Fantastic Fumble

In the summer of 1989 when everyone in the world was caught up in Batmania as a result of Tim Burton’s Batman and its accompanying marketing and merchandizing blitz, I read an interview in with someone working with/for the film production company Neue Constantin in an issue of Comics Scene magazine.
The person, whose name escapes me after all these years, was talking about the plans for a movie adaptation of the Fantastic Four.
Inspired by the success of Batman, the interviewee felt that the time was right to turn “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” into The World’s Greatest Comic Book Movie.  He went on to say that the movie would have a $40 million budget – comparable to the budget of Batman – and would be a 100% faithful translation of one of the most iconic storylines in the history of the FF, project the “Galactus Trilogy” directly from the pages of the comic and onto the movie screen.
It was a bold proclamation. 
It was also utter bullshit. 
As cool as I thought such a thing would be – and as much as I’d hoped that the success of Batman, despite my antipathy towards the movie, would kick off a wave of good comic book adaptations that showed at least some amount of respect for the source material -  I was already pretty cynical and bitter about the entertainment industry and its treatment of comic book adaptations.  I’d suffered through far too many Superman IIIs, Superman IVs, and the like to hold out much hope for a really good comic book movie.
How hopeful could I be?  This was a time when there was very serious consideration being given to the idea of shaving Arnold Schwarzenegger, painting him blue, and having him play Dr. Manhattan in a Watchmen movie adaptation.
Over the next few years this big-budget FF adaptation didn’t materialize, though I would occasionally see some reference to it being stuck in “Development Hell.”
Somewhere around 1993 I started seeing reports of there being some actual movement on the project, but it wasn’t exactly cause for excitement.
The movie had fallen into the hands of B-Movie legend Roger Corman, and the $40 million budget had been somewhat reduced.
By around $38.5 million.
I started seeing some grainy pictures taken on location in publications like Comic Buyer’s Guide, and, even allowing for the low-quality of the images, they didn’t look terribly promising.
In the meantime, Marvel had suffered some serious failures in its attempts to bring its characters to the silver screen, with abortive attempts at adapting the Punisher and Captain America being two recent (at that time) examples.
It’s difficult to believe, from this vantage point, that there was a time when movies based on Marvel characters not only failed to make all the money in the world, they actually failed to even be seen by anyone other than viewers of late-night cable TV fare.
In any case, the handful of photos seemed to be the only evidence of the movie’s existence, as, despite being completed, it never saw the light of day.
In point of fact, it was never intended for anyone to actually see the movie.  It was only produced for the sake of fulfilling a contractual obligation, with no plans whatsoever for distributing it.
Accounts by those who had seen the completed film confirmed what everyone already knew:  it was a cheap piece of shit.
Bootleg copies of the movie managed to circulate among fans of terrible cinema, and its reputation grew to such an extent that it has become the subject of a documentary.
Throughout the years, it became something of the Holy Grail of bad movies, as I was never able to get my hands on a copy.
All of that changed the other day, and Scott and I sat down to bask in its awfulness.
Here’s a taste:

…and just now, in searching for this trailer, I discovered that the whole damn thing is posted on YouTube.  It never even occurred to me to check.  I could have gotten this painful experience over a long time ago.  Ah well.
If you feel brave enough, you can seek it out yourself and watch it in all its…well, what’s the polar opposite of glory?
I’m not going to provide an in-depth review of the movie, but I will touch on some of the things that stood out for me.

Somewhere between the initial conception of the movie, which was to start in the midst of things with an already-established FF facing off against the world-devouring Galactus, with maybe a quick origin sequence tacked-on, and the final product, Galactus was removed, Dr. Doom became the primary villain, and the whole thing was essentially just an origin story.

It starts out…well, not completely horrible.  Cheap-looking and poorly-acted, sure, but the basics are pretty faithful to the comics, and the plot, such as it is, isn’t really all that awful.  They provide a decent introduction of the character dynamics, and we get an okay origin sequence for Dr. Doom (albeit one with dreadful special effects).  In this regard, it’s superior to the big-budget movie of the 2000s, though that’s not really saying much.  However, it’s all goes spectacularly wrong from there.

Young Sue Storm is played by actress Mercedes McNabb, who, at the time, was best known for her role as Wednesday’s nemesis in the Addams Family movies.  She would eventually go on to be known for her role as Harmony on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

The “video game” that Ben Grimm and young Johnny Storm are seen playing is very clearly a cartoon.  An obviously traditionally-animated sequence also plays a part in the movie’s denouement.

Reed’s hair is arguably the very worst special effect in the movie.

While they’re marred by shoddy craftsmanship, the costumes are all pretty accurate.  Doom’s design is dead-on, but he looks like someone who might win third or fourth place in a cosplay competition at a small, local comic book convention.

Apparently everyone assumed that Reed and company would die horribly on their mission to space, as the creation of a memorial statue is planned the very same day that they’re reported missing.

Doom’s reaction when “The Jeweler” threatens to kill Alicia is both perfect and hilarious.

The indelible stamp of the Burton Batman movies can be seen throughout – particularly in any scenes involving “The Jeweler” and his henchmen – and I maintain that, even with a big budget, there would have been no way to make a comic book movie in the 1990s that could come close to resembling the approach used in making contemporary comic book movies, because the only way to make a comic book movie at that time was in the Burton mold, at least until Joel Schumacher got his hands on the Dark Knight.  Even setting aside the horror of the casting of Nicolas Cage, I shudder to think what Superman Lives! would have been like had it actually been made.

To go back to that point, every time “The Jeweler” and his crew appeared, I imagined some “note” from a studio executive that said, “You know what people loved?  The Penguin and his carnival of crime in Batman Returns.  Do something like that!  But with 1000% more 3 Stooges-style humor!”

What do you call “Love at first sight” when the person who experiences it is blind?  In any case, having him cause her to break one of her sculptures, feeling up his face, learning that he’s presumed dead, and then learning that he isn’t dead are enough to get Alicia Masters to declare her love for Ben.

Guy playing Dr. Doom:  “No one can see my face behind this mask, so I’m going to have to use my hands to emote.  My hands should never not be moving, even if it means that sometimes I look like I’m dancing the Batusi, or if I’m constantly touching people’s faces in a way that’s inappropriate and creepy.  Acting!”

Despite being an off-the-charts genius and a creative thinker, the only use Reed can think of for his stretching abilities is to grab things that are a few steps away, punch someone without having to get too close, or trip people.  Even to the limited extent that his powers are used, watching the terrible effect is hilarious.

While the make up for the Thing looks cheap and does nothing to create the illusion that it’s anything other than a costume, I can’t really fault the overall design.  Yes, it looked terrible, but there was a clear attempt at accuracy.  They could have worked just a little harder on making him look rocky rather than scaly, but still, I’d give them a C- for the effort.  That said, they should have saved some money and not bothered building the animatronics into his constantly twitching upper lip.

The Human Torch can fly faster than the speed of light, and is invulnerable to a laser beam that has the power to turn New York City into the most ubiquitous stock footage of the effects of a nuclear explosion.

Even when she wasn’t turning invisible, most of the time it was like Sue wasn’t there.  Sadly, that much is an example of being pretty faithful to the comics.

So, yeah.  That’s the 1994 Fantastic Four movie.  Am I glad I finally watched it?  Yes; as a comic book geek and someone who appreciates cheap, terrible movies and the laughs that they bring, I found it well-worth the time.

Friday Night Randomness

Last week Scott and I went to see the new Godzilla movie.  I really liked the parts that prominently featured the titular King of All Monsters…which is to say that I liked about 5% of the movie.
I will say that there is an interesting movie to be made focusing on the lives of the people impacted by the devastation caused by giant, rampaging monsters, especially if it’s one that has the features the caliber of talent that was found in Godzilla…but that’s not the movie I paid to see.
Also:  too damn many kids.
I described the movie to Scott as being “Godzilla-adjacent.”
But given the success of the movie, which led to the already-announced sequel, I’m definitely in the minority on this one.

