Last night’s show was a really fine time. Everything went well despite the fact that the bassist and the drummer hadn’t even been in the same room since May. In that respect, it was slightly reminiscent of all of those early shows we had at which the guys in the rhythm section barely knew each other. After you’ve played with people who haven’t even met each other, stuff like last night is no cause for worry.
And that's how you make a monkey with a gun on the back of a horse look bland.
I often feel a faint bit of skepticism whenever people talk about the ostensibly insidious ways in which fast food companies market to children. Like McDonald’s with their toys and stuff? Like . . . We are talking about the same kids here, aren’t we? Those little people with fast metabolisms who don’t have jobs? Those guys? Those are the children in question? To my knowledge, those things tend to possess little in the way of practical autonomy. They also tend to want everything. They have desires that inevitably develop the capacity for refusal in any parent that has a steady working relationship with the laws of reality. In practice, I really can’t see the difference between denying a request for a bucket of fries and a supersonic jetpack. Both are common requests among young humanoids. You’ve obviously had experience with shooting down one of those ideas. The other shouldn’t be too much harder.
And McDonald’s actually makes it particularly easy. The salient draw in their campaign is the toy. That’s what whips the youths into a furor in most scenarios. But you can buy the toy without the food. It’s not even really a secret. It’s actually easier to walk in and get the toy than it is to attain the restaurant’s nutritional information sheet from the cashier. At least they always know what you’re talking about in the former case.
If you agree to walk in and buy the toy, the appetite will swiftly disappear in a haze of distraction.
I probably haven’t eaten at that place since middle school, but I was in ninth grade or something when “The Incredibles” came out, and I had a gusto for that Frozone figurine. Was there a reason for this? I’m rather inclined to doubt it.
But I walked in and said, “Hey! Give me that Frozone!”
And the guy said, “Um . . . Alright. That’ll be $4?”
“Ha! You foolish bastard! I would have given you $8 for it!”
“And I’m the foolish bastard?”
And that’s when I realised. This was never about Frozone at all. This . . . This was about Brozone.
And he said, “Uh . . . What’s Brozone?”
And I looked right at him. Our eyes locked. We made the connection. We felt the power rise within us. As our souls met in automatic understanding, I said, “It’s the name of our band, dude.”
Obviously, it never went anywhere, for that story was almost entirely fictional.
I did get that Frozone figurine, though.
Bonus Question!
Can Brozone be a real thing? Please?
Maybe.
“The Magicians” was a book I read and discussed here recently. You remember. Or you don’t. But it’s there. Within the last five or six posts. Not hard to find. Don’t be lazy. When I read it, I was vaguely aware of the fact that its second sequel was on the horizon. I thought that I might like to start reading it upon the day of its release. For my amusement. It’s almost like a bit of a nod to its tenuous ties to the whole “Harry Potter” thing? That’s what everyone did with those. Midnight releases and stuff. I might have only done it for the fourth one, though. I got into it somewhat late, and I dropped off before the fifth one was released. Then I got back into it shortly before the sixth one came out, which meant that I only had to wait for a day or two for that one’s release after I finished the fifth. I think that I was dealing with some stuff when the seventh came out, but I know that I started it without much delay at any rate. I purchased T. Rex’s “Electric Warrior” right before I started it on that night, and I read till the record ended. Then I was surprised by a six-week stay in hospital, which cruelly truncated the end of my summer. Having “The Deathly Hallows” by my side surely wasn’t unhelpful in dealing with that. It was weird, though. For some reason, the buzzers on our floor weren’t working while I was there, and we had to ring actual bells whenever we needed to get the nurses’ attention. We called our section the Anita Ward. Depending on your charity, that last paragraph was a joke or a lie. I enjoyed it, though. I also had a visit from my aunt, who’d come over from her home in England to spend a while with the family after some rather trying experiences at her erstwhile place of employment. She’d enjoyed a long tenure at one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious acting schools, which had come to an end when Alan Rickman took over the place and shook everything up in a manner that sounded suspiciously similar to what Snape did to Hogwarts at the end of the series. In the book, Snape was secretly working on the side of good, though. I suppose that we can just assume that Sir Alan’s private motivations were noble too. Back to “The Magicians”. I knew that I was going to have to read the second book at some point before the release of the third in early August, but I didn’t want my experience with it to abut on either of the other books in the trilogy. In the last week, I decided that it’d probably have to be one of my next two books to give it adequate space from its successor, but there was a part of me that thought that it could get too heavy for some of my current moods. The first book had parts like that, and sequels can sometimes escalate those sorts of things. If that had been the case, it might have interacted poorly with the particular kind of foggy confusion that’s been in my midst lately. But I took that minor risk. I jumped in to find that that was not the case. Instead, it emphasised the best qualities of the original and left every trace of doldrum behind. You know. Like a good sequel. It even delivered on the ecstatic promise of its predecessors final pages. A lot of things don’t. Did you ever wonder why I specifically include “Rush Hour 2” on my lists of favourite movies? Well, there are reasons. This is one of them. There’s no need for patience while Jackie Chan works up the willingness to talk. The dynamic between the two buddy cops is firmly set, and it’s played well. The tonal continuity between the closing scene of the original and the opening scene of the second is flawless. Also, Jeremy Piven has a tiny scene that’s just fantastic. That’s probably irrelevant here, but it’s true. My first conscious exposure to that man came long after my adoration for "Rush Hour 2". It was when I saw advertisements for some movie in which he played a car salesman. It looked awful, and I couldn’t understand why my brother went to see it. This was during a period in which we grew closer through the overlap in our cinematic tastes. Jeremy Piven was his justification, and I didn’t understand it at all. Later, I’d come to understand, and when I did, my brother was there to warn me away from that car salesman movie. But did you seem him in “Serendipity”? Glorious.
