Merciless Minerva: What's up With Wonder Woman?

It's no secret that i'm a giant nerd. while i may no longer regularly buy the "big name" super hero comics, i still have great affection for them, insofar as the characters themselves are, to me, great ideas based on tried-and-true literary concepts. it's sort of a bummer that most heroes have to have their parents offed in the first act, but let's be honest, a moment, shall we? these days when i hear of talented people i particularly enjoy being married, having kids, etc, i almost instantly go "oh..." and my respect for them goes down a notch. is that rude? yeah, probably. it's also temporary, i might add. it also doesn't apply to the chosen few exceptional couples out there who happen to be made up of both funny/artistic/musical/great partners. is it my own bias? yes and no. truth be told, how can you go on an adventure of gigantic proportions if you have family ties (not the TV show, snarky bastards) to constantly worry about. this jaded sentiment led to, i believe, the "canceling out" (for lack of better phrase) of the marriages of both Spider-Man and Superman. oddly enough, i'm anti- this. i personally really liked the marriages of both characters, again because they're spouses seemed on equal footing. Spider-Man had the nerd-wish fulfillment of being married to a hot redhead (who also supported him and his mission), and Superman's wife, Lois Lane, was a take-charge kind of get-in-the-trenches type (in recent years; they thankfully dropped the swooning act in the 1980s). same holds true for the Fantastic Four: they're an adventuring family, so no one is staying home questioning why the hero has to go save the world but yet can't find a second to spend with his/her family/spouse/children (one of my most hated fantasy tropes; it even infects Watchmen, both comic and movie, and that's written by one of my all-time favorite comics writers. not to mention that the stereotypically whiney female is also a superhero! jesus, fuck). well, i've gone far afield, so i'll try my best to bring it all back home.

So yeah, Wonder Woman. it should come as no surprise that despite being considered by many to be one of the most recognizable and best of DC's stable, she is consistently in a sort of B level limbo. believe it or not, there has almost never been a continuing Wonder Woman series. it gets a decent run, sales lag, it's cancelled, someone goes "wait a minute, assholes, it's fucking Wonder Woman for fuck's sake!" and relaunches it with a new creative team and a new #1! whoo-hoo. i'm actually shocked that in the first wave of DC new 52 cancellations, WW was not amongst those chopped. not because the book sucks; it's actually one of the few i can stomach! it's just, hey, Wonder Woman is a guhr-rill, and they do NOT buy comics (a lie, by the way. nor do they only buy smartsy-farsty "graphic novels" like i like; women do like superheroes!). i'm here to tell you: Wonder Woman is the shit.

it may not come as any surprise to many of you (i feel i use that phrase too often. oh well), that i'm a big WW fan. not for the obvious reason, either, or at least, not just for the obvious reasons.

carumba.

i think my earliest exposure to Wonder Woman was probably the Super Friends cartoon. by the way, that show does not hold up with age. i tried watching it a couple years ago, and i was like "hoooo, boy"! i don't know that she left much of an impression on me then, but a few years later, i remember seeing reruns of what many continue to think of as THEE template by which all Wonder Women should be measure: the live action TV show starring Lynda Carter.

prepare for ass-kicking, suckahs.

This did in fact leave a HUGE impression on me, and probably for the reasons you're thinking. to be honest, i didn't understand a lot of what i was feeling at the time. i was 6 or 7. but i knew something was stirring, not even a mouse, and at the risk of getting graphic, it was the open door to a whole new world of something-or-other. i know, that was not only not graphic, it was the opposite of graphic. borderline nonsensical, even. just fill in the blanks mentally. actually, DON'T! no one needs to think about my childhood boners.

it's okay, we're all feeling it.

I think what i'm trying to say is, WW for me is not just tied up with some sexy stuff, though there is some of that. i really do remember watching the show as a kid and enjoying it. i'm sure, as was my wont at the time, i pestered my folks with a lot of inane questions they didn't have the answer to, like how does spinning around change ones clothes, etc. and i don't even know if the show still holds up, but it's a pretty big chapter in the life of everyone's favorite amazon (or, the only amazon anyone actually knows, save maybe some greek scholars or something).

now, if you've stuck with me long enough to wade through comic geekery and references to pre-adolescent priapism, this is where i get into the actual matter i wish to discuss. the truth behind Wonder Woman, which is not so secret, but not many seem to know. until rather recently, i counted myself amongst those benighted masses. here it is: Wonder Woman is (well, started out as, anyway) some freaky shit!

anyone who knows me knows i identify as a Feminist (boner jokes notwithstanding). sadly, i'm not Addi's favorite feminist, but apparently she is my BFF (also, please kill me for using the term BFF; also please go here for an excellent blog/podcast [blodcast?] and also to get this inside-iest of inside jokes: http://additwigg.com/blog/). it's not particularly easy to make people comprehend this, being a straight white dude and all. i'm not going to complain, because women's struggles have been, if i were to estimate 100,000,000,000,000 times worse than mine have been/ are/ will ever be (and frankly, mine aren't that great *cue violin*). Feminism teaches us that the political is the personal, which is why Feminists (myself included) are constantly being told to relax and that shit is "just a tv show/movie/book/video game/comic/et al". the truth is that nothing is ever "just" anything: there is almost always a hidden agenda, even if it's unconscious. that's the case in the vast overwhelming majority of life. take for instance the supposed love of women of Bill Clinton. no one ever goes "well, politically speaking, maybe things were slightly better for American women during his presidency." oh, no, it's constant references to his being "sharp" and "silver tongued" and well groomed and the like, as if women are raccoons to be distracted by shiny objects. that's a perfect example of what i'm talking about. so no movie/book/tv show etc etc etc is without this underlying bias in favor of the status quo. anything radical is usually destroyed or subjugated. it sometimes works in the opposite way, but not often. almost never in fact. one could point out the Beatles: started bubblegummy, end up druggy. but even then, i'm not convinced they were all that radical. art is a tricky thing, eh wot.

this is where Wonder Woman comes in.

i've rambled quite a bit, so hopefully you've stuck with this. 

Wonder Woman was created in the early 1940s by a man named William Moulton Marston. a toothy mouthful by any stretch of the imagination. Marston was a psychologist and one of the inventors of the lie-detector test, which is actually featured in an early WW story involving a Nazi collaborator. Marston had the distinction of being a psychologist in the 194os who did not hate comic books. in fact, he saw them as having a great untapped potential to teach and mold children. he wrote an article saying as much in an issue of Family Circle of all things (my mom used to buy that mag, and all i can say is it sure must've been different in the 1940s, because in the 1980s it was pretty much recipes and crap like that), which was seen by Maxwell Gaines, father of William Gaines (who would later go on to found the much maligned, but awesome, EC comics and Mad magazine, which were both hated by Psychologists of the time, though that was the 50s; what a difference a decade makes...), and creator of what is essentially the comic book as we know it today (that is, the actual format, not the concept of comics writing etc). Gaines hired Marston as an educational consultant for the company that would eventually become DC comics. Marston, along with his wife, began to conceive of a female superhero, one who would stand head-to-head with the already incredibly popular Superman and Batman. she would be strong, intelligent, beautiful, and fully independent. despite being as strong as Superman, her aim would not be to triumph over evil with might, but with Love. she was ultimately a teacher and protector, and stood for all that Marston saw as good in Woman. she was... SUPREMA.

say what?!

kidding! well, kinda. obviously, it's not the character pictured above which is from Alan Moore's run on Supreme (a comic i can say i've never read). but Marston initially did want to call his Amazonian creation Suprema. the fuck's that about? DC editor Sheldon Mayer renamed the character Wonder Woman, and the rest is history. as far as that goes, anyway.

what a lot of people may not know is that William Moulton Marston, on top of being a psychologist and comics fan in some manner, was also a Feminist. Feminism has gone through many different forms, so the Feminism of his day was not so much the Feminism of my day. nevertheless, his intent with Wonder Woman was to educate people to the idea of the liberation of women. he was not creating an unbiased, objective work. WW was started out, essentially as propaganda (a loaded term, certainly, but one befitting the intent of the creator). but he wasn't just trying to instill gender equality in the minds of young people oh no. Marston was not just a shrink and Feminist. no, he was also something of a freaknik. he was not only married, but lived in a polyamorous situation with another woman, a former student, and his wife and the other lady were totally into it! on top of all that, he was super into bondage and submission, he himself being the submissive. 

clearly Freaky-Deaky.