***

One of the main characters in the movie was played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, star of the Kick-Ass movies, whom I totally didn’t recognize.  His wife in the movie was played by Elizabeth Olsen.  I was amused by this, as he will be portraying Quicksilver in Avengers 2, and Olsen will be playing The Scarlet Witch.  I just found it kind of funny, as in this movie they played a husband and wife, while in their upcoming roles they’ll be portraying siblings.
It actually gives their upcoming roles an Ultimates vibe…

***

On the topic of Quicksilver, thanks to a strange arrangement involving movie rights, Quicksilver was also able to appear in X-Men:  Days of Future Past, which Scott and I saw earlier today, and I have to say that, despite how goofy he looked in publicity photos, he was pretty awesome.
Overall, I think Singer and company did a very good job of adapting a classic story from the comics given the characters and the particular version of the X-verse they’ve constructed in the movies, but in a lot of ways it kind of suffers in comparison to the source material.
One thing the movie did have going for it, though, was that, unlike the original story, written at a time when the character didn’t exist, was the presence of Blink.  Just seeing her on the screen made me happy, though I can’t really articulate why.  It also helped that, as presented, she was pretty awesome.  Which is how it should be.

***

At work there are signs all over the place stating that “ID Badges Must Be Visible At All Times,” yet people ignore them.  This annoys me.  Not because people are breaking the rules – I don’t particularly care about that – but because not having them out and visible leads to me witnessing the same scene every day, usually with the same people, as the flagrant rule-breakers are rushing towards the entrance in the morning and are then stopped short and forced to rummage through their purses or laptop bags to dig out their IDs in order to let themselves into the building.
If you followed the rules, your badge would always be readily-accessible!
…
I don’t know why that annoys me so much, but it does.  I guess just because it’s the same people doing the same goddamn thing day after day after day.

***

Speaking of “day after day,” once a song shuffles into rotation on my iPod, which spends its life plugged into my alarm clock, it tends to be the song that wakes me up for a long stretch of time, as I never hit snooze, so the song only plays for a few seconds at a time.
For the past week or so the song that’s been waking me up is Nick Cave’s “Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?”
This morning, that resulted in me being awoken by Nick singing, “Wake up, my love, my lover wake up.”
Awkward.
Listen, Nick, we’re just friends, okay?
On the other hand, it will be utterly appropriate when the day comes upon which I’m awoken by the words, “Gloomily, mournfully, we go ‘round again, and one more doomed time, and without much hope, going ‘round and around to nowhere…”

***

Still, I do like it when there’s a certain synchronicity with lyrics, such as when I’m awoken by the song “Wake Up” by Mad Season, or “Wake Up Dead” by Megadeth…

***

As I pulled in to the parking garage by the theater today I noticed a security guard on a Segway and thought, “Huh.  That’s new.”
When I was walking out of the parking garage, he began chatting me up about my car.  Apparently he’s something of a CX-5 fanboy.  It was all kind of…odd, particularly with the way he was just sort of bobbing up and down on the Segway while we talked.

***

A while back on my way out to my car in the morning a deer went rushing past me.  It happened so quickly that it took me several seconds to figure out what had just happened.
The other day while I was out on the smoking deck at work, I was nearly hit by another deer, which was, frankly, even more unexpected than the one that dashed through my yard.
The next day on the way out to the smoking deck I encountered an apparently suicidal field mouse that seemed determined to get stepped on.
I managed to avoid any random animal encounters today.

It’s A Sin

Earlier today on Facebook I shared a link to this Comics Alliance post about a goddamn* Frank Miller Gucci commercial.
Setting aside the totally bizarre notion of Frank Miller directing a Gucci commercial in the first place, it’s actually not a bad commercial, as far as commercials go.  It’s sleek, stylish, and sexy, and is, naturally, reminiscent of the movie adaptation of Miller’s Sin City.
Longtime readers (AKA Scott) may recall that several years ago that movie was one of the things I was looking forward to most in life, and that I was not disappointed.
Since then I’ve been waiting for the sequels, which seemed inevitable at the time, but which have failed to materialize in nearly a decade.
All of that will be changing in October when Miller and Rodriguez finally reunite to make a new Sin City movie, one which will feature adaptations of two of the stories from the comics, and will feature one entirely new story written specifically for the movie.
One of the adapted stories, which will serve as the sort of centerpiece of the movie, is A Dame to Kill For, which is probably my favorite of all of the stories set in Basin City.
Seeing that story adapted is the thing I’ve most wanted to have happen in a sequel.
For much of the time that I’ve been waiting for that to be adapted it’s been my fervent hope that  Scarlett Johansson would be cast for the role of Ava Lake, the story’s titular – Settle down, Beavis; it just means she’s mentioned in the title – dame.
I had hoped that even if it meant that she proved to be unwilling – which seemed likely – to appear sans clothes in the story’s many, many (many) nude scenes, though I had also hoped that she would be willing to do so because, well, because Scarlett Johansson.  Duh.
Given that she worked with Miller in The Spirit, a movie I refuse to dislike regardless of what anyone says about it – so seriously, don’t bother saying anything about it – I had hoped that my hopes were hopefully more hopeful.
More recently, I had come around to thinking that Christina Hendricks would also be a good choice (all of my comments above about the nude scenes, naturally, are just as applicable).
Back when the first movie was in the planning stages, they had considered adapting Dame, and had talked about casting actress Maria Bello in the role.  That was kind of a head-scratcher for me.  Don’t get me wrong; she’s a perfectly attractive woman and a fine actress, but she was, in my less-than humble opinion, not exactly right for the part of Ava.
The same goes for Rachel Weisz, whose name was thrown around a lot after the first movie was made.
Angelina Jolie was also considered a viable option for a time, and while I think she’s more suited for the part of Ava than Bello or Weisz, it just seemed kind of…obvious.
Unfortunately, recent casting announcements have not only dashed my hopes, they’ve taken them out back and shot them in the head, execution-style, as the role of Ava is being played by Eva Green.
…
So I hate to be shallow here, and I don’t want to be mean, but…I just don’t find her to be especially attractive.  Certainly not Ava Lord levels of attractive.  And given that I’ve seen The Dreamers, even if I did find her attractive, the potential for her to be nude onscreen as often as Ava was in the pages of the comic wouldn’t hold that much appeal.
I’m still looking forward to the movie, of course, but I have to admit that it seems pretty likely that I’ll be sitting there thinking, “Really, Dwight?  This is the woman you spent so much time mooning over, and are now willing to throw your life away for?  This is the woman that can completely manipulate every man she meets?”
You can argue that James Bond seemed to be rather fond of her, but I don't know if that's a ringing endorsement, given his obvious sex addiction.
So, yeah.
Still, I will at least be able to see if the new story serves as an example of Miller’s frenzied descent further and further into batshit insane self-parody continuing unabated, because that’s always kind of entertaining to watch, or at least it proves fascinating in a train wreck sort of way.

*Speaking of Miller’s descent into self-parody, this classic (“classic”) panel, from All Star Batman and Robin, serves as the reason I refer to the commercial as a goddamn Frank Miller Gucci commercial:

And this is the goddamn Batmobile and I'm taking you to the goddamn Batcave.

Randomness

Me:  I’m trying to do heavier weights this time.  So I was pretty worn out by the time I got to the last set on the close-grip bench press after doing 30 reps each of the incline bench press and dumbbell flies.
Scott:  Weight lifting nerd.

****

While standing in front of the hotel smoking a cigarette in Austin, I saw an expensive car – I don’t remember what kind – pull up, and out of the passenger side stepped a young, hot blonde in heels and a skintight, satiny little black dress.
She noticed me noticing her, and, I assume because she likes being noticed and not because of anything about me personally, she smiled.
Out of the driver side stepped a much older, short, schlubby, fat guy in a baggy Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts with a thick New York accent.
Ah, I thought.  I see.
I was curious as to whether she was local talent, or if she had actually been his travelling companion – travelling as his “niece,” I should think – and as they approached so that the man could smoke a cigarette, I caught snatches of their conversation which seemed to be centered around the foolish excess of some time of especially expensive car.
While they stood there, another “uncle and his niece” approached – though this one was slightly less mismatched, as neither the man nor the woman were as far towards the extreme ends of relative attractiveness as the first two – the schlubby guy said to the less-schlubby guy, “This girl is telling me that the guy who’s takin’ her to the Hamptons wants to pick her up in a McLaren.”
At that point, as I finished my cigarette, I thought, “I kind of want to be rich.”