Bonus Question!
Worst Alan Rickman role? "Love Actually". Because of the hair.
I might have mentioned that to my aunt at the time in a token effort to mitigate my obvious enjoyment of the man's work during her complicated situation. Incidentally, I first watched "Love Actually" during that hospital stay, and repeated viewings definitely helped with that whole experience.
It's right above "Serendipity" on my romantic comedy list. That puts it at the top of the list.
Apparently, I’m not going to see “Godzilla”. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me. It is ostensibly the type of big, crazy movie that generally requires my attention, but I haven’t really found the desire to make time in my ridiculously lax schedule for it. I suppose that my apathy basically congealed when the IMAX showings stopped. Honestly, I think that this might have a lot to do with my fond memories of the version from the Nineties that faithful adherents of the legendary monster king decry. I don’t get that. I had a great time with that film when I saw it in childhood, and it holds up. I last watched it a few years ago, and it was still entertaining. You’ve got your Jean Reno. The Hank Azaria. It has that classic type of action movie opening I cherish. You know the one. With the scientist? Approching some random dude in a remote part in the world? With all the urgency? “You! You’re the world’s leading expert on this one particular thing that could, in this highly specific scenario, save the human race.” “What? I’m, like, a worm doctor.” “Right. You’re the world’s leading expert on worms. Your country needs you.” “I’m not disputing that. I'm pretty well awesome. I just don’t really want to go. I’m . . . I’m all comfy here.” “Come on. It’ll be a good time.” “A good time? Why didn’t you say so? Let’s do this.” And that worm doctor was John Cusack. Actually, I just checked after I wrote that. I was wrong. Matthew Broderick was the worm doctor. Still. He saved the world. You can see why everyone thinks that he’s a righteous dude. Anyway, I don’t have anything against any other incarnation of the Godzilla franchise, but I don’t think that I’m in the right mood to give this new one a chance without comparing it to the Broderick vehicle. Furthermore, “Pacific Rim” just came out a year ago, and that was basically “Godzilla” with giant robots, which means that this is essentially “Pacific Rim” without giant robots. Actually, I don’t think that the giant robots were even my favourite part about that film. The monsters weren’t either. Those dimensional rifts were pretty great, but I think that my interest goes to Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, and that hunched British guy. But a Godzilla movie without those three characters, giant robots, and dimensional rifts is just “Godzilla”. Who wants that?
Bonus Question!
Best intersection of reptilian monsters and giant robots?
Dinobots?
Prove me right, Michael Bay! I believe!
I recently saw “Chef”, which is almost like “Iron Man 2” with gastronomy instead of mechanical wizardry. Basically, it’s a pretty good time. I suppose that it could also serve as a decent primer on social media. I thought that the kid was good.
I’ve occasionally heard people bemoan perceived faults in a lot of child actors for the apparent air of distraction that can creep into a performance in the absence of discipline. I should mention that it definitely wasn't on display here, but I'm on the tangent now anyway.
Anyway, I don’t really care to determine the validity of such complaints, but I will say that such roles generally don’t stand to lose much even if that supposed problem is present. It just makes the character seem vacant and somewhat vague, and that’s how a lot of children can appear to some adults anyway, for the younglings haven’t had time to congeal into solid identities with an understanding of social interaction’s nuances. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the effects one might notice from attempts to communicate with neophyte Anglophones or some of the less versatile varieties of fictitious androids. Mismatched cadences. That’s a part of it.
Bonus Question!
Best chef? Swedish.
The ones on the left come in fruit flavours. The ones on the right come in a rainbow of flavours. This rainbow happens to be made up of fruit, and the particular fruits in question seem to match the ones from the left.