Wonder Woman. insofar as it was able in the staid 1940s, was entirely an attempt to break down the fabric of conventional relationships, including marriage and family. this is not jaded surmising from a current day nut spouting deconstructive critical theory, this is straight from the horse's mouth. the entire initial run of the WW comic was about WW herself leaving the all-female Paradise Island because of the incursion of man. not mankind, mind you, but A man. the much put-upon (and rightly so! he's a shitty character) Steve Trevor crashes into the midst of the idyllic upbringing from which Diana AKA Wonder Woman springs. as an aside, Diana herself is not the product of a "proper" union betwixt male and female. she is created from clay by her mother, queen of the Amazons, and given live by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. if you think to yourself that this is bat-shit crazy, you're right! i don't have a problem with it, and surely as comic origins go its in keeping with the oddity of them all. but it certainly does stand out.  she wins a contest to become Wonder Woman, the Amazons emissary to "man's world", where she will teach world peace through loving submission to strong yet gentle female authority, which Marston refers to as "Love Allure".

WW's very attire is tied up in this use of submission and bondage. her primary weapon is the Magic Lasso, which not only compelled those ensnared to tell the truth, but in early issues forced them to comply with any command. it was sometimes even used against Wonder Woman herself. the bracelets which she famously uses to deflect bullets are signifiers of a bondage relationship, the idea that willing submission creates strength... or something. apparently her physical appearance was modeled after the 3rd member of the Marston polyamory set, Olive Byrne (including the bracelets, although how she walked around wearing them in the 1940s and how she explained such is beyond me).

so what evidence is there to support this claim of Wonder Woman being a BDSM tractate? the initial run of the comic (written by Marston under the psuedonym "Charles Moulton" with art by H.G. Peters, who is seemingly forgotten and not known for doing much else) is rife with imagery involving bondage, domination, Amazons wrestling each other, people being tied up, forced to kneel before their captors, and many other examples. it's often pointed out in histories of the comics, to varying degrees of "oh my lord!" to "ain't this awesome?" 

um...

(p.s. - this is from an actual WW comic, not some freaky underground porn parody)

pay special attention to the words of the Amazon queen.

note that there are MANY binding games. many.

there is some speculation as the whether or not artist H.G. Peters shared Marston's particular predilection. i'm not sure how anyone can look at these panels and wonder that. outside of porn or maybe freaky-deaky art books, where else have these types of images been shown in such painstaking detail? i mean, come on.

these themes were obviously later softened, and then almost completely taken out, turning WW into just another ripping yarn of comic book escapism. this lesser known side of Diana's mission is almost completely gone from the more recent retellings of her origin. as a kid, i knew Wonder Woman as being as strong as Superman, but a woman. nothing really on her attempt to bring peace to man's world through love and, well, bondage. the flip side, Wonder Woman as example of how one might live one's life in an alternative fashion was never presented, for good or ill. frankly, the whole bondage thing, it's not for me, but i'm not gonna judge it. who am i to criticize. would i let a woman dressed as WW tie me up? probably not ( i can't say "definitely not!", because who knows?), but others might, and hey, good for them. i digress. the point isn't how this effects me and my life, the point is that whether or not people see/have seen it, initially at least, those elements were there, and they were, for lack of a better term, meant to be "preachy". 

sadly, not everything in these early WW's is super progressive. Diana has a sidekick named "Etta Candy" who is portrayed as being fat and obsessed with food. she's not depicted as anything but comedy relief, as well as something of a bother that WW general has to rescue, leading to one of these bondage situations. Wonder Woman herself admonishes Etta for eating too much, saying she'll never catch a man like that. Etta poo-poos the notion, saying "what can you do with a man? candy you can eat!" it's a bizarre question in a book all about sex (however covert). in one story, Etta promises to lose 10 pounds (which is clearly meant to be a joke, as it would have no effect on her overall appearance). by the end, she tells Diana that she doesn't like her "new" self, and begs in all caps "GIMME MY CANDY!" cue wah-wah-wah-ahhhhh sad trombone effect. here's i'm not fat shaming, i'm pointing out that Etta's fatness and love of food is not celebrated nor shown to be a positive thing in any way, somehow undermining the Feminism inherit in much of the rest of early Wonder Woman stories.

 World War II, despite being the ultimate expression of male dominance created by unchecked aggression, is wholly justified in the Marston stories. Ares (god of war) and Aphrodite are arguing whilst on Olympus, the brutish Ares smugly pointing out that he is winning, as the whole world is at war! MWAH-HA-HA-HA! Aphrodite calmly states that when the USA wins ("and they WILL win!"), it will be her turn, as the world will no longer see any point in war, and Love will rule supreme. alternative though that message may be, it is still jingoism, and by its very nature therefore not progressive.

as ever, i'm bad with endings. i'll simply wrap up by saying this: if you are able (and some of you may be) to read these early Wonder Woman comics, either via the library, springing for the moderately priced reprint volumes, or "other means" *ahem* perhaps digital, i highly recommend them. bondage/submission stuff aside, they are generally five shades of batshit insane, and therefore awesome. shit, i didn't even mention the jousting matches on the backs of giant kangaroos!

i'll leave you with this image, which both my 7 year old and 37 year old selves love for different reasons (my 7 year old self may have been able to spot rockin' bods, but he wouldn't know good snark to save his life):

not impressed by this lame attempt to return to WW's bondage roots, obviously.

yet another unfinished project.

i won't be playing through all the Final Fantasy games after all. the first one was taking way too long, and i'm just becoming a jaded fuck or something, because as much as i love classic games, it wasn't all that fun. it started out pretty cool, but eventually became tedious. who knows? just a minor update.

"It's Hallowe'en all over again" (Flaming Lips)

Halloween is coming yet again, and many people are very excited. they use Halloween as the "one night a year [they] can truly be [themselves]", and are able to express the "real" them.
personally, when it comes to Halloween, i'm a purist. i generally like to take the time to celebrate the death of the crops by worshiping Cernunnos, the antlered god, and harassing the locals into giving me offerings, awarding those that do with blessings, and cursing those that do not, sometimes causing such psychic distress that they commit suicide*.

psych, nah. 
what i mean is, as someone who is not particularly fond of my actual self (for the record, cosplay nerds, your real self is the one that wears clothes and works at a job, and goes grocery shopping and such. your costumed self is a fun fantasy dress-up play time self, and guess what: that is awesome) i like to think of dressing up for Halloween as escapism. i don't get to be my "real" self, i get to be someone else. and really, how often do we get to do that? but for me, as I am an adult who is well into his 30s, Halloween, like most holidays, is about drinking, and lots of it.

what's the point of all this? well, as is the usual for many, i would like to give some Halloween advice, particularly some Halloween party advice. be forewarned: if you're a giant halloween enthusiast, you probably won't like my advice. too bad, tho. here it is:

Don't be a Costume Nazi. by that, i don't mean don't be a Nazi as your costume (but don't do that either, assholes/princes of england. the Nazis were horrible fuckheads, and unless you're in a movie playing a Nazi, or in some kind of historical reenactment, don't dress as one. also, don't be a Nazi in historical reenactments. further, don't be in historical reenactments). look, not everyone has the halloween boner you may have. perhaps you spent a shit ton of time, energy, and maybe even real money on your costume. that is fucking awesome, and i mean that snark-free. you know what i spent a lot of time, energy, and real money on? Mass Effect 3. man that game fucking ruled. every time i played it i was psyched. i loved the storyline, the characters were awesome, the graphics were mindblowing. my character, a female space marine/spaceship captain went around making out with other females in the game. it was so great.  and for me it was worth every penny. wait, you're no doubt saying, what's the point of that? exactly! that's the point. not everyone gives that big of a shit about a halloween costume, just as not everyone gives two shits about sweet-ass video games. sometimes people will half-ass it. sometimes they may not even wear a costume (and by that i don't mean nudity, altho...). who are you to judge? as a bearded man, one year, i was like "fuck, i don't feel like shaving." so i went as the Unibomber. it was seriously what i generally wear everyday, and then a grey hoodie and aviator shades. i already had the hoodie, and my GF bought the shades for like 99 cents somewhere. i was sure someone would crawl up my ass at some point, but i actually got a lot of compliments. i think there are people who would say that costume was half-assed, but i actually did it fully assed. i didn't just go "oh shit, what am i gonna wear?" i was like "i'm gonna be the Unibomber". other people probably have been it many times, but so what? it doesn't always work out, however. last year i had no costume and no ideas, but i really wanted to drink, and i didn't want to be the guy with no costume, so i shaved down to a 'stache, put on my winter hat, cut off some pants i never wear to flood-water levels, drew a mustache on my pointer finger, wore a plaid shirt i've gained too much weight to normally wear, and went as a "hipster". it was so lame. and the drunker people got, the more they were like "are you a lumberjack?", so it just became a hipster lumberjack (totally a thing, guys!). i'm not proud of it, but fuck, whattayagonnado? i still managed to have a shit-ton of fun drinking and karaoake-ing (that's the correct verb form of karaoke, by the way). my long-winded point is just not to be so rigid on the costume thing. not everyone has the imagination you may have, but they may want to be apart of the festivities. 

also, can we not slut shame? the sexy/slutty version of most costumes is kinda lame, but it doesn't make those people bad people. i dunno, i don't think we should slut shame in life, and Halloween is just another day, right? a fun day, but a day nevertheless. also, some sexy costumes are kind of okay (and i'm not just saying that cuz of the boners). like, people may disagree, but i think Sexy Librarian is fully acceptable. i'm also not totally anti- Sexy Nurse. but most of them are right out. Sexy Kermit is just... jesus christ... i can't...

i'd tell you what i'm going as, but i want people to get the full effect in person. it's not a giant leap, but it did take a bit of effort, and i think it's imaginative. and one of these days, as promised for many years, i WILL go as a Scary Ghost (sheet w/ eyeholes cut out). 

have Happy Halloweening, everybody.


*the actual origin of Treat-Or-Treating. or not. i grew up Evangelical, and was lectured at many times of the evils of Halloween.

Neglectful.

i haven't done much with this blog, mainly because i don't know if anyone reads it. i think the lack of commenting has been a big indicator of that, but perhaps not. I'm not begging for comments, please don't think that. it just makes it difficult to gauge whether anyone reads or not. with LJ it was at least sort of implied that people who were LJ Friends read the stuff. this is harder. i tend to try and plug it via tumblr, and i know there are followers of me there, but not that many, and who knows. anyway, enough pity party. just in case anyone does in fact see this and go "he hasn't written anything in a while", i haven't written it off. i've just been slightly neglectful.

as a mini update of sorts: i've been playing Final Fantasy 1 (see previous post on my attempt to play through all of the original 8/16 bit ear FF series) off and on, and it's pretty goddamn hard. we forget that old video games are actually harder, mainly because the bells and whistles of the new games are often used to detract from the actual gameplay/storyline/difficulty. i've beaten way more new games than anything from the NES/SNES/Genesis, etc era. truth be told, i don't even think i've ever been a Mario game. i beat the 1st Sonic The Hedgehog with the help of Game Genie, the "real" ending, anyway (i finished it a few times without collecting all the Chaos Emeralds, which is not actually beating it; Game Genie had a code that gave you 5 out of 6, you pick one up in the first bonus stage, and as long as you can make it through the game, there's the win). and Metroid, as far as classic gaming goes, is my crowning achievement. i did in fact beat that, no game genie or codes, but it did take fucking forever. as for Contra, i distinctly recall using the Konami Code to get 30 lives, and getting very far, but i don't recall ever beating it. shit's hard, y'all.

speaking of old NES, i think the best thing (and it's been widely discussed on the net, some i'm not breaking new ground here) is the incredibly deceptive box art for the old 8 bit games.  one of the best examples of this is the Megaman games.
for example, the US version of the 1st Megaman  box art is this:

what the shit??

the actual gameplay, of course, looks like this:

see, super cartoony and rad. Megaman doesn't carry a weird laser gun or have a yellow suit with blue accents. he's a robot with a kid face, his arm is a gun (specifically a "Buster", why not a "Blaster", i don't know), and his suit is all blue, seemingly with underoos on that outside like an old timey superhero.

Megaman 2 is closer:

still... no cigar.

the suit is right, but it still looks like a dude, and he's holding a gun, rather than the gun being attached to his arm, "Buster" style. also, the actual gameplay looks like the above shot from MM1: 8-bit pixellated cartoony radness. not the super animated for you see here.

it wouldn't be till Megman 3 for NES that we got much closer to what you actually might see within the game, if much more highly rendered to make it more appealing (i guess?) for sales purposes:

yes, that actually looks like Megaman, he has the Buster, the robot look, the enemies look like robots and not guys. i guess they figured by this point the series had caught on in the US, so they had to be a bit more true to form.

incidentally, in Japan, Megaman is known as "Rockman", and here's the box art for the Famicom (original NES) game:

why, that's what they actually sort of look like!

the mind boggles.

incidentally, if you had the original NES, and bought games that were actually developed by Nintendo, the box art was not deceiving at all. it pretty much looked exactly like what the gameplay looked like. that certainly didn't stop anyone from buying millions of Mario games, or Metroid, or even Duck Hunt.

Super Who What-Now? doesn't ring a bell...

if only they had stuck with super rendered,

ridiculously intricate box art that had nothing to

do with the actual gameplay. such a waste!

Daiboken no Laruki Pahka: Fainura Fantaji.

It's not literal (kinda like fake-y Japanese) but the above kinda says "Larky Parka's Great Adventure: Final Fantasy".

for whatever reason, i plan on playing the original Final Fantasy series from the NES/SNES era (FF's 1-6) and writing about it here. why not? i plan to do this until i get bored.

if you're unaware, Final Fantasy is a series of video game RPGs from Japan. it's influence on the video game world in general (and your humble author in specific) cannot be overstated. it spans four generations of video game consoles, and is one of the best selling franchises of all time. ironically, many of the games didn't appear in North America until much later (either on PS1, Nintendo DS, or Wii's virtual console), hence the series seemingly jumping from FF3 to FF7 (FF3 was actually FF6 in Japan; the original 3-5 didn't come over here until much later). i could ramble on and on about the importance of this video game legacy, but i won't. suffice to say, it's kinda a big deal (insofar as video games are a big deal to me; in the greater scope of humanity, probably not as important as other things, but whatever).
interestingly enough, i have never beaten a single Final Fantasy game. in fact, that i can recall, i've only ever beaten one RPG: Shining Force for Sega Genesis (tho i played it on an emulator, as i'll be doing with FF).
what usually happens is: i remember or hear about a video game, get it for an emulator, play it for a bit, and then it goes away. not this time. i plan to play each of these games solely, until they are beaten, and play them a little bit for a certain allotted amount of time every night (probably longer on weekends if i can manage it). i'll probably be checking in here and there with updates, etc. it'd be too long between entries if i just waited until i beat each game. P.S. this won't be the only thing i'm writing about here at The Dynamic Adventuring. no need to fret.

oh yeah, you might be asking "why stop at 6?" well, 7-13 are on much later consoles, and also i've actually played most of those. the NES/SNES years, which encompasses FF's 1-6 is really what i want to focus on. because it's rad. so, here's hoping all this goes well.
for more info, if you're interested, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(video_game)

also, here's this:
it's long, so just watched the first minute or so if you want to get a feel for it.