****

In Austin, we stayed at a Westin, and while I was on a lower floor than my VP, and the Director accompanying us, I was on the “Executive Level.”
…
It was a very nice hotel.
In Syracuse, we stayed at a Hilton, and I have to say that, while nice, it was kind of a letdown after the Westin.  (“Really?  Only one queen-size bed in my room?”)
(See Also:  Rich, I kind of want to be)

****

One of the cool/nerdy features of my room at the Westin was this little media panel on the desk that featured HDMI inputs for the TV, power outlets, and a USB power outlet.

****

Much like the man’s “niece” noticed me noticing her, throughout the course of the trip at the various dinners and “nightcap” sessions we had, I couldn’t help noticing that my VP and the Director were noticing that I consistently abstained from drinking.
They didn’t say anything, but I could see the wheels spinning, and I can’t help but wonder what they were thinking.
I’m not ashamed of being a recovering alcoholic, and it’s not something I hide, but I don’t exactly announce it either, but I do, on occasions such as that, find myself curious as to what people make of my teetotaler ways.

****

(While having lunch)
Boss:  Jon…what is your IQ?
Me:  I have no idea.
Boss:  It has to be way up there.  Like, the 160s, at least.
Me:  (Shrug)  I’ve never seen any kind of records or anything, so I have no clue.

While it’s not an actual measure of IQ, I know that, in most subjects, in standardized aptitude tests I pretty consistently scored at levels several grades higher than whatever grade I was in at the time.  I remember scoring at a 12th grade level in several subjects on some test I took when I was in 7th grade.
What does any of that mean?  I don’t know.  Nothing, I suppose, all things considered, but it’s really the only gauge I have to go by.
The only other thing that really comes to mind about my IQ was that there was some person who worked for the state who came to our house to assess my developmental progress a few times before I started kindergarten, and he was less than impressed by my cognitive abilities.
So…yeah.  Like I said, I have no idea.
If I had to guess – and, really, it doesn’t matter enough, if it matters at all, that I’m required to guess – I would place it lower than the 160s  Probably 140s, at best.
When I was in college, I took a Psychology class that had a lab component (to fulfill the lab requirement), and in one of our lab sessions we had to take a mock IQ test.
I forget the details of the experiment, but the whole point of it had something to do with designing a test that’s more or less guaranteed to provide the results you’re hoping to achieve.  In this case, the hoped-for results were scores that followed the standard bell curve, thus there was a built-in bias in the test to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that the scores would be distributed in such a fashion.
That did, in fact, end up being the case, with the one outlier being an IQ score that was far outside the expected range.
I don’t remember what my score was – and, again, the test’s methodology was flawed – but I was the outlier, and my score was much, much higher than anyone else’s.  I don’t remember what it was, however, and, once again, it wouldn’t have been a reliable indicator anyway.  I just remember being amused by the professor’s surprise that there was a score that fell so far outside of the predicted range.

****

The reason my IQ came up – it wasn’t just completely out of the blue – is that I was telling her about the time I had eye surgery when I was four (I was born with excess tissue on my eye that caused it to turn in towards my nose; the surgery was to remove that) and how I remembered being prepped for surgery and the snarky comments* the people in the room were making about the surgeon prior to his arrival.  They didn’t seem to realize that I understood their sarcasm.
That I remembered the events** – and understood the snarkiness – at such a young age, was what prompted the question.

****

I kind of want to write a semi-detailed review of The Dark Knight Rises, but I’d also like to take in another viewing of it before doing so.  I meant to over the past week, but never had the time.
I will say that, in short, I enjoyed it a great deal, and that it did manage to live up to expectations.
Better than The Dark Knight?  Well…certainly it was lacking the stellar performances of Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart, which can’t help but detract from the film slightly, but…I’m not sure.  Most people would probably say that no, it’s not, and personally I’m leaning in that direction, but I haven’t fully decided yet.
I will say this much:  I was very, very pleasantly surprised by Anne Hathaway.  I like her in general, but I wasn’t thrilled when she was cast as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, but, appropriately enough, given the nature of her character, she managed to steal the movie.  Excellent job, and one that actually makes up for the godawful Halle Berry movie, and the regrettable version portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer in Button’s piece of crap.

****

If nothing else, the Nolan movies have managed to really shift the public’s image of Batman away from the 1960s’ TV show in a pretty dramatic fashion and to a much greater extent than anything that came before, which, in my mind, would make them worthwhile even if they weren’t also excellent films.
That being said, prior to TDKR there was a teaser trailer for next year’s Superman movie, The Man of Steel.  From what little of it we actually got to see, there are elements that look promising, but I’m not especially hopeful for a Superman movie (or movie franchise) that can have a similar effect on the public’s conception of the character.
It just annoys me – Superman has been around for 75 years, has been adapted into every other form of media imaginable, is one of the most recognized and well-known fictional characters in history, and yet, despite that, all anyone can seem to focus on are those two hours from 1978.

****

…and I actually meant to post this nearly a week ago, so I guess I’ll finally get around to it now.

*They kept referring to him as “Dr. Savior,” which was a play on his similar-sounding last name, and his apparent – in their view, at least – God Complex.  This did not exactly fill me with confidence, despite the fact that, prior to going in, as my mother is so fond of telling and re-telling me, I had said, “Don’t cry, momma; Jesus won’t let anything bad happen to me.”

**I also remember the experience of being put under; everything around me seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the voices of the people talking sounded like a 78 being played at 45 speed, then everything just went black.  The next thing I remember is waking up in my hospital bed and having to pee, and being offered a bedpan, which I refused, and then my dad helped me walk to the bathroom.

Scarlett Sin

There was a recent announcement that the sequel to Sin City has a release date of October, 2013.
This is good news for me, as I've been eagerly anticipating the sequel for years now.
It's even better news for me, because it's titled A Dame To Kill For, as the centerpiece of the movie - which, like the original, will consist of adaptations of several Sin City stories - is based on the "yarn" of that same name, and Dame is my absolute favorite tale of that rough little town officially known as Basin City.
I've long maintained that in any adaptation of that particular yarn, the part of Ava Lord - the titular* Dame - should be played by Scarlett Johansson.
This is, to me, such an obvious fact that it requires no evidence, but even so, here is a Sin Citified image of Scarlett, and while it's immediately apparent that I'm no Frank Miller, it should be noted that, these days, neither is Frank Miller:

"What, are you dense?  Are you retarded or something?  Who the hell do you think I am?  I'm the goddamn Dame to Kill For."

*I said "titular."

Marathon Men

Thursday morning found me waking up a bit before 8 AM – which is considerably later than I normally get up on Thursdays – showering, dressing, and getting in the car to make my way to Tysons Corner.
Whenever I have to drive someplace unfamiliar, I always run into the same problem with my car’s nav system.  Basically, it presents me three options, but the view of the map is zoomed out so far that I end up picking some random route that has me going all over creation even though it looks like it’s pretty close to a straight shot.
In this case, I had mapped out a route earlier on my phone that involved taking 267 most of the way, getting on 7 for less than a mile, and then boom, I was there.
That’s what it looked like on the nav system in the car, but, in fact, I learned shortly after I got onto the Greenway, that it wanted me to take the Greenway to 28, and 28 to 50, which, just…no.
All along the way, after I failed to take the exit to 28, it kept hectoring me to take different exits, until I finally got to the one that the route on my phone had told me to take.
In any case, the trip took less time than I had anticipated, and I arrived about 2 hours before the marathon was set to start, and about a half an hour before the box office would open to allow me to pick up my pre-purchased ticket.  (I wasn’t able to use the kiosk to get my ticket because I had paid for it with my PayPal account rather than a credit card.)
At that point, a line for the marathon had already formed.
Eventually, after I wandered around for a while, the box office opened and I got in line to pick up my ticket.
There was a woman in front of me who did the thing that women always do when they’re in line in front of me:  continually turning and straining to see something in the distance behind me.
Seriously, if there’s something over there that’s so important that you have to keep looking at it, just get the hell out line and go over to it.
Worse, once it was her turn to pick up her ticket, she, naturally, had to turn something that should have been a simple and straightforward process into something that was needlessly complex.
Of course, that was my fault – I emit some sort of field that forces people in front of me in line to make things complicated.
(I have the worst super powers ever.)
It seems that sometime after she purchased her ticket, her credit card got stolen, so she couldn’t use that to confirm her purchase.  The power of the “Pretzel Wagon Effect,*” as I called it, rendered the woman working in the box office incapable of processing this information on the first, second, third, and fourth attempts by the woman to explain the situation, and ultimately she had to find someone else to come over and listen to the story three times.
Eventually, the other person was able to understand the situation, and asked, “Do you have your confirmation number?”  The woman said no.  The man said, “It should have been e-mailed to you when you bought the ticket.”  The woman dug around in her purse and pulled out a piece of paper.  “Is this it?”
It was, and that was all she needed.
Well played, Pretzel Wagon Effect; you added at least ten additional minutes of standing in line to my day.
Scott arrived shortly thereafter, and we got in the line – which had expanded considerably already – and were soon told how it was going to work:

1. We would be allowed into the theater
2. We would make our way to a table where we would be given a lanyard with a badge, a promotional comic book (which was just an extended ad for some hotel chain), a poster, and our choice of one set of the collector’s edition 3D glasses.