I just finished reading Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”. It’s an entertaining deconstruction of fantasy literature, but I think that my favourite conceit is the way in which it plays with the idea of the hidden world that pops up across the genre. You know the one. Harry Potter discovers that magic is real. The Pevensies wander into Narnia. Richard Mayhew gets thrown into a subterranean wonderland beneath London. These new realms remain unknown to the masses as they reveal themselves to the main characters and the audience. But the thing I liked about Grossman’s book was the fact that it happened twice. The protagonist, some dissatisfied kid in Brooklyn with a particular fondness for a fantasy series that’s essentially the equivalent of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, unexpectedly gets invited to a secret magical college in the country. He accepts this with the hope that it’ll pull him away from all of life’s problems that had dragged him down in the ordinary world, but it still doesn’t live up to that kind of Narnia world that he liked to read about. It’s almost more of a consolation prize. But then he finds that ersatz Narnia too.
Hilarity ensues. And further disillusionment. His. Not mine.
Anyway. Lovely tale.
But I mention it for another reason.
When I finished it, I decided that I was in the mood for a different kind of book, and my mind went back to some novel I’d seen during a recent jaunt through a favoured bookstore. It was called “Soon I Will Be Invincible”, and it’s a kind of satire on the superhero genre. When I went to look for it on Amazon, I noticed for the first time that the author shared a surname with Lev, and I came to learn that they were in fact twins. I also saw that the European version of the cover looked like a Bryan Hitch comic, which happened to be because Bryan Hitch actually drew it. It felt appropriate.
The other thing.
On Sunday, my perambulations took me through Kensington Market, and I happened to hear a gypsy jazz band play some riff on the James Bond theme at a restaurant by the name of Amadeu’s. I stayed in the vicinity till the end, for my enjoyment of their musical chimera was great. I only mourned for my inability to learn anything about the band that would enable me to hear them again with any degree of certainty.
On the following day, I was walking along Bloor to the house of one of the musicians from the last Hot Apollo show for the purpose of discussing summer recording plans. First, I ran into an acquaintance from high school who spent some time at the university of my brother and a close friend. I’d just been speaking to that friend on Friday about my tendency to run into that high school acquaintance once or twice a year, and I realised that it had been a bit of a while since our last encounter.
Immediately after that meeting, I was stopped by a man who offered me a tarot reading. I declined, but I offered him my rock-and-roll in turn. This set us to talking, and he told me that his brother was in a band too. He said that they were a fixture at Amadeu’s, and they turned out to be the band that I’d caught on the previous day. I found their album, “Between Worlds”, on iTunes later, and it’s got some good stuff. Fortuitous meeting.
Bonus Question!
Best rainbow? Bifrost.
My favourite cinema was showing “Predator” on Wednesday. I might not have even found out, but I happened to see a poster about it in the bathroom of a different theatre in the previous week. I’d never actually seen the original before this. In anticipation of the arrival of “AVP” in 2004, I went to my local video store in search of the Schwarzenegger classic, but I only managed to find the sequel. I settled for that and had a fairly bad time with it. Instead of a golden god in a scenic jungle, it had some random cop in a poorly lit city. The whole thing just felt rather dour in comparison to my expectations of what a “Predator” film should be. Fortunately, most of these expectations were met on Wednesday.
After the show, I ran into a friend who’d happened to wander into the screening after work, and he had effusive praise for the pure, classical machismo of the film. I did notice how it seemed to be made in a slightly different mould from the action movies to which I have accustomed myself. You know. The kind I watch for the dialogue. Like “Rush Hour”. And “Rush Hour 2”. Have I mentioned my love for “Rush Hour 2” recently? I love “Rush Hour 2”.
“Rush Hour 2”.
Anyway, I was somewhat surprised by the complete absence of dialogue in the third act. There wasn’t even anything to wrap things up after Arnold’s final victory. It just ended in a scene of silent triumph. It’s not the lack of digital graphics that sets this movie apart from its modern successors. It’s that. Even when there was conversation, I don’t think that the number of lines per scene ever broke into the double digits.
I have this theory that his chest was intentionally drawn to hide his crotch on this stamp in an effort to retain some ambiguity about the status of his briefs, thus avoiding the incitement of confusion in current fans for whom Superman's thighs are draped in solid blue and all the other people who are familiar with the red trunks he wore for most of the last century. I could easily be overthinking this.
Now, I can’t be alone in my refusal to believe that the titular character is a representative of a race that uses its superior physiology and weaponry to come to planets like Earth in order to hunt beings that provide no obvious challenge. No way. I’m pretty sure that the rest of this guy’s species are spread across countless brutal worlds in fierce combat against giant reptilian lions and things like that. I believe that the concept of “AVP” corroborates this theory. The individual that final initial represents seems to be a respectable member of his race, and he spends the film in fights with monsters that actually present a bit of a threat to him. Lots of them. In fact, I seem to recall that those aliens were specifically bred by his people for ritual combat or something. That’s the kind of Predator I’d support.