*Edit Face!*:
-i started FF1 last night. holy shit, it's hard as fuck! that's the thing though, old school games were harder. they had simpler graphics, which makes them look juvenile or whatever, but they were way more challenging. it's true. try playing Mega Man some time if it's been awhile. you're ass will be kick-ed right quick.
-above i stated it had been four generations of consoles. it has actually been seven generations. amazing.

Hey there, Hockey Puck! (Legendary Comedians: Are They Funny? part 2)

This man needs no introduction, which is good, because i don't feel like giving one *rimshot*.
seriously, folks, the next comedian to grace this blog is famed insult comic Don Rickles.

here's the deal, i'm not gonna go into huge amounts of depth on this one. everyone probably knows who Don Rickles is. suffice to say, he's old, and he got started millions of years ago. he was Frank Sinatra's favorite comedian, etc. i actually thought of this one whilst waking up one morning, literally half-asleep. to me, that's hilarious. he is best known for being irascible and for making fun of people to their faces. also, i guess he got away with telling these jokes because he would always say he loved the person whom he was defaming. all of the clips of him on youtube are interminably long. seriously, there are hardly any under 5 minutes, and for a Don Rickles clip, that's a goddam eternity. so here's this:

still got it...? i guess...?

but is he funny: frankly, no.

but whattayagonnado? he's old and legendary, so there it is.

The Comedy Legends: Are They Funny? (hopefully a multi-part series)

Hear me now and listen to me later: Humor is subjective. there are thousands of comedians from the days of yore that are name-checked and referred to, in fact, as Legendary. they indeed paved the way for your Louies, Your Pattons, Your Marons, et al.
but where they, in fact, funny?

i thought of this at work, because truth be told, i don't really know. some of them, to my way of thinking, are quite funny. some, well, not so much, but one may look at them in the context of their importance to the craft. but just because something is old and legendary, doesn't make it funny. conversely, that does not make it unfunny. i think we can only judge them by their merits. and here is where i begin. bear in mind, as stated above, that humor and comedy are almost completely subjective. this is, as ever, my opinion. you may not dig any of these artists at all. hell, I might not even dig any of them. we shall see.

________________________________

I'm starting with the following Comedienne because she is in the news a lot lately, having recently died at the ripe old age of 92. this of course is Phyllis Diller. a bit of context: Phyllis is incredibly well known as a personality. she did, in fact, get her start as a comedian, but i'm not sure if i was ever really conscious of that until maybe a couple years ago. i'm not especially old (despite how i feel/joke), so my knowledge of Ms. Diller is from her appearances in reruns of old game shows, stuff like Laugh-in, and random sitcoms. she even appears in the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?, regaling the viewer with the knowledge that most cars were once electric. fascinating stuff, for my money.

but is she funny?

This short clip is probably not enough to make a judgment on such a long and storied career. in this 2:22 video, i think i actually laughed aloud 3 or 4 times. that's not a particularly high quotient, but it is a short video, and frankly, it's more times than i thought i would. in breaking ground for bizarre female characters to be comedic, i say i have the utmost respect for Phyllis Diller.
as for funny: yeah, kinda. sure.
that's the best i can do.

Not Just Another Drop In The Ocean.

a lot of time something will speak heavily to me. i'll often use hyperbole in the form of statements like "this changed my life". many was the time i have told someone that something applied to my life/mind state or whatever at a certain time, and got at least an eye roll, at best an explanation as to why it didn't actually apply to my life, because it was really about XYZ, etc.
Nonsense!
this happens a lot with music. the problem (but it's not really even a problem, not really, is it?) with a lot of lyrical content is that it's incredibly abstract. you can say "this line from this song applies to how i feel right now", and some wag will point out "actually, they're singing about Elvis OD'ing..." or something. fuck that shit. no one is going to tell me whether or not a lyric or theme from a song applies to my life.
oddly enough, this isn't aimed at anyone specifically. i was just thinking of it, because i'm currently listening to _Ocean Rain_ by Echo + The Bunnymen, an album that i connect with heavily on an emotional level. the lyrics themselves are probably not about anything to do with anything. but they all apply to my life because I say so. other people don't get to tell you how you feel about things or whether they apply to your life. believe that!

and while it's not from _Ocean Rain_, and it's lyrics are incredibly abstract at best, this song definitely carries a lot of emotional weight with me. especially the chorus. sorry, naysayers (not really).

Dynamic Adventuring.

some misc. bits, because why not?

-i've dropped a shit-ton of the comics i was regularly buying ("dropping" means i no longer purchase them on a regular, in this case monthly, basis. it's jargon, y'all). most of DC's new 52 output, which i was initially excited about, has turned suck-balls. so as with everything, i am voting with my dollars.
look, i love my Local Comic Shop as much as the next guy, but they've slacked on stocking the alternative/indie and lesser-known stuff. sad but true. it leads me to go to websites like instocktrades.com for my graphic novel/trade paperback purchases. also, been buying a lot of weird old comics on E-Bay on the cheap. nothing super old, mostly shit i either read through a friend but didn't buy, or couldn't buy because it was "mature readers" or just not accessible to me at the time. E-Bay is surprisingly good for that.

-i'm not gonna get into a big thing, but i'm really sick of my job. over a year. oh well. i don't want to get into a whole downward spiral thing. whatever.

-why does the internet have to have so many funny hotties? my twitter is infested with them, and frankly it makes me sick (BNR). that sounds weird. i have an awesome  GF (as the kids are calling them), so it's not about that. it's just... i don't have a way to describe it or anything. it's partially the whole just i feel like i'm getting older and i've missed every chance to hob-knob with these people and such. i'm not gonna lie, GF or no GF, i like hot, funny women! sue me, i guess. i don't know where i was going with that, but i'm not going to delete it. i'm an open book.

-for your troubles, here's a picture of adorable Pug puppy razzing you (or me. or whomever):

you adorable little bastard.

-next time, i'll try to have a real entry. i just don't want this thing to lay fallow for too long. word.

Children of The Atom.

As stated many times before, both here, my old LJ, and in "real life" (whatever that may be), i love comics. i've been reading them since i was about 8 (regularly, anyway. prior to that, here and there as kids are wont to do, perhaps). i've gone through many phases, both fanboy obsessed with superheroes, as well as indie "elitist" who only read the stuff "cool kids" read (like Ghost World, for example).
i feel as tho i've come to a sort of zen place in my love of comic books. as stands, i basically just love the medium; if the subject matter or genre is well done, and does not pander or insult my/our intelligence, i tend to enjoy them. same with film. superheroes, indie nerd stuff, biographical comics, etc; it's all good. but that's not really what this entry is about.