Badges?  We don't - oh, we DO need badges?

Once we got to the table, a woman working there said to me, “Oh, you’re going to be so disappointed.”
”What?” I asked, in a small voice, fearing the worst.  “Why?”
”We’re all out of Thor glasses.” (I was wearing a Thor T-shirt.)
Not really caring that much about the glasses – mostly because I don’t particularly care for 3D anyway – I shrugged, and went with the Hulk glasses.

Hulk smash puny third dimension!

We ended up getting fairly decent seats, which was surprising, given how many people got in ahead of us.
Sometime before the first movie started I went out to get some snacks, and, of course, the Pretzel Wagon Effect struck again, despite the fact that I had gotten in the line that contained no children and very few couples.
Of course, I wasn’t terribly concerned about missing anything anyway.  As I told my boss, in response to her text telling me to be sure to get up and move around a lot, I’d seen most of the movies multiple times already, so I was free, for example, to get up and pee whenever I felt like it.
The movies themselves were enjoyable, of course, despite how many times I’ve seen them.
In between each movie there was a brief intermission during which they had activities like trivia contests.  After the first one, when it became clear that A. the prizes weren’t all that great and B. they were going to give the majority of them to kids, I opted not to participate further.  (On one of the questions mine had been the first hand up, but the guy running it picked a kid instead, despite the fact that there was a large section of the audience yelling at him that I was first.)
The “events” actually got pretty annoying, and the crowd tired of them early on, until finally, during the last intermission, the guy just gave up and said he’d give free posters to anyone who wanted one and didn’t bother with the rest of it.
During the first intermission it became clear that one of us had to stay in the theater at all times to protect our seats.  There was a group of kids dressed up as the Avengers, and when they left during the break, some lady took one of their seats.  When they returned, she wouldn’t move.  “Captain America” appealed to the crowd to try to convince her to move, but she refused, despite the fact that everyone present was booing her.  Eventually the manager had to come in and get her to move.
I just can’t imagine what was going through her head to make her think that was a fight she was going to win.  I mean, you don’t steal a seat from the Avengers…

Assembled.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the crowd.  No one was ever particularly annoying when the movies were actually playing.  Even the annoying kids sitting next to me managed to STFU for the most part.
Because I wouldn’t be getting home until around the time I”d normally be getting up, I consumed truly massive amounts of caffeine to keep be going.  It didn’t keep me from falling asleep when I got home and went to bed, but it did prevent me from staying asleep for very long, and I ended up waking up after a scant four hours.
I went out into the world and did a Costco run, then came home and watched some recorded TV.  I had been toying with the notion of taking in a matinee of the movie so that I could see the 2D version, which I assume would be less blurry and dark, but I was just too wiped out, and ended up taking a couple of naps instead.
And that was my Ultimate Marvel Marathon experience.  Overall it was a good time, and I’m glad I went.

*So named for the episode of The Simpsons in which Marge opens a “Pretzel Wagon” franchise and begins selling pretzels – and only pretzels – from her car.  At one point, she’s selling pretzels at the nuclear plant, and Lenny stands in line indecisively trying to figure out what to order.  “I’ll have uhh….one…uhhh….”  Carl, standing behind him impatiently, tells him to hurry up.  Lenny finally decides to buy one pretzel.  At that point, Carl moves into position.  “Let’s see now, I’ll have…uhh….”

The Short And Long Of “Marvel’s The Avengers”

As part of the Ultimate Marvel Marathon – about which, more later – in fact, the ultimate part of the marathon, Scott and I caught the midnight premiere of Marvel’s The Avengers.
At a little after 2:30 AM, when the movie let out, and I was thinking about how I would just be getting home at a time when, on a normal Friday, I’d be getting up to start my day, I posted a quick, two word review of the movie to Facebook:

Holy. Shit.

Here I will expand on that with my mostly spoiler-free thoughts on the movie.
I will admit that, going into the movie, I had rather high expectations, based on the general quality and entertainment value of the Marvel movies that preceded and informed it, and the fact that the movie was helmed by Joss Whedon.
In recent years, few people have contributed more to geek culture than Whedon.  His body of work includes such notable efforts as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dollhouse, and work in the actual comic book medium in which the Avengers were first assembled, and seemed to me to be reason enough to expect him to do well with the task of bring the Avengers to the big screen.
Having read much of his work in comics, and knowing that he is, himself a comic book geek didn’t hurt my expectations either.
Additionally, the notion of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark delivering the snappy and snarky dialogue that is a Whedon trademark seemed to be very much a Peanut Butter plus Chocolate situation.
Despite my already high expectations, however, Avengers managed to completely exceed what I was expecting by a very wide margin.
Which isn’t to say I had no complaints at all – I did, and will list them shortly – but the generally fantastic execution more than made up for them.
As an aside, the movie has sparked a lot of controversy within the comic fan community due to the mistreatment of the legendary Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Avengers comic and of most of the characters appearing in the movie, at the hands of Marvel – and, more largely, the mistreatment of creators by the comic book industry as a whole – and I certainly understand those fans and pros who find the movie troubling at best.  However, personally, and you can make your own decisions as to what this says about me as a fan and a human being, while I agree wholeheartedly that the behavior of Marvel (and DC) in this regard (and with far too many examples to count) has been nothing less than execrable, it just wasn’t enough to keep me away or to sully my enjoyment of the movie.
In any case, among the key elements that made the movie such a success, aside from the phenomenal effects, fight choreography, and strong performances, was the fact that it tied together elements from the five standalone movies that preceded it – with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson as the unifying threads – so capably and that, relatedly, despite the many divergences from the multitude of source material in the comics themselves, it actually felt like an Avengers comic that was translated directly from comic to screen in a way that even X-Men and X2, despite their own strengths as comic book movies, just never managed.
Watching the movie unfold, I could imagine this story being told in individual four-color panels over the course of several issues of an Avengers comic.
This is where Whedon’s own history as a comic geek paid off.  He knows the medium.  He knows the storytelling flow.  He knows the tropes, and while he often subverted them and put his own twist on them – as any talented comic book writer would do – he demonstrated the utmost respect for them, and in many cases delivered them just exactly as they are, with neither spin nor commentary, and demonstrated why they have become tropes.
The most notable example of this was the standard, “When super heroes meet for the first time, they always end up fighting each other.”
Did that happen?  Of course.  Was it everything that any fanboy or fangirl could ever hope for?  Oh yes.  Holy shit, yes.
Beyond that, however, what really sold it as a comic book story – and, more specifically, a super hero team comic book story – were the scenes in which the individual members were pulled into the larger narrative.
As much as I’ve been known to rail against Chris Claremont on this space, mocking his stilted, unnaturally idiosyncratic dialogue and his continual trips back to the same dried-up well, I freely admit that the man is a master of comic book storytelling and would never deny that he’s earned his status as a legendary figure in comics (Hello?  The Dark Phoenix Saga, anyone?), and one of his greatest strengths over the years has been to seamlessly tie in events from other parts of whatever comic book universe he’s working in and present nice little scenes that could easily appear in another writer’s book as a means of pulling the required characters into the story at hand.
So it was in that context, as I watched the little scene of domestic bliss between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts – which could have easily been part of an Iron Man sequel – early in the movie, I thought, in the best way possible, “My god, this is positively Claremontian.”
It was that approach to telling the story that helped to keep the movie from becoming a confused mess the way that some movies featuring a large cast so often do.
The other obvious comic book influence, of course, was the King himself, as the story burst forth with all of the dynamism and cosmic scale of a Kirby story.  Interestingly enough, it had more than a little of the flavor of Kirby’s Fourth World work for Marvel’s Dynamic Competition.
I was also pleased to see that while Whedon clearly cribbed from Marvel’s Ultimate line – a line of comics featuring alternate reality versions of Marvel characters – as have all of the movies that are components of Avengers, he avoided some of the more over-the-top and extreme scenes favored by Mark Millar, because I have to say that I’m just as glad that we didn’t have to see the Hulk eating people* as I was that we weren’t treated to the original Avengers story that featured the Hulk hiding out in a circus disguised as an elephant-juggling robot clown.
I really want to avoid spoilers, so I’ll start wrapping things up here and say that one of the things that has made the post-X-Men comic movies that have been part of what I call the Comic Geek’s Cinematic Golden Age so satisfying to the fans has been the fact that despite frequently straying very far from the source material, the most successful and well-received movies have managed to keep a certain level of respect for the material – and for the fans – at the forefront.  With Avengers, Whedon takes it to another level, with respect not only for the stories and the characters, but also for the techniques used in telling those stories and developing those characters.