Alright. Alright. What? Alright. What's going on, Twizzler? You make your name by dint of a uniquely textured type of liquorice. Then you release Nibs, a side project of candies that are ostensibly too small to retain that texture efficiently. For the moment, I'll ignore those sour things you made that seemed to keep those trademark ridges even at their reduced size. But now you scale up your Nibs into these nominal Super Nibs, which are quite indistinguishable from any other brand of ordinary liquorice. You move mysteriously, Twizzler.
The creature in the first movie is just some aberrant weakling who goes up against the easiest prey he can find in a futile effort to deal with his own insecurities. When Arnold addresses him with the phrase “ugly motherfucker”, I don’t think that he was implying anything about the whole species. Surely, Mr Schwarzenegger’s conception of beauty must be far more cosmopolitan. After all, he's Mr. Universe. If he had met the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Predators, he probably would have had kinder things to say about his extraterrestrial counterpart’s physical appearance. In this case, I think that he probably just instinctively identified an inherent wretchedness in his adversary that transcended petty genotypic differences. He knew that his opponent was basically the Bernard Marx of his people. Like that malformed misfit in “Brave New World”, this film’s villain seeks to ameliorate the symptoms of his crippling inferiority complex by entering a primitive land and picking out an exquisite physical specimen. Now, as the Predator’s society is apparently based around carnage instead of commodity, he does not take Dutch the Savage out to parties on his home planet to show him off in front of the popular crowd. He takes the culturally equivalent path of attempted slaughter.
Even his attempts at honourable combat seem fatuous. He’s unwilling to kill an unarmed soldier? That’s like refraining from throwing a grenade at a puppy because the poor thing is missing one of its teeth.
Ultimately, like Kramer against a karate class of children, the Predator still loses. He’s just bad.
It’s a great movie, though.
Bonus Question!
Does this mean that it's time to watch "Predators"? I'm starting to hope so. I'm always up for some middling science fiction with Adrian Brody. Remember "Splice"? Fun times.
After filming the above video on Thursday, I decided to rush down and catch the early midnight release of “Days of Future Past”. It was a good cap to the night.
It was a solid film, but I only saw the advertisement for it after I’d watched the actual movie, which allowed me to appreciate the commercial’s use of “Kashmir”. It was one of the first Zeppelin songs I ever heard, and it always sounded like a mix of a James Bond theme and some sort of ancient Egyptian thing. In my mind, that’s a perfect fit for “Days of Future Past”, which is basically bordered by those two fairly disparate elements. On one side, it follows up from the shaken martini flavour of the spy antics that defined “X-Men: First Class”. On the other, the scene after the credits shows the deification of the primordial mutant Apocalypse in front of a bunch of pyramids and a throng of slaves. I suppose that there’s also the obvious connection with Robert Plant’s talk of travelling through time and space in the opening verse. That’s fine too.
Bonus Question!
Best song from an "X-Men" movie? Gnarls Barkley's "Run" from that montage in "First Class". That was stuck in my head for months after the fact.
I think that it might have been my alarm tune for a while too, but I generally slept through it. This caused my brother to develop a loathing for the song, which is one of my great regrets.
Man! Let me tell you something. Last night’s show was the first one we actually organised by ourselves, and it was worth it. Well! Instead of getting thrown on a bill with a bunch of random acts we didn’t like, we got to play with bands we liked on personal and professional levels. That’s a total of two levels! Big ones. For anyone who might be interested, the work of the other bands can be found at https://soundcloud.com/georgegeorgelis and https://www.facebook.com/wewereheads. It’s good stuff.
Anyway, this is definitely going to happen again. Soon. We’ll be restricted to acoustic sets in June while our bassist is out of town, but when she returns at the start of the following month, we’ll jump back in full electric glory, and all of you shall be invited. This is the plan.
Bonus Question!
When was that the plan?
That was always the plan!
On argent peak, an arbor sways
And cloaks the mountain with its verd.
It hides its home from daylight's rays.
Behind its boughs, no sound is heard.
A private sky neath leafy dome
Lurks always on the edge of night,
And stars like secrets freely roam
Mid lofty branch in gracious flight.
The trunk in silent glory stands
As colours run along its height
In vivid shades and vaguer strands
That play upon a plane of white.
Upon the bole are symbols borne
That ward the glade from sun's purview.
Beneath the bark, dim marks adorn
A surface of a darker hue.
A tale of other lands they show
In shapes not carved by mortal will.
They move about with silent skill
And tell of all the world below.
To my chagrin, this is apparently not a sequel to Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday".
At some point in the rapidly fleeing winter, I happened to have a conversation with a worker from Paradise Comics, my first and favourite comic book store. The fact that it’s not local for me anymore is the only salient problem with the fact that I now live in my favourite part of town.