In case you've been living under a rock, or perhaps aren't all that bright, one of the more popular comic book franchises of the late 20th-century-to-current-day is the X-Men. even those who have never picked up a comic book (shame on you!) have no doubt seen them either on the TV, in a film, or perhaps some new-fangled video game. maybe you've even just seen them walking through a department store at some point. some of you may even be able to name an X-Man or two (probably Wolverine). heck, i'd go so far as to say a couple of you may have even asked someone (maybe even me) "hey, is that what the comic is like?" upon seeing one of the films or sommat. it's not unheard of.
well, like with many things, The X-Men and i have a long and complicated relationship that may seem arcane to those who either a)are not in the know, b)don't give a crap. understandable, but if you've read this far, might as well go a bit farther, wot? good.

how it all began.

the X-Men for me represent all that is best and worst in comics as a medium. when done well, in certain peaks of their long-ass run, they've been incredibly imaginative, thought provoking even. some point out the (often heavy handed) racism metaphor. the X-Men, you see, are "mutants": born with genetic defects that set them apart from humanity as a whole, they are scorned, hated, and even some times maltreated through institutionalized brutality similar to the Nazi treatment of European Jewry (like all great comics properties, The X-Men was created by two Jews) . like most superheroes, who are in some way "better" than us, despite being outcast from the great society, they have sworn to protect it, hoping one day to show "normal" people the error of their ways. this was a theme that was heavily grabbed on to in the 1990s (the height of my X reading days), with simplistic comparisons between Professor X's "Martin Luther King Jr" and Magneto's "Malcolm X" (no pun intended? perhaps...). the dichotomy is made further ironic by the rather patrician Protestant upbringing of Charles Xavier aka Professor X, who faced almost no prejudice in life, versus Magneto, a victim of the Nazi Holocaust, who lost his whole family to the Death Camps.

sidebar: this is where one's comic book history becomes tricky. Magneto is now seen as a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, as stated above. this is depicted in the comics as well as practically all the films (played rather well in the most recent "prequel" X-Men: First Class; which may for my money be the best X film). however, i think when Magneto stopped being merely the "big baddie" and was being more fleshed out in the 70s/80s, he was depicted as a "gypsy" or something like that. still a victim of Hitler's horrible policies, but not specifically a Jew. read your history: the Nazis targeted many groups for extinction, including the mentally challenged/ill, homosexuals (which is where we get the pink triangle; it is a re-appropriated symbol), so-called "gypsies", and even Jehovah's Witnesses (huh? weirdly enough, it's true: look it up). anyway, i'm not sure if it's more powerful to make Magneto Jewish or not. it is what it is, and i for one don't mind it. end of sidebar.

these elements aside: the X-Men at its best created a rather huge world that was off-putting to those on the outskirts, but quite rewarding for anyone who took half a minute to find out the backstory. i read it all through the 90s, which may have been the height of X-Mania. at that point, the arcaneness of the X-world was troubling to some, but clearly not enough to stop it from being one of the most popular comics on the stands. this is also where they started showing up on TV in the form of cartoon (not well produced by the by; i sure did watch them, tho), and various video games, mostly bad. although the Arcade game is fucking great. if you have Xbox 360, they released in for Xbox Live as a downloadable game, and it's well worth it. i digress. towards the end of the 90s run, however, is where the X-Men start to exemplify the worst of comics as a business. oversaturation was the name of the game, and it showed. the plots, already heavy with soap-opera bathos, became even more byzantine and, well, often time just plain sappy. there were almost no "joyful" X-Men, and really, that's never been what the comic has been about. but frankly, for a time, it became almost too much to handle. this is also when the yearly crossover events began to take over, and a self-contained X-Men adventure became nigh unheard of. the mercenary aspect of having to buy 6 or 7 extra comics for an entire summer was problematic for yours truly. this was also when i was starting to discover the more mature themed indie type comics, and i pretty much had to let the X-Peoples go by the wayside.

back in the super funky 90s...

another sidebar: the above image was the cover for a comic book called X-Men #1. now, some of you are no doubt saying, "the X-Men started in the 1960s! how can this overblown pin-up from the 1990s be X-Men #1? don't try to kid a kidder!" firstly, calm down. second, i'll explain. the X-Men comic title that carried over from the 60s was actually The Uncanny X-Men. no one really ever called it that, but that was the whole title. in the 90s, it was common for popular characters both at Marvel and DC to get multiple titles. Superman once had 5 separate titles. these were usually differentiated by adjectives. if the book already had an adjective, a new title lacking one was usually the designation, hence X-Men #1 in the 90s. that's not the interesting part, however. for me at the time, this was the first occurrence of so-called "variant" covers. that's right, one issue of a comic would have multiple covers. the contents of the inside where all the same, but the covers would be different. you could buy your favorite, or better yet (in Marvel's eyes) collect them all! the variants for X-Men #1 were basically that cover split into four panels, and then the fifth was a "deluxe" edition with the entire image above as a GIANT FOLD OUT!!!! crazy, man! i initally bought the cover that featured Cyclops and Wolverine, and that was it. several years later, i end up going to a comics warehouse sale, where they were attempting to jettison all the crap they couldn't sell, and they had literally hundreds of copies of each variant copy marked down to a quarter. i saw guys buying whole boxes of the supposedly "deluxe" edition. instead, i simply bought all of the variants, plus 2 deluxes, and ripped the cover off of one to use the deluxe cover as a poster. hilarious! this is why i tell people "no comic coming out today will be worth any money!" and i mean it. at free comics day this year, Phantom had piles of these 90s "adjectiveless" X-Men books they were giving away for 1000% free. this was the comic that people were buying in the 90s hoping to send their children to college. wowzers. end of sidebar.

like Batman, the X-Men of today are almost unrecognizable. also like Batman, the X-Men continue to be "favorites" of mine, despite not really reading any X-Men comic from probably the last 10 or so years. when a film comes out, like say your X-Men: First Class, i definitely get excited, and have every intention of seeing it. and yet, if anyone asked me "hey, do you read X-Men? i liked the movies, should i check it out?" i would have to respond "hell, no!" (admittedly, i've read waaaaay more recent Batman comics than X-Men, primarily because one of my favorite comics writers, Grant Morrison, has written several series of Batman in the last dozen or so years. true to form "diehard" superhero comics fan-boys "hate" them as they consider them "too weird". all the more reason to love them, as far as i'm concerned. interestingly enough, Grant Morrison also wrote an X-Men series, dubbed "New X-Men", which is very weird, and very great. highly recommended! and, as with Bats, often maligned by mainstreamer nerds. oh well). if i were to recommend anything to potential X-Readers, it would have to be the "essential" collections, which are phone book sized paperbacks that reprint older marvel comics, usually from the 1960s and 1970s. they are in black and white, which bugs some people, but this keeps them affordable, and personally, i think you get a great read with these collections. huge chunks of old school comic-bookery. but even so, again, these may be a bit esoteric for the average reader. one might do well to just skim a wikipedia entry for the back story, then see if any of the many story arcs interest you. perhaps not a best place to start, but some of my favorite runs are "Dark Phoenix Saga", "Days Of Future Past", "Inferno", and "Fall Of The Mutants". most of those are from the 70s and 80s, but whattayagonnado? that said, the aforementioned Morrison's New X-Men is awesome, but it's also very nerd-centric. a lot of inside references to that which has gone before, seen through an almost jaundiced eye (which is why i, ever the cynic, appreciate it so much). it's a sticky wicket; i think someone who really was interested could get something out of the various X-Men story arcs, but where to begin? alas, i probably don't have a very good answer. comic book readers are often able to just pick up in the middle of something and go from there. it's a gift, i suppose. the 30 year backstory that preceded my dalliance with the X-Universe didn't impede me, but as i said, i'm a comic book reader. we're used to jumping on in media res. there it is.

so that's a glossing of my feelings on the X-Men, sorta. i intended to get into the most popular (or for some people's money (mine included) most overly exposed to the point of annoyance) X-Person, but i may have to save that for another time, as this entry is overlong as is.

on a final note: X-Men: First Class takes place in the 60s, which is rad. they mixed James Bond, Madmen, and, well, X-Men, to make a fantastic, poppy, over-the-top mix. it was fantastic, and if you've not seen it, i can't recommend it enough. i assume due to the success of the film, they plan to make more. one can only hope that they do one that takes place during the 1970s, and finish it off with one in the 80s (since everything has to be trilogies these days. it's my hope that as they showed lesser known characters like Havoc and Banshee, they'll expand it even further, and maybe we'll even see Dazzler (shut up), Long Shot, Polaris, and Storm with a mohawk. here's hoping!

totally rad, dudes.