Complaints:
I have no particular feelings** about Hank Pym, who was one of the founding members of the Avengers in the comics, and I recognize that a character whose primary ability, in his Ant-Man persona, is to shrink to the size of an ant and communicate with ants would make him an easy target for ridicule, and someone who wouldn’t fit in well in the Marvel Movieverse, but as a founding member, I would have liked to have seen him included.  Honestly, if they had focused on one of his other costumed identities, Giant-Man, whose name speaks to his abilities, he would have fit in just fine. (Hank changed things up a lot.  Sometimes he’d go the Ant-Man route, sometimes the Giant-Man route.  And he was also Yellowjacket.  And Goliath.  And…well, just read this.)
Similarly, Janet Van Dyne, the winsome Wasp, a woman who can shrink down to the size of an insect, grow wings, and zap people with a bioelectric sting, would seem kind of silly in the movies, but she, too, was a founding member, and is a character who has, in my estimation, been treated rather shabbily in the comics.  (See footnote on Hank Pym as just one example, and the linked article above for more.)  It was a shame to see that shabby treatment continue; one of my favorite eras of the Avengers comics was when Wasp was in charge.
Just as comic books have their tropes and clichés, so too do comic book movies.  Most notably the fact that no comic book movie super hero can keep his or her mask on for more than five minutes.  Avengers was no exception.
Speaking of masks, and, more generally, costumes, I really did not like the redesign of Captain America’s costume in this movie.  At all.  I was less bothered by the changes to Thor’s costume, but I didn’t care for those changes, either.

Stray Thoughts:
I don’t know if I should pleased with Whedon or angry with him, but he actually made me kind of like Hawkeye.
It’s a shame that DC will never be able to get its movie strategy lined up well enough to give us a Justice League movie.  Even if they started developing a strategy right now, it would still be years before we saw the end result.
Biggest surprise for me?  I actually liked Mark Ruffalo as Brue Banner.
I think I can safely say that Scarlett Johannson is somewhat attractive.
There were a lot of Easter Eggs for the fans, which is always appreciated.
I tend to hate “comic relief,” but one of the strengths of the Marvel movies (setting aside Kat Dennings in Thor, who didn’t bother me as much as I thought she would) has been that they find a way to insert the right amount of humor without making it seem inorganic or restricting one two character to merely filling the role of comic relief, and not only does it not detract from the emotional resonance of the story, it adds to it.  Whedon, of course, is a master of this.

Profanity-Laden Stray Thoughts:
Fucking Quinjets!
The motherfucking Helicarrier! (Fortunately/unfortunately, Nick Fury didn’t say, “I have had it with these motherfucking super villains on this motherfucking helicarrier!”)
Holy shitballs, the motherfucking post-credits scene!

*I will admit that within the context of The Ultimates, the idea was kind of entertaining.  Betty Ross being turned on by it, however, was disturbing in any context.

**Except for the part about beating his wife.  That I do have strong feelings about, or more specifically, against.  Not that I’m opposed to it being a topic for exploration in a storyline, but if one considers it a defining characteristic of the character – and I do – it naturally leads to strong negative feelings about the character.  Even before the first presentation of physical abuse in the comics, Hank was a sexist, controlling, patriarchal jerkwad, which is, surprisingly, pretty much the only super hero name he never went by.  In any case, my point is that, conceptually, I don’t have a problem with the idea of Hank Pym as a character (that is, a character who has the power to change his size).

Quick Bits Of Randomness

(At a meeting)
Project Manager:  She’s kind of a Jack-of-All-Trades.   Well, I guess I should say Jackie-of-All-Trades.
Me:  Just so long as she isn’t a Jackée-of-All-Trades – I don’t think the position really calls for that level of sassiness.
All:  [Crickets]

*Sigh*  Nobody gets me.

****

Every so often I think to myself, “You should probably try to stop hating everyone so much.  It doesn’t do any good, and it’s probably not healthy.”
Then I end up having to drive to work in the rain, and as I see people panicking as though the Zombie Apocalypse has broken out, it’s like the Emperor is in the car with me saying, “Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you”

****

Boss:  Sarcasm isn’t the way to deal with conflict.
Me:  Sure it is.
Boss:  …okay, it’s our way, but…

****

Thursday will find me and Scott sitting in a theater from 11:30 AM until sometime in the wee hours on Friday morning as we enjoy the Ultimate Marvel Marathon.
…
*Ahem*
NERDS!!!

****

I have ideas.
A lot of ideas. 
Far too many ideas.
If there’s one thing I don’t lack, it’s ideas.
What I do lack, however, is the willingness and/or ability to do anything with these ideas.
I’ve come to think of myself as an Idea Graveyard, and I find myself, like the voices in the head of Ed O’Neil in Wayne’s World 2, wondering, “Why do they come to me to die?  Why do they come to me to die?”

****

Of the assorted animals that seem drawn to my yard for no apparent reason, the rabbits are pretty much the only ones that haven’t annoyed me.
I mean, I don’t grow any vegetables or anything, so, Watership Down aside, who could have anything against rabbits?
Except that their presence also seems to draw the attention of children who will run around in my yard attempting to catch said rabbits, and drawing me inexorably towards the day when I open my door and yell, “Hey!  You kids!  Get off my lawn!”

****

Last week there was a “Health and Wellness Fair” at work.  I hadn’t intended to go to it, but at one point my boss – who is on the Health and Wellness Committee and was working one of the tables – texted me and asked me if I wanted to get my blood pressure, BMI, and body fat checked out.
As I had an informally-scheduled discussion with someone about metrics coming up in the next few minutes – a discussion I wanted to avoid because metrics –  I decided that there was nothing I would like more, and so I headed down for it.
Unsurprisingly, my blood pressure was fine.
However, I got conflicting information from the BMI and body fat results.  According to my BMI, I’m overweight, but my body fat percentage – about 19% – put me in the “Good” range.
According to the BMI chart, my ideal weight would be around 120 pounds.
…
Currently, I weigh somewhere around 165 pounds. 
I have a 29 inch waist.
Because I’m short, that makes it exceedingly difficult to find pants that fit properly – when you’re this short, you’re supposed to have a much wider waist, apparently.  I can’t even find a belt that’s designed for anything smaller than a 32 inch waist.
Years ago, I weighed around 140 pounds – which would put me on the high end of the optimal BMI range – and I had a 27 inch waist.
I think I’m going to pay more attention to what the body fat percentage says than what the BMI says, at least if I ever want to wear clothes…

Assembled

The Black Widow from the trailer for the "Avengers" movie.