This discussion involved “Secret Six”, which could easily be the best comic that DC ever published for me. By “for me”, I don’t just mean that it was a great work in my opinion. That slightly obtuse bit of phrasing should also draw attention to one of the comic’s gifts, one that seems endemic to great works. It’s that ability to make a reader feel as though the work were specifically created with him in mind. Obviously, it’s completely subjective, which is part of what makes it special.
I love “Star Wars” too. All the movies. Some of the shows. Bits of the other stuff. I could take or leave the holiday, but I hope that all of you have a happy one regardless. Topical! Anyway. Beside the point. Lots of people love “Star Wars”, and many of those people feel a deep personal connection with it. I know that I do. Despite the fact that my tastes currently tend to favour comics over “Star Wars” to some extent, I actually invested myself in “Star Wars” novels before I ever entered the world of comic books. That chronology seems mildly odd in retrospect. But I had a love for “Star Wars” long before the original trilogy made its return to cinemas in the late Nineties, which was excellent because it meant that that revival meant something to me before I even went in.
I believe that the first “Star Wars” novel I picked up was Timothy Zahn’s “The Last Command”. I think that I was at an airport. It was the final entry of a trilogy, and I only learned fairly recently that it bore the brunt of responsibility for blowing up the expanded universe of “Star Wars” into what it is today. Or would that be yesterday? Who knows what Disney's really doing with all of that? Whatever. It'll be fine. There were some good times, but I won't think of it like losing a Thrawn. I'll think about it like gaining Chewbacca! His death never felt terribly real to me anyway, and now it probably isn't! All of this might also be beside the point. But that’s how this goes.
Anyway, my affection for that franchise is clear, and it’s something that’s experienced in one way or another by millions of other people, but I’d imagine that that extra sensation that “Secret Six” incited in me is relatively rare even among the most fervent fans of Lucas’s saga. It’s a rare thing in all cases. It’s not tied to the level of devotion. It’s purely qualitative and often random. “Star Wars” certainly contains great works, but I bring it up here specifically because its perfectly benign inability to bring up that particular emotion in me is completely irrelevant to its presence in my life, which is certainly bigger than that of “Secret Six”.
Incidentally, I didn’t set out to speak so profusely on “Star Wars” when I began this post about Free Comic Book Day, but I’m glad for the presence of this digression on a post that happens to fall on the fourth of May. The whole thing works out!
I brought up the discussion about “Secret Six” because it resolved with my declaration of an attempt to locate my complete paperback collection of the series and deliver it to the comic shop worker. Later, I realised that I’d probably thrown the books out with most of my other comics, which she and I took in stride.
On Thursday, I had cause to enter my brother’s bedroom for the first time since the recent end of his brief visit. Apparently, he’d been digging around through old stuff, for I chanced upon a “Secret Six” paperback among the freshly strewn oddments in the room. It wasn’t in great condition, but it was the first collection of the actual series, which was technically preluded by a brief volume that was probably tossed out with everything else.
This was a fortuitous find, for it gave me the extra bit of motivation to actually make the journey up to Paradise on that Saturday for Free Comic Book Day, which has never really been the most worthwhile of prospects for me. Obviously, it’s a wonderful thing, but the books it offered never really ran away with my imagination. That’s on me, though. I just never managed to muster up true excitement for complimentary issues that seemed minor and incidental when there was such a vast amount of stuff in the store that appealed to me. My clearest childhood memory of Free Comic Book Day is of an issue that my brother picked up. It was a comic continuation of an animated adaptation of a book by DC, a company that I didn’t even care about until the arrival of the “Teen Titans” cartoon in a later year. My favourite comic on that particular day was almost definitely some “X-Men” thing that I actually had to pay for. In a somewhat amusing turn, one of the best free issues I picked up today was a comic based on the successor to that “Teen Titans” cartoon. There could be some irony in that, but there’s a healthy dose of aptness too. There was also a “Guardians of the Galaxy” comic that told the story of Flash Thompson’s arrival on the team, which serves as a somewhat belated answer to the short moment of mild confusion I experienced when I picked up the latest regular issue of that series to discover that something like the addition of a new cast member was apparently only mentioned on the recapitulation page instead of being shown anywhere.
If people are actually reading this, many of them might not know or care about these bits of minutiae into which I’m delving, but it’s Free Comic Book Day. It’s made for this stuff. I hardly think that I’d care if it weren’t, though. People never know what I’m talking about anyway.
Most of the other stuff I grabbed didn’t seem to merit much attention, but I did find an issue of “Courtney Crumrin”, which is a series I basically forgot to start a few months ago. I also bought the first issue of Gaiman’s new “Sandman”, which is another thing I meant to do months ago despite my current tendency towards digital acquisition.