ah-ah-ah! You Didn't get the science accurate!

if you're anything like me, you probably watched Jurassic Park on vhs. A LOT! we had the tape when i was a youth, and having a much younger sister, she was obsessed with it. i admit to also having a fascination for Dinosaurs when i was a kid. i think a lot of kids did/do. and to be honest, i still do like them. especially now that i no longer believe in those pesky god and jesus fellows. yeah, Dinosaurs are cool.
even when you find out much later that they didn't actually look anything like what we were taught. i mean, obviously, none of were there (or were we? no. we weren't. sorry). so everything is speculation. however, despite what some may think, it's speculation based on mountains of evidence. so shut it! sorry, again.
for example, everyone's beloved T. Rex more than likely looked like this:

so luxurious.

that's right, scientists theorize that many of the dinosaurs may have had feathers. pretty crazy, and amazing, i think!

this leads me back to Jurassic Park. believe it or not, but they apparently got a lot of stuff wrong. heck, wikipedia even has a whole entry on the subject!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_issues_in_Jurassic_Park

the best part for me is how much of the Raptors related stuff was pure-d wrong. even something as fundamental as their size. since most of you will probably not go to that wiki entry (jerks*), here's the size comparison of the real Velociraptor. hilarity ensues!

murderously adorable!

*kidding.

I Dug The Quality of Steel.

I know this blog hasn't been around for very long, but some of you might be wondering, "hey, where'd he come up with that kooky title?"
first, stop using the word kooky.
2nd, i'll tell you.

here's yr answer.

this is what i do.

Male Privilege and a Stupid World.

Almost a month ago, an unfunny jackass and host of a clip show that makes fun of people who do stupid things on "teh interwebz" made some rape jokes in public. an audience member was rightfully offended, and probably unwisely chose to point out that rape jokes are wrong. said unfunny dickhole preceded to ask "hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if like 5 dudes just raped this lady right here?".

okay, so, you may have guessed by reading the above or ANYTHING ELSE I HAVE EVER WRITTEN that i am not objective on these matters. in my opinion, there is nothing defensible in what this "comedian" did or said. yet, people who should know better (i always think that, and i am always burned *sigh*) will defend him, because, hey "heckling is wrong".

here's the deal: i am 100% anti-heckling. no one should yell out when someone else is performing. it's uncouth. and even if you are offended and they are saying horrible things, you can always leave and maybe try to get your money back. tell the world this person is awful, has no brain in their head, says horrible things, makes light of violence against women (or whatever the thing is), and spread the word. this woman did not do that. she heckled.

now: let's say that stupid-fuck-joke-man had said "lady, shut the fuck up. it was a joke. i don't come down to where you work and piss on the benches at the bus station before you can clean them" or whatever. then it would've just been like a comedian "smacking down" a heckler. no big deal. but that's NOT what happened. instead, in a fit of pique, he said that a specific woman, someone in the audience,  should be raped, and it would be hilarious. sorry, ass-clown. you did not handle yourself properly at all. even if he had called her a "bitch" or used the brand name "c word", it would have been a completely different story. he would have been an asshole still, sure, but it would've been more a situation involving performer and heckler. she would've seemed foolish. but, again, that's not what happened.

*sidebar*: i do not think that everything is off limits "as long as it's funny". sorry. what am i saying here? do i think rape jokes are wrong? yes, i do. am i suggesting no one should ever joke about rape? again, yes, that is exactly what i'm saying. sorry. i personally think it's easy, and society is "easy" right now. instead of thinking of something that is actually satirical, biting, thoughtful, etc, people are more likely to "buy" that, giving the performer more perceived cache. instead of honing his/her craft, they settle for the big money easy shit, and we get a bunch of mouth breathing troglodytes. hilarity ensues! not...
further: i am in no way, shape, or form condoning censorship. do i think anyone should tell rape jokes? no. would i ever speak out in a live audience and try to have that person removed or silenced or taken off or whatever? never. i would "vote with my dollars" as i am fond of saying. i'd probably walk out. would i later "badmouth" said person on the net, etc? probably, but that's not censorship. that would be my opinion, my blog, my twitter, whatever. hey, if it takes money from their pockets, fucking good. maybe they should try to be smart instead of shock-ful. there are enough comedians out there, some are very hilarious.
also, what constitutes a rape joke? is mike birbiglia's joke about "a rapist would never have a bed like that" a rape joke? no, i tend to think that's a joke about his being awkward and ill equipped for human interaction. the punchline of the joke is he says, instead of nothing, "you'd be surprised", and then realizes that was a dumb-ass thing to say. is my beloved Kristen Schaal on Flight Of The Conchords asking if Brit and Jemaine had been raped while in jail a rape joke? sadly, it kinda is. the humor is predicated on whether or not the two were sexually violated in jail. did i laugh at that? did it end up getting a pass because i really like all the involved players? i'm not sure. personally, again, i think it is fairly easy. i'm certainly not perfect, but i try to do the best i can. the mention of the word "rape" in a joke/bit doesn't automatically make it a rape joke. that may be grasping at straws, but it's all i got for now. something to think about, right? *end of sidebar*

what's my point in all this, you may be asking? well, as with many things that are this emotionally wrought, it's easy to get mixed up in the details. people are in fact flat out defending the use of rape jokes. so yeah, fuck those people; they're beneath my notice. next! people are defending not his rape jokes, but his reaction because the woman in the audience was a heckler and heckling is wrong: i will not do this. because he said that it'd be funny if she was gang raped in the audience. even if he wasn't saying "she should be raped" or "i hope she is raped", the thought that someone would say (even if they didn't think it) that someone being raped is funny just sickens me. and this for me is the heart of the matter. i don't think it's exaggeration to say that all of this stems from male privilege. i overheard a comedian whose name i forget (apologies) on a podcast i quite like defending the situation via the "heckling is wrong" defense. the problem i had overall was that someone saying this could've easily been written off, but he preceded to make other faulty arguments. for one: he started saying "one person said all this stuff, and everyone believed her." to me, that smacks of the tendency for people to disbelieve women who report rape. for another, he said some rather thoughtful things about the fear women feel everyday as they do things that may not bother us as men: walking alone at night, parking lots in the darkness, the usual. this would be a plus on his part, but he further negated himself by stating that these things did not in fact prove that America is a "rape culture", and that it was also alarmist rhetoric. but he's wrong: America is a rape culture, or else we not only wouldn't be able to defend people's use of rape imagery in supposed "comedy", but said people WOULDN'T BE USING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

so maybe my arguments are sloppy. truth be told, i'm not a sociologist or critical theorist. i'm a concerned human and staunch lefty; this is not something i've ever denied. i really just wanted to get my thoughts out there. whether or not some white privileged dudes out there think there's no problem don't make it so. and as long as this is so: we live in a stupid world and we are at the mercy of stupid, stupid people.

have a great day.

NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH... you know the rest.

so i saw The Dark Knight Rises. it was quite excellent, and i'm glad i got to see it in the theatre, mainly because i saw the other 2 there, and i think for a first viewing, when it comes to these Nolan Batman movies, the theatre is the best. i have the other two on DVD, and i enjoy them, but it doesn't compare. who's to say?

to be honest, it wasn't my favorite of the 3. i think The Dark Knight gets that honor. but all three films have had a great amount of goodness to get behind, and frankly, i don't think they could've been handled better.


this part may contain SPOILERS: it's often difficult for me to make amends in my mind with the difference between comic books and comic book related movies. for one thing, in the comics, almost no one ever figures out anyone's secret identity. in the movies, every single Batman movie (including the original series, most of which is wretched) has had him either reveal his identity or someone figure it out. i know they have to do in 2+ hours what's taken 70 years in the comics to do, as well as for non-comic readers. but still, by the end of TDKR (i apologize for that, but i'm sick of typing it) everyone knows who he is. and some didn't even use shmancy detecting. Joseph Gordon Levitt's character "just knew". kinda lame. i also don't like the whole "we killed him off BNR" thing. non comic readers may see this as the best, most fulfilling, and even most realistic ending. well, realism is dumb: it's a movie based on a comic book (note: neither of those things are real). this is why people carping on the whole "how'd he get from the prison in the desert to gotham???" is nonsense. frankly, i don't want to see 30 or 40 minutes of Bruce Wayne hopping sheep trucks in Uzbekistan or wherever the fuck. sorry. his suddenly appearing in Gotham City didn't bother me.

also, i'm not a big fan of Bane, generally speaking. i didn't give a shit about him in the comic. i think he's kind of cool in the movie, however, but... jeezis, can we just say it? the voice. i mean, what the fuck? i wasn't giggling the whole time like one reviewer i read, but it was pretty damn dumb. however, if thought of in these terms, it may make a bit more sense: despite being a horrible killer, global terrorist, mass murdering psycho, and huge mountainous slab of hugeness, he's played off as something of a dandy. seriously, think about it. he walks around in that woolen coat, holding the lapels as though he were Oscar Wilde. he is often seen quipping, asking questions with questions, pondering philosophical queries, etc. during the national anthem (which was wretched by the way, but a "stirring" a cappella version of the National Anthem sung by a boy falsetto is not my cup of tea, sorry everyone. call me a commie if you must) he remarks "what an angelic voice!" or something to that effect. bear all that in mind, as well as the fact that he was Talia al Ghul's protector when she was a tiny child, and in the film she is easily in her 30s, Bane has got to be pushing 70. i'm serious. he would have to be at least in his 60s. if Talia was like 8-10 when she escaped, and she's 30 now, Bane looks to be in his 30s in the prison. so at the least late fifties, more than likely 60s. maybe not quite pushing 70, but he's on the back end of middle age. he's older than Bruce Wayne, easily. it's possible that whatever the fuck his mask does (never fully explained, by the by), it may jack him up to his mammoth proportions, as well as slow the aging process (remember, this is a comic book based movie!). also, it's possible that Talia was older than she looked, and had been stunted by malnutrition and lack of sunlight. that's a thing, right? i just think, if she's young enough to be mistaken for a boy, she's probably still pretty small.
in the comics, it actually is Bane that is born and raised in prison. he is also pumped up with a chemical called Venom, which is a super steroid that caused huge amounts of agression. also, he's south american, not Anglo-Mid-Eastern. and not tied in with R'as al Ghul. and the mask is kinda like a Lucha Libre mask, with tubes and shit connected to it that pump the venom to him. strangely enough, the horrible Batman and Robin got it closer, if still not quite right. hilarious.
factoid: IRL, Marion Cotillard, who plays Tali al Ghul/ Ms. Tate is two years older than Tom Hardy AKA Bane (36 and 34 respectively). absurd!

also, in the negative Column, well, sort of: Joe G. Levitt as "Robin". gimme a break, please. half-way through the film, my roommate turns to me an goes "lemme guess *points to JGL on the screen*: Nightwing?" and i was like "oh shit, yeah. i can see it..." well, as it turns out, he is probably not only not Nightwing, and not even Robin, but will be the straight up new Batman. a backdoor for making more films sans Nolan, hmmm? methinks. well, i don't per se think JGL would make a terrible Batman, but i think it'd actually be cooler if he were Nightwing. tho would i pay to see a Nightwing film in theatres? probably not. also, it depends on who was directing. he was good in the film. but it think it's kinda lame to have "Robin" not be at least Tim Drake or Jason Todd if not straight up Dick Grayson.  pretty silly. as the cop character John Blake, tho, he was actually pretty good. i didn't see inception; the only film of his adult career i've seen was G.I. Joe and it fucking sucked. i don't even want to talk about it. but, no, in this he was good.

also, i'm sorry, i didn't like whiney Alfred. he was fine in the other two movies. also, one reviewer pointed out it was his idea for Bruce to be Batman. but, i can't hate on "Michael. Caine.", so there's that.

and now, the best part of the movie, and not necessarily for the obvious reasons: Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman. she was fucking fantastic. and not just because of her ridiculous hotness and her riDONKulous donka-donk in that catsuit either. how she switched from shy and demure when thieving the pearls to the bad-ass who doesn't give a fuck, jumps out the window, and precedes to kidnap a senator right up to the climactic scenes in besieged Gotham. she was the shit. and, sorry to seem pervy, but i could watch her ride that Batpod motorcycle thing any day of the week. she's a fantastic actress and seriously beyond hot. i mean, it's almost shameful how hot she is. i could go on and on, but instead, exhibit A:

holy crap, Batman.

i could go on and on about other things i love and liked less, but over-all, it was excellent, and i maintain it was a worthy capper for the trilogy. will they make more, again, without Nolan? will Joey L. be the new Batman? did Bruce Wayne actually live or was it a figment of a senile Alfred's imagination? did Bane die? was R'as al Ghul actually alive, or was it in Bruce's mind brought on by pain and exhaustion (in the comics he's immortal)? no fucking clue.

i guess we shall see.

75% of The Planet is Covered by Water.

If i live to be 1 million years old, i will never understand the public's fascination with dissing Aquaman.

in case you're unaware, here he is.

everyone has taken a dig at him: SNL, Family Guy, even the Big Bang Theory. Aquaman is the comic book world's whipping boy, and i for one can't stand it.

the main problem with Aquaman for most people's money seems to be his ties to the sea. how can he fight crime? he lives in the sea? this presupposes that all superheroes do is fight crime. this may be the case with more "street level" characters like Batman and Spider-Man, but it's not alway the case with many, indeed one could probably even say most superheroes. most heroes, even the aforementioned crime fighters take on villains that are in keeping with their thematic elements. Spider-Man often fights animal themed villains and the like. Batman (who i maintain is not crazy, as the current media would have us believe; i personally feel he is beyond driven, which may lead to what some would perceive of us as a kind of mania) fights foes who are primarily insane. the list goes on. it's no different for Aquaman. he fights sea related villains.
consider the subject header of this entry: 75% of the Earth's surface is ocean. that leaves vast amounts of unexplored territory for truly imaginative writers to utilize. to me, that's what it comes down to: sheer laziness. if you can't watch 5 minutes of a nature special about the undersea world and see how it could be used to great imaginative effect, you're just not very clever.
granted, i think a lot of people may see Aquaman tackling sea monsters and such and perceive a kind of goofiness. i understand that on some level. in the 1950s, Batman (a character who we see as very gritty today) was often fighting aliens on other planets. it seems out of place, hence the goofiness. but if you really break it down, all superheroes, even the "dark" or "grim" ones, are kind of goofy. as a notion it makes very little sense. a child's parents are killed before his eyes: he becomes a giant bat and fights crime. wait, what...?
we've become cynical, and i admit to being quit the cynic myself, friends. but the problem is that we aren't cynical about the right things. governmental abuse, the poor, unjust wars, global atrocity: no one bats an eye in the face of that shit. but Aquaman, i mean, he wears orange and green and rides around on whales and shit, AMIRITE? i feel no need to be cynical about Aquaman. he serves his purpose. no one complains about Green Lantern fighting in space. because he belongs in space, right? well, Aquaman belongs in the sea.
so i admit wholeheartedly: i like Aquaman. i'm not ashamed.

Nothing Is Safe From All Pervasive Corporate Bullshit.