Hacking My Own Brain And Random Departments

The other day, Friday by Rebecca Black (no link provided because I’m not that cruel) popped into Scott’s head, and, because that’s how the sickness works, he tried to pass it along to me via IM.
However, with considerable effort – I commented that I thought I’d burned over a thousand calories from the act of concentration – I managed to prevent it from infecting me.
I accomplished it by voluntarily getting the song Like a Stone by Audioslave stuck in my head:



The reason that this worked is that, while I kind of like the song, I don’t really know it that well, and, while I hate Friday, I do, unfortunately, know it well.
This was the key to keeping young Miss Black out of my head, as I know that, when presented an option, my brain will always go with the song I don’t know very well, as I tend to find it more irritating to have a song – even one I that I like – that I don’t know playing over and over again in my head, even when the alternative is much, much more annoying.
Scott described it as “hacking my own brain.”  I pointed out that it’s just a matter of having learned a few tricks in the nearly four decades that I’ve spent living with the thing.

A New (Old) Department Department:
After more than a year after mentioning that it was coming, and then never officially talking about it again, we recently had a reorg at work.  Because they decided that the employee opinion survey-identified goal of improved communication is something that they’re going to work on for what remains of the year – and also because I’m reasonably certain they had no idea what they were doing – our managers were provided with virtually no details about what was coming beyond a vague guess as to when.
Naturally, the rumors started swirling, because, as much as executives hate to have rumors circulating, it never occurs to them that there’s a very effective method for stopping the rumors before they start.  (Hint:  It’s not keeping everything top secret and flat-out refusing to answer direct questions.)
For a while it seemed as though some major changes were in store for me – though I was assured that my neck wasn’t on the chopping block – such as being moved to a completely different department.  This was a bummer, as it meant that I’d be losing out on having the great boss I’ve had for over a year and a half.
However, at the last minute, those plans changed, and the end result is that not much of anything is changing for me.  Same job, same boss, but she’ll have a different boss, and our team is undergoing yet another name change.
I did, however, lose some team members – who performed an entirely different function from whatever the hell it is that I do – as they got moved to a different manager, and three entirely new (to us) people are joining the team, presumably to the same thing that I do, whatever the hell that may be.
In the announcement that went out, the names of the five people who will now be reporting to my boss were called out, and while it wasn’t an alphabetical listing of names, there did seem to be some kind of order in how the names were listed, which made me take note of the fact that my name was listed dead last.
I copied that bit out of the announcement and e-mailed it to my boss – who was on vacation – with the subject line “Well, at least I know my place…” and said, “Whoo!  I’m Number 5!  I’m Number 5!”  (I also told her that I was glad that she was still the boss.)
She replied that maybe “5 is the new 1.”
Like I said, I’m glad she’s still the boss…
Ultimately I can’t complain too much, as this is still much better than some of the rumored changes, and while my neck was, apparently, never in any danger, there were a lot of other necks that ended up on the chopping block.

The Key Takeaway Department:
(In briefly explaining the history of the Java programming language to someone much, much younger than I am at work, I realize that I’m talking about things that happened when she was still in grade school.)
Me:  …anyway, the key takeaway from all of this is that I’m old.

Life Expectations Department:
Some things I – perhaps foolishly – expected to see in my lifetime:
Humanoid household robots
Off-world colonies
Cold fusion
The discovery of extraterrestrial life

Something I never expected to see in my life:
A Captain America movie that’s even halfway decent

The jury is still out on some of those expectations, but today I learned that I was wrong about the Captain America movie.  Not just wrong:  dead wrong.  Captain America:  The First Avenger is excellent.  I couldn’t have – and didn’t – hoped for a better Cap movie.

Getting Things Done

It took several hours, and it feels like more of an accomplishment than it really ought to, but I’ve finally managed to sit through all of the recorded TV that had piled up on my DVR.
Who says I don’t get things done?
Seriously, I want to know who’s been spreading these lies about me.
Yesterday found me out in the world earlier than usual, as I was off to a Green Home Buying Seminar for the NOVA Green Team.
The seminar was held next door to the comic shop, so after it was over I popped in to pick up this week’s comics.
Being the first Saturday in May, that meant it was Free Comic Book Day. Everyone was allowed to take five comics from the available freebies. There wasn’t much there that interested me, so I grabbed one comic for myself – the “zero” issue of Blackest Night, the latest “event” being published by DC – one that I thought Scott might be interested, and three kids comics for Scott’s girls.
After that I didn’t really have time to do my grocery shopping, as I was meeting Scott and Stacy at 1:30 to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the movie. I liked it, for the most part, despite the presence of Gambit, who may very well be my least favorite comic book character ever. God, I hate him so very, very much.
I know a lot of people didn’t like the handling of Deadpool in the movie, but he’s never been a character that I cared about one way or the other, so while I could see that perspective, I didn’t share it.
But yeah, it was pretty good. Nothing spectacular, and while nowhere near the level of the really good comic book movies of the past few years, it was well above the level of the worst (which are themselves largely better than the comic book movies of the more distant past).
I’d probably rank it somewhere around X-Men 2, which is fitting, given how much it ties in with that movie.
After that it was off to Manassas, as I’d agreed to bring my chainsaw down to help trim a large tree in front of Scott and Stacy’s house. We were also going to watch the Riff Trax version of Twilight, which Scott and I had originally planned to watch this past Wednesday, but hadn’t, as Stacy had expressed an interest in seeing it.
After a trip to Costco to pick up a ladder and some food, and then eating some of the food, we got to work on trimming the branches. The end result of the trimming looked, to put it charitably, like crap, so ultimately the decision was made to remove it entirely.
Unfortunately by that time we’d pretty well run down the chainsaw’s battery, so it wasn’t up to the task of cutting it down, and, while I’d thought about doing so, I hadn’t brought a spare battery or the charger along.
By that time we decided to call it a day it was fairly late, and, covered with pine needles, I was feeling grungy, tired, and I-just-want-to-go-home-y, I decided that we’ll hold Riff Trax night at their house this Wednesday and I’ll bring along a spare battery and the charger and we’ll finish what we started.
Seriously, at least some times I do get things done, even if it takes an extra few days. Who is this vicious rumor-monger perpetrating these falsehoods?
In any case, I went out and did my grocery shopping this morning, and also stopped at Home Depot to pick up a regular supply line for my toilet and installed it when I got home, so now I’m done with that flood stop nonsense.
And that pretty much brings us up to date.

It's Important To Be Akuret (See What I Did There? No? Oh.)

It seems to be around 7 that the tiredness starts to creep in.
Apparently being awake for more than 12 hours is too much effort.
Of course I can’t go to sleep that early – not anymore, anyway – so I have to find a way to stay awake for at least a few more hours, and in doing so I seem to shake the tiredness off just in time to go to bed and toss and turn before finally falling asleep.
Fun stuff.
Not much of note has been happening. It’s pretty much just been work, come home, get sleepy, stay awake, go to bed, toss and turn, etc.
Following on the heels of my entry about fact-checking, I encountered a post on Wired blogs about the continuing trend of comic book movies that was just rife with errors, illustrating my point about even more perfectly than the review that inspired the entry.
The worst part was that they were mistakes that didn’t have to be made, as they were details, or more accurately, attempts at details that didn’t need to be included.
For example, in discussing the Frank Miller-directed adaptation of The Spirit, he made a reference to the “fact” that Miller had cast an actress who had appeared in the big screen adaptation of Miller’s Sin City. This was an unnecessary detail.
Oh, and it was wrong; he stated that Eva Mendes was the actress in question. Eva Mendes who appeared in Sin City as Miss Not Appearing in this Film.
There was no reason to make this mistake, as there was no reason to mention that someone who was in Sin City will be appearing in The Spirit.
(He was half right, though; Jaime King, who played Goldie/Wendy in Sin City, is appearing in The Spirit.)
Speaking of Miller, the author of the blog post also went on to mention that another of Miller’s works – Hard Boiled – is currently in development, and he correctly stated that Hard Boiled was published in 2000.
Of course, he only “correctly” stated that if you allow a margin of error of plus or minus ten years, as Hard Boiled was actually published in 1990.
Those are just a few of the many errors contained in the post, and while it may seem nit-picky, if I’m spotting that many errors in what he writes about properties and projects that I’m familiar with, how can I trust anything he writes about properties and projects that I’m not?
Here’s the thing. I’m not a journalist. I don’t make any money off of this blog, so I’m not really under any sort of obligation to provide accurate information here. The purpose of this blog, ultimately, is just for me to ramble on about whatever I damn well please, so I don’t owe anyone anything. If I want to say “Citizen Kane was the best movie Stanley Kubrick ever directed,” no one really has legitimate grounds to complain, because I’m just some unpaid jerk-off writing whatever he feels like writing and who doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Beyond that, this isn’t a film history blog or, really, any sort of special purpose blog, so there’s no reason to think that the promise of any kind of accuracy is even implied.
And yet, when I’m writing an entry, I pretty much always have Wikipedia and IMDb open in browser tabs to that I can verify that any claims I make that can be verified are correct. How hard can it be to do that when you’re getting paid to write something and you do have a responsibility to be accurate?
I don’t really mean to harp on this, but I’m sort of at a loss for anything to write about, and it was just funny that I stumbled across the post so soon after writing an entry about exactly that sort of problem.
On a less preachy and serious note, I’ve been neglecting to share one of the more clever things I’ve said of late, so I will rectify that oversight now.
Last week one of my conference calls, the person I was talking to said, “I guess I’m just a nerd at heart.”
In response, I said, “I’m a nerd at skin.”