One other comic I considered and forgot months ago probably isn’t related to Free Comic Book Day in any real way, but I’ll talk about it anyway because I’m on a ramble. “Saga”! Its worth is old news to many of the people who would care, but I finally turned my attention to it recently, and I adore it. When I realised that I was approaching its most recent issue, I was even faintly bothered at the idea of waiting for the next one. This was heightened by my awareness of the creative team’s penchant for taking breaks between story arcs. However, after I finished the last book today, this discomfort was assuaged in the letter column by the writer’s revelation that the hiatus that began after the issue’s release would be ending in May. This is what I get for starting late. I get to jump right back on immediately. Cheers for procrastination!
Bonus Question!
Best holiday of the week that I didn't mention? The Beltane, which dutifully brought a patch of sun amidst the days of constant rain.
The hamburger box isn't too far away from the pizza box. You're really just thinking inside the adjacent box. In terms of boxes, it's a lateral move. That's basically what I'm saying.
“The Princess Bride” is another old film that’s been on my list for a bit of a while. I have only the vaguest memories of my childhood notions about it, but I don’t think that they were particularly favourable. I believe that one of my best friends had a particular gusto for the film, which now does something to explain his affection for that Andre the Giant shirt he used to wear. His taste for the story, however, was something I would not share, and though my reasons for this were never profoundly solid, I’m willing to place stock in the idea that the clearest among them had something to do with Wallace Shawn. I don’t have anything against the guy. He’s a fine performer. There’s just something in the way that his face so naturally resembles the visage of a clown. It’s disconcerting. I think that one of the only pieces of the movie I happened to see when I was young featured him prominently. I actually thought that he was the primary villain until I finally saw the thing on Thursday.
Right. So. Eventually, I realised that my aversion to this movie had no real basis, and I decided that I should think about getting around to seeing it. That was a while ago. At some point, I took up the assumption that this was exactly the sort of film that would occasionally get played in theatres, and I made the choice to wait for that. It certainly worked in the case of “Flash Gordon”, and I don’t think that I even planned things out for that one. During this last week, my laconic patience was rewarded by the opportunity to experience the story in its broad glory at my favourite cinema, and I jumped to it. Wallace Shawn is more acceptable to me now, and his presence in the film was not overwhelming.
Bonus Question!
Best Wallace? Gromit's buddy.
I saw “Winter Soldier” a few days ago. I would have seen it earlier, but I had to get “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” out of the way first. Canine time traveller and his young ward? That’s my jam right there. I’d delayed on that too much already, and I was almost at the point of feeling guilty. But I finally saw it, and it was joyous. All’s forgiven? Yeah. We’re good.
Anyway, watching the Captain America movie made me think more on the nature of the organisation of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel. I’m not really one to question things like Hawkeye’s role on the Avengers. Dude’s an action star. He can pull his weight. He doesn’t have any explicit powers, but he does his thing, and he does it well. Similar things could be said about Black Widow, though her history leaves a bit of room for ambiguity about the possibility of secret Soviet enhancements to which she may have been subject.
But all of that’s fine. People like that are basically just behind Batman by a step or two in terms of narrative superpower. The only big thing that really separates them from the heroes of other action stories with slightly less tenuous ties to the real world is the fact that the nature of a comic book universe leaves them open to comparisons with people who are specifically said to have actual powers. In any case, they prove themselves. Black Widow jumps onto a supersonic alien glider without ripping her arms from her sockets. Hawkeye does his whole blind shot thing. Captain America says, “You can be my wingman anytime.” Something like that.
Notably, Hawkeye does not say, “Bullshit. You can be mine.” But there’s a very simple reason for that: you don’t say that to Captain America. All of them are still dangerous, though. That’s my point.
But then you go and watch “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” because you’re a comic book fanatic with an excess of free time, and you start to wonder. Here’s a show that focuses on a bunch of people who are also dangerous. They don’t have powers either. They don’t even have gimmicks. Do you think that any of them ever feel bothered by the fact that they didn’t make it onto the Avengers roster? Does Grant Ward ever grumble about his position in his organisation when he needs a break from grumbling about everything else?
“Freaking Hawkeye. I don’t see the appeal. Dude’s got a bow. Take away that, then what are you? Not a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Man, I could beat that guy up. Dude’s got, like, eight years on me. And who knows how much mileage. Have you seen his face? Guy needs to exfoliate or something. Don’t he know that perfectly smooth skin is S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation? Even Melinda manages it. Admittedly, she’s Asian, but she’s still probably old enough to be my mother or something. Well, maybe not my mother. This is network television. There’s no room for intimations of incest. Maybe, like, Fitz’s mother. Yeah. I could see myself getting it on with Fitz’s mom. But for Hawkeye not to even keep up with that piece of Christmas cake in the smoothness department is just downright disrespectful. A dereliction of duty, even! He should be given a red card, or whatever it is we do in these mysterious paramilitary organisations. Court-martial? Whatever! But definitely not given an Avengers spot! And I’m on cleanup duty? Fuck that! I mean, look at these cheeks! I’m a slice of prime cut hyperlethal action wrapped up in a baby-bottom visage! With a healthy side order of grimace. And that dilapidated old marksman gets a spot on the starting lineup? What gives?”
