Bad Movie Or Worst In-Flight Movie Ever? (Plus: Bouncing Boy!)

I seriously did jack today.
Every ounce of energy and ambition I had, I think, was used up in the struggle to force myself to get out of bed.
Once I did get up, I sat my ass down to watch a movie I’d recorded, and even that was a lot of effort.
The movie in question? Last year’s pop culture phenomenon, the oft-blogged about Snakes on a Plane.
I never bothered to see it when there was all the hype about it, and I never put forth an active effort to see it after that, but when I noticed that it was going to be on HBO2, I figured I might as well record it.
It was pretty much as bad and cheesy as I expected, though there were some elements whose badness and cheesiness I couldn’t really have anticipated.
Admittedly, I’ve never been a Red Eye flight from Honolulu to LA, but I think it’s safe to assume that such flights don’t really have such a porny ambience.
We won’t even bother getting into the viability of the titular method of attacking the witness for the prosecution of a vicious mobster who was on the flight to LA to give his testimony.
Overall it seemed like the sort of movie that was destined to air as a Sci Fi Channel original movie until Samuel L. Jackson got involved and urged the producers to add more R-rated elements to it.
Said elements felt really tacked-on, much like the hardcore sex scenes that Bob Guccione inserted (so to speak) into the movie Caligula.
In any case, the long and the short of it is that it was a shitty movie and I knew it was going to be a shitty movie and I watched it anyway only because of a mild interest in seeing what all of the fuss had been about.
That was the major event of the day, apart from finishing up The Great Darkness Saga, which, as I expected it would, managed to hold up to a re-reading (and was considerably more enjoyable than watching that stupid movie).
And that leads me to...

The Bouncing Boy Dilemma
Back when I learned that I was the IWon.com daily $10,000 winner, my initial response was, of course, excitement.
I remained excited about it (and am still glad of it), but eventually my enthusiasm was dampened a little by the thought, “If only I could have been the annual $25 million winner.”
It’s a natural human response, I think. No matter how good you have it, you’ll always wish that things could have worked out better.
Which brings me – inspired by my re-reading of a classic Legion of Super-Heroes storyline – to the subject of Bouncing Boy and his dilemma..
For those unfamiliar with the character, Chuck Taine, is a fat teen of the distant future who mistakes an experimental super-plastic formula for a soft drink and as a result of drinking it his body is changed, becoming much more elastic and allowing him to become, in essence, a human rubber ball.
(Yes, it’s a goofy origin and a goofy power, but that’s not the point, and the Legion is full of much goofier shit than that.)
Chuck takes on the name Bouncing Boy and joins the galaxy’s premier team of young heroes, the Legion of Super-Heroes.
At this point it’s clear that BB is a pretty lucky guy. A mishap that would likely have killed anyone else gives him super powers and allows him to become part of a group that’s respected and idolized by billions of sentient beings on countless worlds.
Further, he doesn’t have to feel self-conscious about his weight, because, basically, being a bit of a butterball is actually part of what makes him a hero.
So Chuck’s already doing pretty good, but he hits the jackpot when he meets fellow Legionnaire Luornu Durgo, or, as she’s also known, Duo Damsel.
Duo Damsel, a drop-dead gorgeous young woman, has the ability to split herself into two drop-dead gorgeous young women.
I reiterate: she can split herself into two identical bodies.
I’ll let that sink in, and then mention that, despite being surrounded by some of the most eligible, attractive young men in the galaxy, DD fell in love with and married Bouncing Boy.
So yeah, clearly at this point Bouncing Boy is one of the luckiest fat asses in the galaxy. Super powers, fame and adulation, the freedom to be as fat as he wants, and a hot wife who can make an exact duplicate of herself; Bouncing Boy has nothing to complain about.
But here’s the thing.
Prior to a tragic battle with an evil computer, Duo Damsel had been known as Triplicate Girl, owing to the fact that, before one of her selves was killed in said battle, she could actually split herself into three identical selves.
So you have to think that, lying in bed at night, sandwiched (and probably eating a sandwich) between those two perfect bodies, un-self-consciously nude, despite the fact that his big, rubbery gut prevents him from seeing his own penis (whose elastic nature undoubtedly provides him some advantages over the average guy), BB has to be wondering what things might have been like before that stupid evil computer came along.
And that, my friends, is the Bouncing Boy Dilemma.