Hellboy? Hell Yeah!

I’d like to say that I was extremely productive and that I accomplished a lot today.
However, clearly I wouldn’t like it enough to have actually been extremely productive and accomplished enough so that I could legitimately say that I had.
Instead I got up a bit before 10, sat around for a while, showered, dressed, headed over to the comic shop – new comics came out on Thursday this week because of the holiday, but I was too lazy to stop by there before today – had lunch, went to Target and bought a few things, then came home and took a nap.
Among the things I bought at Target was the latest Futurama DVD, The Beast With a Billion Backs, which I watched after I got up from my nap.
It was better than Bender’s Big Score, but it still seemed a bit off, and didn’t have as many laughs as a standard episode of the series would have had.
Still, there was one particular scene that was completely awesome and which made up for all of the other areas in which it was lacking.
Speaking of awesomeness, I went to see Hellboy II last night with Scott and Stacy and a bunch of other people I’m too lazy to list and I enjoyed the…err…hell out of it.
Not really going to post a review of it, other than, as already mentioned, to note that it was awesome, and also to say that I never thought I would have enjoyed something that included a Barry Manilow song as a rather central element, and yet I did.
I will say, though, that while the movie was near-perfection, I do have three complaints. It included one of my favorite supporting characters, Johann Krauss, a German scientist accidentally converted into a swirling mist of ectoplasmic vapor – voiced, oddly enough, by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, who did a decent job, particularly for Johann as presented in the movie – but it did not include my absolute favorite supporting character, Roger, the pantsless homunculus.
Also not featured: pulp hero Lobster Johnson. This is a shame, as there was a perfect opportunity in the movie to give audience at least a fleeting glimpse of the character.
My final complaint? No cybernetic Nazi gorillas.
These are, of course, mere quibbles, and I have absolutely nothing in the way of real complaints about the movie (other than that it annoyed me to have to wait four damn years for it to come out).
So yeah; I liked it. It had the requisite amounts of humor, action, and creepiness that should accompany any Hellboy story.
I should mention that a year or two before Hellboy hit the comics scene, I’d come up with an idea that was quite similar to the high concept behind Hellboy.
For the uninitiated, Hellboy is a demon who was brought to Earth through the machinations of a group of Nazi occultists during World War II. However, the ritual that summoned him was disrupted by Allied soldiers led by a paranormal researcher, and the demon, who was just a child, was adopted by the US military and raised by the paranormal researcher, eventually growing to become the world’s foremost paranormal investigator, who rejected his original destiny, which was to destroy the world.
My idea didn’t involve Nazis, but had a similar notion in that it involved the redemption of a demon. Basically, a demon takes possession of a child, and a priest is called in to exorcise it. In hearing the message of the Gospels, the demon, against all conventional wisdom and theology, becomes converted, and vows to join with the priest in the fight against the forces of darkness of which it was once part.
Of course, it was never much more than the germ of an idea, and likely wouldn’t have turned out to be anywhere near as entertaining as Hellboy even if I hadn’t been too lazy to actually do anything with the idea.
Up next as far as movie-going is The Dark Knight, on Friday, which we’ll be seeing in IMAX. After that, I can’t think of anything else that’s coming out that I’m interested in seeing.
When I got home from work yesterday, I watched the season finale of Reno 911! on my DVR, and then got to work on a picture for the upcoming remodel of the Heroic Portraits site. I went into obsessive mode, and got so caught up in it that I neglected to eat – as often happens – or to leave myself enough time to do so before leaving for the movie, so the hot dog and two boxes of candy I had at the theater had to fulfill that function.
When I got home, I pretty much immediately went back to working on the picture until the wee hours of the morning.
Of course – as also often happens – when I looked at the picture in the light of day I decided that it sucked and that I hated everything about it and that the whole thing had been a colossal waste of time.
Oh well.
In any case, if I should happen to stumble upon some motivation this weekend I’ll probably get to work on putting together a site that is at least a marginal improvement over the current version.
Maybe.

Not Really What I Wanted

So I went to see Wanted this morning.
When I got to the theater, I randomly bumped into someone I used to know at AOL. I asked him if he was still there, and he said that no, he works for Microsoft now, and will be moving to Redmond next week.
Deciding that a hot dog was as good a breakfast as any I was likely to get at the theater, I headed over to the condiment stand.
In my life I’ve gotten, and continue to get, a lot of, well, I don’t know what to call it. Flack? Grief? Ribbing?
Whatever you want to call it, people generally make some sort of comment on some of my idiosyncrasies. The most notable is how quiet I am, as that’s probably my most prominent characteristic. Apparently failing to flap your gums 24x7 makes you enough of a freak that people feel the need to say something about it, since, unlike me, they feel the need to be constantly talking. The most common form this takes is people sarcastically saying something like, “Jeez, Jon, will you shut up already? You never stop talking!”
Ha ha ha ha…fuck you.
But whatever. I’m used to it.
The other thing I’ve had people comment on a lot is the way I carry myself. I don’t hear this one too much anymore, as it’s easier to change your posture than it is to change some innate part of your personality, or at least that’s how it is for me.
Anyway, people used to comment on how I always looked “guilty,” as I would walk in a slouch, with my head hanging down, and my eyes on the ground.
These days I’m much closer to the shoulders back, chest out, head held high ideal than I am to my old slouching ways.
Because of this, as I walked toward the condiment stand, head held high looking directly in front of me, that I didn’t notice that someone had spilled a large drink on the floor right by the condiment stand, and so I stepped heedlessly into a huge sticky puddle of some kind of piss-yellow soft drink. At least, I hope it was a soft drink.
The younger, downward-looking Jon, would have been able to avoid the mess.
As it was a very early matinee there weren’t very many people in the theater. I’d say that, at most, there were fifteen people in total. This meant that anyone coming in could choose to sit almost anywhere.
Naturally, to very large, very loud people decided that the best seats in the house were directly behind me. At least they didn’t talk a lot, but they managed to eat their candy and popcorn loud enough to make the Big Bang feel like a pussy in comparison.
Now, for my spoilery review of the movie itself.
It was okay.
It had some absolutely bat shit crazy action sequences in it that have raised the bar for bat shit crazy action sequences, and which will be endlessly copied in every action movie that follows for years to come (and will be spoofed in all of the parody movies that are churned out over the next 25 years).
The other significant aspect of the movie was that Angelina Jolie, as always, was unbearably hot, infusing raw sexuality into even the most mundane activities in the way that only Angelina Jolie can.
As for the plot…well, the movie is “based” on the 2004 comic book mini-series of the same name written by Mark Millar and illustrated by J.G. Jones.
I say “based” on the comic, as it was “based” on in inasmuch as both stories shared some common characters and, at least initially, a similar premise, but it soon veers off into a wildly different direction.
Let’s compare and contrast the plot synopses for each:

Wanted (The Movie): Wesley Gibson is a loser. He has a shitty job and a boring life. His girlfriend is fucking his best friend, and while he knows this, he lacks the spine to stand up and do anything about it. In short, he is a pathetic nobody, an insignificant, unimportant face in the crowd. However, he soon discovers that the father he never knew has been murdered, and was, in fact, a super-assassin working for a secret society of assassins, and now Wesley has been tapped to take his father’s place, learning that he’s special in a way that he could have never imagined. Now, as part of The Fraternity, the Assassins of Fate, Wesley uses his new-found abilities to help provide balance to the world, “killing one to save thousands,” and working to find the man who killed his father.

