israelis have a superior culture, so they live better.
Has anyone ever asked him if that means, by extension, that the Nazis had an even more superior culture? After all, I'm pretty sure that if you compare the standards of living of Nazi party members to German Jews in 1942, you'd find an even vaster disparity in income and standard of living. And many of those surviving Jews went on to be among the earliest Israeli settlers. I think someone should check in with Mitt and see if the syllogism holds for him.
Actually, on second thought, I think that'd be a very bad idea. He might tell us.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Reactions to the Comic-Con Comic Movie News
Comic-Con, of course, is your go-to spot for big gigantic epic humongous super-cool movie news, ever since they realized you could fit the entire reading audience of the best-selling comic at either Marvel or DC into the building and have some space around the sides. Let's face it, it's either diversify or die, and luckily tons of people are into superheroes nowadays, even if they don't know that they're still publishing stories about them in small pamphlets to a niche audience of aging fans.
And this year's news was no exception. Marvel announced that they would be coming out with 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier', 'Thor: The Dark World', 'Iron Man 3', 'Ant-Man', and 'Guardians of the Galaxy', while DC announced that after the climax of Christopher Nolan's Bat-Trilogy and the relaunch of Superman that fans have already been aware of for over a year, they have...um...maybe a 'Justice League' movie? Sometime in 2015? They don't have a script or a director or a cast yet, but they're totally working on it.
Let that just sink in for a moment. Ant-Man and Rocket Raccoon will be hitting the big screen before Wonder Woman and the Flash. At this point, it feels like Marvel is just doing victory laps. "Hey, whaddya think, guys!" you can hear them saying. "Wanna fast-track a Squadron Supreme movie for 2015, just to mess with their heads?"
Seriously, how does this work? Does Warner Brothers just hate money? There is a huge audience out there right now for well-done superhero movies that treat their source material with respect while remaining accessible to newcomers, and their mainstream DCU non-Superman/Batman track record for the last five years consists of 'Jonah Hex' and 'Green Lantern'. And extending it back much further runs into 'Catwoman'.
What these guys need is to find their own Avi Arad; someone who is savvy about the film industry, while remaining ultimately in the corner of the DC comics guys. They need to elevate DC to its own division in their company, with its own studio that focuses exclusively on DC movies. They need to show deference to the people who know the material, instead of assuming that the tropes of the superhero comic can be easily and painlessly extruded through the mold of a summer blockbuster. They need high-quality talent behind the cameras; Christopher Nolan should be the base level of quality for this kind of thing. (Admittedly, Martin Campbell looked like a good choice on paper...perhaps the lesson to take away from 'Green Lantern' is that your script has to work first.)
And they need to do all this fast. Because at this rate, by the time they do finally come out with a 'Flash' movie, people are going to assume it's totally a rip-off of that Quicksilver guy from 'Avengers 3'.
And this year's news was no exception. Marvel announced that they would be coming out with 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier', 'Thor: The Dark World', 'Iron Man 3', 'Ant-Man', and 'Guardians of the Galaxy', while DC announced that after the climax of Christopher Nolan's Bat-Trilogy and the relaunch of Superman that fans have already been aware of for over a year, they have...um...maybe a 'Justice League' movie? Sometime in 2015? They don't have a script or a director or a cast yet, but they're totally working on it.
Let that just sink in for a moment. Ant-Man and Rocket Raccoon will be hitting the big screen before Wonder Woman and the Flash. At this point, it feels like Marvel is just doing victory laps. "Hey, whaddya think, guys!" you can hear them saying. "Wanna fast-track a Squadron Supreme movie for 2015, just to mess with their heads?"
Seriously, how does this work? Does Warner Brothers just hate money? There is a huge audience out there right now for well-done superhero movies that treat their source material with respect while remaining accessible to newcomers, and their mainstream DCU non-Superman/Batman track record for the last five years consists of 'Jonah Hex' and 'Green Lantern'. And extending it back much further runs into 'Catwoman'.