I don’t know. Maybe that’s why he shot that lady in the back? .
Bonus Question!
Best assistant superhero to die, come back, turn evil for a while, and find redemption? In a domino mask?
Jason Todd.
The winds that whipped our brows abate. The chills that cracked our will subside. No peril stole our promised fate. Naught stands against the force of pride. Our revel’s full return now rings. It brings a song to ancient ears And stirs the souls of sleeping kings That lie beneath the weight of years. They wake in grace to timeless strains That play for all their slumber missed. They join the joyous tune’s refrains With lips that tender triumph kissed. They cry for aeons held in shade And ages that were spent to yearn. For every dream that ever strayed, Their regal voices freely burn. Their hymn extends through lightened halls To boast of newly bolstered fame. The toast is borne beyond their walls Across the lands that they reclaim. Beneath the barrows, bellows rise And ride above their mountain tomb. A godly throne of solid guise Now stands where sombre graves did loom. The lay at last has found its place To rule within this hilly fain. Below the mound, in earth’s embrace,
I promptly went off to see “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and I obviously enjoyed it. It’s right behind “The Darjeeling Limited” on my list of Wes Anderson’s works, and even that is probably due in large part to the lesser presence of Owen Wilson. Honestly, if the whole movie had just been about Owen Wilson’s dealings with the Nazis in his occupied hotel, I would’ve been fine. I’d see that spinoff. Does Wes Anderson make franchises? He should. Damn it, Wes Anderson! Why won’t you run your intellectual properties into the ground like everyone else? Johnny Depp’s going to play Jack Sparrow until he dies, and we love him for it! Actually, he’ll probably steal the plot of his new computer movie and come back from death mainly to play Jack Sparrow for eternity. And to hang out with Tim Burton. Which is also great. They make a good team. Like you and Owen Wilson! Who will hopefully be returning in “Darjeeling 2: Unlimited”.
Bonus Question!
Best movie of a play?
"A Midsummer Night's Dream". Stanley Tucci's Puck? I might not have been fully supportive when I first saw the little bald dude in the role 10 years ago, but I was an idiot in a lot of other ways then too. By contrast, I went to see the second "Percy Jackson" movie mainly to see the Tooch play Dionysus. There's a nice bit of symmetry in that somewhere.
I just saw the “Veronica Mars” movie. I never saw the show, but the film basically turned out to be a cast reunion for “Party Down”, which is something I did watch. Also, I like the Dandy Warhols, who did the theme for the series. I just learned that shortly before I saw this. Anyway, everyone was in that movie. Seeing cinematic adaptations of shows I never watched is turning out to be quite enjoyable. This concurs with last week’s experience with Steve Coogan’s “Alan Partridge” movie. I don’t think that I’d ever even heard of that character before I saw the theatrical poster. Incidentally, did I actually fail to notice the arrival of a new Wes Anderson comedy with all the people I love who weren’t in “Veronica Mars”? Because it’s here. It’s in Europe. In a hotel. It’s like everything I loved about “The Darjeeling Limited” with a greater focus on hotels. That’s perfect for me. I decided against seeing “Moonrise Kingdom”. The atmosphere didn’t seem right for me. A rural camp ground isn't generally my kind of setting for a fantasy. Hotels? Yes, sir. That's my jam right there. Right above trains that feel like mobile, horizontal hotels. My family saw "Moonrise", but even they thought that it was too quiet, and they have a greater tolerance for quietude than I do. The only other review came from a friend with an abiding love of Wes Anderson’s oeuvre, and he spoke favourably of it. Still. He tried for a long time to get me into “Life Aquatic”, but it never really spoke to me in the same way. I think that my best experience with that guy came from “The Darjeeling Limited”, which I thoroughly adored, but nothing in his body of work really tells me that he’s a director I shouldn’t have a strong fondness for. Dude’s awesome. That’s what I’m saying. Wes and I also seem to share a taste for Owen Wilson’s performances. Now I just don’t know whether I should try to wait for that Anderson fan to see the movie. He’s my oldest friend, but it’s really hard to make plans around his schedule. Basically, if it’s not a Sunday, he can’t do it. On another note, in the day since I wrote everything above this paragraph, I happened to learn that a “Party Down” movie might actually be happening, which gives me a bit of joy. I think that I’m really starting to like this trend.
Bonus Question!
Bruno versus Veronica?
I don't know, man! These entities are lucky to exist on my periphery! I'm just going to give it to Veronica because her recency makes her more vivid in my mind.