When we were kids (presumptuous of me to assume a)people reading this are in my age group, b)people are reading this), LEGO was the a series of toys with themes: Town (which i believe it now called "City"), Space, Undersea, etc. you got generic blocky figures i always just called "Lego Guys" (apparently they have an actual name: "Minifigs". i will not be referring to them by this horrible appellation), a series of blocks that interconnected, and awesome green and/or grey flat thing to connect everything to, and maybe the bare-bones of a story. there were basic instructions for creating dwellings and vehicles, but those were suggestions at best. the point was to try and make as crazy shit as possible. the blocks were maybe color-coded to what the theme was (my space sets were all white, grey, and maybe some black; they had rad transparent canopies for the cockpits). the "Lego Guys" themselves were fairly gender neutral, but in my unenlightened pre-adolescent mind, they were "guys". you could've made them female quite easily, tho, with a snap of some strangely molded plastic hair piece (mostly it was "Ted Copple" for dudes, and then maybe ladies had longish hair). fact is, i'm not sure if the space set had hair at all, as the characters mostly wore bitchin' retro-futuristic helmets. had i been in the know as a kid, i could've re-enacted some awesome Day The Earth Stood Still or Planet of Vampires stories, but i think i mostly tried to tie it in to whatever weird sci-fi thing i had seen on TV or sommat. Other sets were different colors and had a different configuration of "guys" (probably even some that were more representative of females). there were also just "generic" Legos that were the traditional color scheme one may associate with Lego; the familiar green, red, blue, yellow, grey, and white. those sets weren't as interesting to me, but they did of course get mixed in with the more "themed" sets, which just led to crazier, more elaborate, and more outlandish vehicles/dwellings for the space men (et al). my point is, Lego never struck me as boys or girls toys. my sister and i played with them, tho i did generally play with them alone. and it never really dawned on me that Lego was considered a boys toy until now.
sadly, Lego has been primarily marketed to boys for the past 20+ years. it stared subtly with Zack, the Lego Maniac. you no doubt remember him:

even so, the focus was still on building, and the sets were original. these days, Lego is not what we had as kids. it's primarily in the pocket of major genre franchises: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman, etc. and the focus on the boys only club mentality is even more pronounced. an attempt to make a "Lego for girls" (which is idiotic, as the toy started out as being for everybody, including parents even!) called "Lego Friends" was introduced, and it's wretched. the entire line is bedecked in pink and purple. there's nothing wrong with these colors per se, the problem is that these are the marketed colors telling girls that this is for them, and the other stuff (Star Wars, Harry, the space and the city) are not for them. Lego Friends figures are not compatible with the blocky "guys" of yesteryear. they're taller, slim, and "look like girls" (i.e.- have boobs, wear skirts, have long hair). there aren't even occupations in Lego Friends' "Heartlake City" (this is whether they live. yep. "Heartlake city". jeezis...). all of the sets are based on taking care of pets, decorating a house, and getting your hair did. Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian puts it best when she states what do the "friends" do if a house catches on fire? call the boys from the "real" Lego City to put it out? conversely, where do the inhabitants of Lego City go when they're hungry? do they all commute to Heartlake City? her two part deconstruction (pun intended!) of Lego and gender is highly recommended by this humble writer (she says it much better than i could, truly):

(you can link to part 2 through this video, and i strongly suggest you do).

it's sad to see that even Lego is not safe from this patriarchal nonsense. i look back fondly on Lego, and i do plan to buy the new Lego Batman 2 video game, but i really do wish Lego would get their shit together and not pander to macho stereotypes of boys fighting, nor talk down to girls and expect them to clean up the mess afterwards. i might have to buy that Superman set i keep ogling from afar used on Ebay, because frankly, i'd like to support them as little as possible with my money until they at least try to straighten this out.

Highly Recommended: Feminist Deconstruction of Pop Culture.

if you're anything like me (shyeah...), you like to think about things. even things that some people (wrongly) don't think need to be thought about. you might have even been told over 75% of your life that you "think too much" about these things (and things in general).
if you are that type of person, i highly recommend Feminist Frequency:

http://www.feministfrequency.com/

if you're not that sort of person... well, we may still be friends, but i find that highly dubious.

I'm Not Letting The 'Net Spoil My Film Experience.

I just watched Prometheus. never mind how, i just did. it was actually a movie i had been anticipating for quite some time. i'm a big fan of the first two Alien films (the heretofore mentioned film as well as the sequel Aliens), and enjoy the concepts within that universe in general. the 3rd movie and up, however, sucked balls.

initially, Prometheus was touted as a prequel to the Alien franchise. later it was said not to be an actual prequel, but took place in the same universe. then it was a prequel again. furthermore, fan reaction (read: "internet reaction") was mixed at best. i was worried at first, because i hadn't really known anyone whose opinion i actually trusted that had seen the film and given a raved review (Truby was cagey at best, but he almost might have been trying to avoid spoilers, which i appreciate). one kid i worked with raved about how amazing it is, but he's, well, not all there. he was also going on and on about how you had to be a huge H.R. Giger (which he pronounces "Guy-ger"; it's pronounced "Gee-ger", hard G, like "geek") fan, which i am not. i like him alright. i'm also not a 15 year old boy. i digress. my point is, i was a bit wary, but i figured there'd be something to take from it.

i was right. i actually enjoyed the film quite a lot. i would easily give it 3 1/2 stars, if not 4. something keeps me from giving it 4. maybe the whininess of a few of the characters? the pseudo-mystical elements don't bug me all that much. it's fiction, it's purporting to be the actual story of humanity's origin. i don't care if Ridley Scott believes it (personally, i don't think he does), it's not trying to proselytize bullshit, so it's fine with me. no spoilers, i'm just here to say it was a good film.

highly doubtful they'll make a sequel (a sequel to the prequel. wow. how far we've come *sarcasm*), as it seemed like it was super expensive to make, and has not justified the rewards of doing so. there's more to glean from this line of origin of Alien, but we'll probably never see it. oh well. worth seeing in my book.

I don't love it, nor do I hate it.

Today I was listening to a podcast i often listen to about video games. The subject of the interview said something to the effect of how she believed it was "lame" not to get into every latest bit of technology that comes out, stating "get over it, it's here to stay." (not exact quote). this actually made me kind of upset. i mean, i ultimately let it go, but at first i was bothered by it. the question is: why?

first off, why is it "lame"? everyone has different aptitudes. not everyone is as tech savvy as the next person, especially someone who designs video games for a living. furthermore, people have different interests. i love comic books, and i do honestly think that everyone should read them. seriously. but i have never called someone "lame" for not liking them. i could not give two shits about this newest "hip food" fascination (half of my tumblr feed is clogged with assholes posting pictures (sorry, "pics") of what they ate for dinner), but i don't bag on people for being into it (not out loud, any way).

also, why is it "here to stay"? because you say it is? 8 tracks, betamax, HDDVD, cassette tapes, atari 2600: all once brand new, cutting edge technology, no longer available. someone surely thought these were "here to stay". and yet, they didn't stay, did they? nope.

my overall point: technology is not going to save us. if you have devices that you enjoy, fine. but don't try to convince me that they're important. they're not. and get your head out of your goddamned phone when you're hanging out with actual living people. jeezis.

it's not a popular opinion, but i actually kind of think that this is the new dark ages. never has more information been more easily available to a greater amount of people, and never  before have people been more willfully ignorant. i know people who brag about not reading. not that they're "too busy" or whatever; they straight up do not read. I... i have no words for how disgusting that is. we just don't care any more. it's all fed to us, and none of it is worth a damn. and it really doesn't seem like it's getting better. i dunno. i have no idea what to do about it, because no one cares. plus this entry is getting kinda depressing, so i'll just end it here.

i really wish i could beg like i did in a tweet earlier in the year for someone to please, please read a goddamned book, a REAL book, made of paper (you don't even have to buy it! i have a shit ton, i will give you one!), but i know no one will. oh well.

anyone who knows me probably knows i'm a big fan of cover songs. i'm especially a fan of covers of american/english language songs covered by foreign groups who clearly do not speak english, or at least speak it as a second (or 3rd or 4th, etc) language. it's true: i can't get enough of 'em.

so here's I Dik Dik (pronounced "ee deek deek") from Italy, i believe, with an all time favorite.