What these guys need is to find their own Avi Arad; someone who is savvy about the film industry, while remaining ultimately in the corner of the DC comics guys. They need to elevate DC to its own division in their company, with its own studio that focuses exclusively on DC movies. They need to show deference to the people who know the material, instead of assuming that the tropes of the superhero comic can be easily and painlessly extruded through the mold of a summer blockbuster. They need high-quality talent behind the cameras; Christopher Nolan should be the base level of quality for this kind of thing. (Admittedly, Martin Campbell looked like a good choice on paper...perhaps the lesson to take away from 'Green Lantern' is that your script has to work first.)
And they need to do all this fast. Because at this rate, by the time they do finally come out with a 'Flash' movie, people are going to assume it's totally a rip-off of that Quicksilver guy from 'Avengers 3'.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Storytelling Engines: CSI
(or "The Old Reliable")
Let's start by specifying which "CSI" we're talking about. We're not talking about the CSI TV show that's been going for twelve seasons, nor the other CSI TV show, nor the other other CSI TV show. We're talking about the CSI comics that are based on the CSI TV show that spun off two other CSI TV shows, both of which had impressively long runs as well. So you can already tell that we're talking about a pretty successful storytelling engine here. (What you may not be able to tell, and I'm not going to assume you know, is what "CSI" stands for. It's "Crime Scene Investigations".)
But why? What makes this the kind of storytelling engine that sustains so many stories so easily for so long? Do the comics contain some sort of clue that the TV show doesn't? Actually, it's hard to tell just what the storytelling engine is from one volume of the CSI comic book collections; the "decompression" effect of modern comic books is quite graphically demonstrated (if you'll pardon the pun) with these series. A trade paperback that's over 300 pages long really only contains three individual stories; that's barely enough time to put names to faces, let alone give you a really detailed look into what makes the series tick.
Fortunately, one of the things that the CSI TV series show is that it doesn't really matter who's doing the investigating. All three shows have rotating casts, in addition to having three complete sets of casts, and it doesn't seem to dent the popularity of the shows or the ability of writers to come up with new story ideas. It's the jobs the characters do, not their personal lives, that drive the engine of a police procedural; the occasional episode or storyarc might come from the characters' pasts or personalities, but usually the easiest way to get a police protagonist involved in a story is to call 911. (Depending on the series, of course; 'Criminal Minds', for example, tends to run its one-off stories as basic procedurals and base its longer arcs on the backstories of the people involved. Neither approach is "right" or "wrong", but one definitely lends itself better towards casting changes.)
And likewise, it's not the location that's important; the CSI that the comics are based on happens to be the Las Vegas CSI, but New York and Miami offer no more or fewer storytelling opportunities. Pretty much any big city has a high enough crime rate that you can believably imagine one interesting murder case a week. CSI: International Falls doesn't work quite so well, but you could easily imagine them spinning off the franchise into Dallas, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or Atlanta without any real difficulty.
So if the people don't matter, and the place doesn't matter...what makes this such a workable storytelling engine? Surely if 100+ previous entries have taught us anything, it's that those things are usually pretty important. Why is CSI evergreen without any of it mattering?
The answer, I think, has to be the crimes. Sad to say, there is an endless variety of human misery out there, ready to inspire us to create art that examines its meaning. Meaning that there's never going to be an end to the inspiration for police procedurals; as long as there's crime today, there will be a story tomorrow that imagines those criminals being brought to justice. That's enough material to supply a hundred police procedurals for a hundred years...which is probably something I shouldn't say too loud. I might give the CSI people some ideas.
Let's start by specifying which "CSI" we're talking about. We're not talking about the CSI TV show that's been going for twelve seasons, nor the other CSI TV show, nor the other other CSI TV show. We're talking about the CSI comics that are based on the CSI TV show that spun off two other CSI TV shows, both of which had impressively long runs as well. So you can already tell that we're talking about a pretty successful storytelling engine here. (What you may not be able to tell, and I'm not going to assume you know, is what "CSI" stands for. It's "Crime Scene Investigations".)