Both have poise, though. I've got to give it up for that.
Sugar Crisp! Am I right?
Perhaps I should elaborate.
I think that I should give credit to the marketing team on this one. When people talk about the power of advertising, they generally jump to Coca-Cola or something, but in those cases, the product does most of the work. Coca-Cola actually tastes good. Admittedly, getting people to drink it in the winter was a bit of a coup, but it’s still not that hard to sell in the first place. Advertising mainly just serves to reinforce its popularity.
This is not the case for Sugar Crisp. Those marketers had an implausible task, and they succeeded beyond sense.
I remember the excitement I felt when this stuff first appeared in my world. All of the elements of a joyous experience seemed to be there. First, you’ve got the name. That’s a name of pure, naked promise. Next, you’ve got the bear. The bear’s a primal, undeniably powerful symbol. It worked for Russia, it worked for the Norse, and it works for Sugar Crisp. But this is no ordinary bear. This is Sugar Bear, a bear with a calm demeanour and an easy smile. His mellow eyes have the seductive sort of heavy lids that would put Lauren Bacall to shame. If that’s not enough, he sometimes gets superpowers from his cereal.
For all the holdouts, there’s the theme song. Don’t doubt it, man. That bear can croon. If the Rat Pack ever lost Dean Martin, they could bring in Sugar Bear without skipping a beat.
All of this should combine to make something irresistible. Indeed, it would if it were employed in the service of a product that was even mediocre. For one brief, saccharine moment, I dreamt of the delight this cereal would bring. Upon receiving my first bowl of the stuff, I learned that that dream was empty, and I never looked back.
Until now.
I just don’t know how something with such a high amount of sugar could taste so bland. I can only imagine that someone took the contents of a pencil sharpener, condensed them, seasoned them with sawdust, and put the result in an exquisitely themed box. I don't know how something can taste dry when it's immersed in milk, but Sugar Crisp manages. I only know that the glory that seemed so certain in every facet of the concept that Sugar Crisp sold dissipated instantly with the first taste.
So. Sugar Crisp. Am I right?
Bonus Question!
Best cover of the Sugar Crisp theme?
I think that I found a new, irrevocable reason to avoid marriage. For me. For me to avoid marriage. Marriage is an awesome idea, but I've gradually been realising that I'd be absolutely terrible at it. There are other reasons. Myriads. Over the past six years, they’ve been slowly building, and their sheer magnitude recently became impossible to ignore. Most of them, however, are theoretically negotiable. You know how it is. Some of them could be avoided with the right partner. Others could be erased if I were more willing to change. But this fresh one seems too abhorrent to even permit thoughts of correction. I’m terrible at dressing up for things. You know that I can dress up. Everyone does. But this sort of dressing up is just my alternative to dressing down, which is something that is still traumatically difficult for me. I’m not actually dressing up for anything. “Up” merely signifies the general direction of my dressing, but the exact vectors are left to me. Dressing up for occasions that aren’t specifically focused on my onstage spasms generally involves a trajectory that’s been planned without my input. Fortunately, I am rarely placed in positions that necessitate my refusal to attend such functions. If I were to marry, I would theoretically be placed in those positions more often, but I highly doubt that any woman who’d even countenance the idea of marrying me would insist on managing my attire for an acquaintance’s holiday ball. Have you ever wondered why people die? Listen. I’m not going to say that the gods invented death purely to create a type of gathering wherein my gauche ignorance of any semblance of sartorial subtlety would seem actively disrespectful. I’m just saying that it’s a workable theory. Now, in my life, the only funerals that fall within the bounds of my notice are held in honour of those who’re close to me. Everyone grieves in his own way, and no one’s really going to tell me that I’m improperly dressed to mourn my loved one. I suppose that I don’t technically grieve, but if I care about someone enough to attend his funeral, it’s probably because he’s had a presence in my life that can’t be diminished by death. With that in mind, what reason do I have to grieve? Maybe that’s why I never had a problem with “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. It couldn’t do anything to detract from my experience of its predecessors because that experience had already happened. Actually, that can’t be the reason at all. I just happened to enjoy that film. Anyway, no one presently has a reason to invite me to a stranger’s funeral. But all of that changes with a spouse. Obviously, there are the common discomforts that come with the melding of families, but I could probably avoid a lot of that. You only really see your partner’s people at holidays. Right? And those are festive events. And I’m always festive. But that’s why funerals are terrible. You’re there purely as an adjunct to your spouse, and that’s a role that leaves very little room for personal eccentricities. That’s when I’d be out of options, wouldn’t it? That’s when I’d have to throw on a suit. A suit I don’t own. One with trousers through which the contours of my legs are not immediately visible. One that’s not shiny at all. And I’d probably just fall asleep anyway. And that’s why I can’t get married.
Bonus Question!
Best funeral? The fiery kind.