But why? What makes this the kind of storytelling engine that sustains so many stories so easily for so long? Do the comics contain some sort of clue that the TV show doesn't? Actually, it's hard to tell just what the storytelling engine is from one volume of the CSI comic book collections; the "decompression" effect of modern comic books is quite graphically demonstrated (if you'll pardon the pun) with these series. A trade paperback that's over 300 pages long really only contains three individual stories; that's barely enough time to put names to faces, let alone give you a really detailed look into what makes the series tick.
Fortunately, one of the things that the CSI TV series show is that it doesn't really matter who's doing the investigating. All three shows have rotating casts, in addition to having three complete sets of casts, and it doesn't seem to dent the popularity of the shows or the ability of writers to come up with new story ideas. It's the jobs the characters do, not their personal lives, that drive the engine of a police procedural; the occasional episode or storyarc might come from the characters' pasts or personalities, but usually the easiest way to get a police protagonist involved in a story is to call 911. (Depending on the series, of course; 'Criminal Minds', for example, tends to run its one-off stories as basic procedurals and base its longer arcs on the backstories of the people involved. Neither approach is "right" or "wrong", but one definitely lends itself better towards casting changes.)
And likewise, it's not the location that's important; the CSI that the comics are based on happens to be the Las Vegas CSI, but New York and Miami offer no more or fewer storytelling opportunities. Pretty much any big city has a high enough crime rate that you can believably imagine one interesting murder case a week. CSI: International Falls doesn't work quite so well, but you could easily imagine them spinning off the franchise into Dallas, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or Atlanta without any real difficulty.
So if the people don't matter, and the place doesn't matter...what makes this such a workable storytelling engine? Surely if 100+ previous entries have taught us anything, it's that those things are usually pretty important. Why is CSI evergreen without any of it mattering?
The answer, I think, has to be the crimes. Sad to say, there is an endless variety of human misery out there, ready to inspire us to create art that examines its meaning. Meaning that there's never going to be an end to the inspiration for police procedurals; as long as there's crime today, there will be a story tomorrow that imagines those criminals being brought to justice. That's enough material to supply a hundred police procedurals for a hundred years...which is probably something I shouldn't say too loud. I might give the CSI people some ideas.
Friday, July 13, 2012
No, Seriously, Republicans, Who's Your Real Candidate?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about how utterly inept politician Mitt Romney was at the basic fundamentals of politics; to wit, he has a very hard time presenting himself as a decent and likeable human being that you'd want to elect, and he has a hard time keeping negative stories about himself from circulating. I posted a series of jocular headlines I expected to see over the coming months, as Romney's liabilities continued to snowball.
I didn't actually expect that the June headline, "Romney Invested In Company That Disposes of Human Fetuses" and the July headline, "Romney Insists He Did Not Commit Felony With False SEC Filings", would actually top the ones I'd written. At this point, I am not ruling out the Horcruxes.
I didn't actually expect that the June headline, "Romney Invested In Company That Disposes of Human Fetuses" and the July headline, "Romney Insists He Did Not Commit Felony With False SEC Filings", would actually top the ones I'd written. At this point, I am not ruling out the Horcruxes.
Sunday, July 08, 2012
A Shocking Revelation
I can't imagine why I haven't seen this before.
He's an expert martial artist with a hidden backstory. He refuses to use guns, to the point of emptying the clip as soon as he takes one off a bad guy. He's determined to the point of seeming imperviousness to pain.
Eliot from 'Leverage' is Bruce Wayne in disguise.
Everything makes so much sense now.
He's an expert martial artist with a hidden backstory. He refuses to use guns, to the point of emptying the clip as soon as he takes one off a bad guy. He's determined to the point of seeming imperviousness to pain.
Eliot from 'Leverage' is Bruce Wayne in disguise.
Everything makes so much sense now.
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