Wanted (The Comic): Wesley Gibson is a loser. He has a shitty job and a boring life. His girlfriend is fucking his best friend, and while he knows this, he lacks the spine to stand up and do anything about it. In short, he is a pathetic nobody, an insignificant, unimportant face in the crowd. However, he soon discovers that the father he never knew has been murdered, and was, in fact, a super-villain, a member of a cadre of evil that secretly runs the world. He further learns that the world is nothing like he believed it to be, as it was once populated with colorful heroes and villains, and was like something straight out of comic books. However, one day the villains, tired of constantly being defeated by the heroes, banded together and, in an apocalyptic battle, killed every last hero on the planet and seized control of the world, turning it into a much darker place. Through various means, the villains who now rule the world alter the memories of the entire population so that no one remembers that there were once costumed heroes and villains or that the world had once been a much brighter, happier, more exciting and colorful place. Taking on his father’s position within The Fraternity, the villains who rule the world, Wesley learns that he’s free to do whatever the fuck he wants, killing, raping, and pillaging with impunity, engaging in the most vile and depraved activities imaginable, simply because he can.

So.
Notice anything different?
All of the comic book-related aspects were stripped away in the movie, and the characters were changed to make them more sympathetic – there’s nothing sympathetic about the characters in the comic – and the story, which, in its original form, was a biting commentary on every aspect of modern comic books, including the fans, the characters, the creators, and the publishers. Shorn of that context, Wanted the movie was nothing more than a standard action flick. Sure, it was a decent standard action flick, but it bore almost no resemblance to the material on which it was based.
If there was any “message” to the movie, it was one of empowerment, and taking control of your own life, and about how cool it is to be a bad ass. Sure, Wesley killed people, but he did it for a noble purpose, which made him at least somewhat admirable and very much unlike his comic book counterpart.
The best way to sum up the differences between the movie and the comic is to examine the movie’s final frame, and the last page of the comic.
In the final scene, we hear Wesley in a voice over talking about taking control of his own life, and as the camera zooms in on him, he turns to look at us and says, “What the fuck have you done lately?”
At the end of the comic, Wesley gives a speech to his companion, The Fox (based on Halle Berry in the comic, and played by Angelina in the movie) and says that what they’ve been doing is wrong, and that they should stop going around killing and raping as they please, and give control of the world back to the ordinary people who are like Wesley once was. The Fox considers his words and then says, “You’re just fucking with me here, right?” To which Wesley responds, “’course I’m fucking with you, bitch.”
Wesley then goes on to explain what pathetic assholes we all are as we live our ordinary, boring lives, with no idea of what the world is really like, and on the last page we are treated to this:


For those who don’t want to click on the image to read the text, it says, “This is my face while I’m fucking you in the ass.”

So, yeah. Just a little bit different.
Judged on its own merits, Wanted was a decent movie, and I enjoyed it. However, it totally missed the point of the comic, and by being tweaked to be more accessible to a general, non-comic fan audience, it lost a lot of its depth and its frankly disturbing appeal.
I will say that my one major complaint about the movie – apart from how it departed from the source material – is that, in the scenes in which we see just how pathetic Wesley’s life is, they stole my theme song!



I think the filmmakers were spying on me. And hey, even if she was a cheating whore, no matter how pathetic his life was, Wesley still had me beat in that he at least had a girlfriend.
I hadn’t had a chance to get to the comic shop before today –well, I had the chance but didn’t take it – so I decided to stop there on the way home from the movie. Naturally that’s when it decided to start raining. Hard.
Parking spot anywhere near the comic shop? What do you think?

Well, I Don't Know That "Incredible" Is The Right Word, But "The Acceptable Hulk" Doesn't Work As A Title

As Scott is away with Stacy this weekend to celebrate their anniversary – congratulations, by the way – we aren’t planning to see The Incredible Hulk until Tuesday evening.
Of course, I didn’t really want to wait, and figured that I probably wouldn’t mind seeing it twice, so I decided to see it by myself today.
While in many ways it may well be an example of inferior filmmaking in comparison to its predecessor Hulk – which it is not a sequel to, or connected to in any way – overall I’d say it’s a better movie.
The story is much faster-paced than the slow unfolding of the 2003 version, though it really can’t be described as “action-packed,” either, striking a balance between long, slow character and story development and frenetic action.
Overall I enjoyed it, as it does have some great action sequences, but still manages to explore some of the pathos of Bruce Banner’s Jekyll and Hyde existence.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into the movie’s plot until after Scott has had a chance to see it, but there are a few things I wanted to mention:

Homages:
The origin sequence – which was handled really well as a sort of opening montage – draws very strongly from The Incredible Hulk TV series, and there are a lot of other little references to the show, such as a cameo by Lou Ferrigno, and the inclusion of, as Stewie on Family Guy put it, “that sad walking away music.”
There was also a nice nod in the form of the name of a college student – a student journalist at that – who managed to record a bit of one of the showdowns between the Hulk and the Army on his cell phone.
The “cameo” by the late Bill Bixby was also clever, and a nice touch.
Before I get on to some of the other homages, though, I want to talk a little about source material in comic book movies.
The story of the Hulk as presented on the TV series is likely to be the one that the general population is most familiar with, and from that perspective it makes a lot of sense draw on that material to a certain extent. However, if you consider that by the time the series came along, Hulk had already existed in comic book form for almost twenty years, and it’s been more than twenty years since the series ended. Given how many comics Hulk has appeared in over the course of more than 40 years, it seems silly to focus too much attention on the TV show as a source for material, given that it is, comparatively, pretty scarce on material.
Also, there’s a very good chance that a significant percentage of the movie-going public doesn’t even know that there was a TV series, or at least never actually saw it.
(I remember being amazed as a kid to discover that there had been a Superman TV series in the 50s.)
Besides, once you start pulling from other sources like TV shows, you start making an adaptation of an adaptation, which can cause you to veer pretty far away from the character you’re ostensibly making a movie about in the first place.
I’m not the kind of hard-line “stick to the comics and only the comics” absolutist I once was, and I recognize that long-running characters who have been adapted into other media have a vast history and mythology that should be drawn from to create an “iconic” version for a big-budget movie, but I do think that when the question of “Where do I draw most of the material from?” comes up, the comics should win out, period.
(On the flip side, too often the mass-media adaptations start to have an impact on the comics themselves, and this is almost never a good thing. For example, Perry White should never, ever, under any fucking circumstances, say “Great shades of Elvis!” on the printed page. Ever.)
Reviews of the movie that I’d read before seeing it led me to believe that it was the case with The Incredible Hulk that it drew almost entirely from the TV show, but while the show’s influence was readily apparent, as noted above, I was thankful to find that such was not actually the case. (I think the reviewers who thought it was probably just didn’t recognize the comic book source material that it drew most heavily from.)
Of course, that could still be considered a negative, as much of the story did draw from the run of the comic scripted by Bruce Jones. People rave about that run, but I have to say that I wasn’t a fan. Definitely had its moments, but ultimately proved to have more promise than it was able to deliver, though I do think the elements that were used in the movie worked very well.
Beyond that, the movie also drew pretty heavily from The Ultimates, including one very specific scene from a story that was titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Hulk.”
I also saw some homages in the visual design of Hulk himself. In one sequence, he looked like a Herb Trimpe drawing brought to life, which is only fitting as, perhaps even more than that of Hulk’s co-creator Jack Kirby, Trimpe’s take on Hulk is one of the most iconic.
(Of course, for me, when I visualize a generic/iconic image of the Hulk, it’s Sal Buscema’s version that comes to mind.)
I also saw elements of Dale Keown and Mike Deodato.
(Personally, I would have liked to have seen a little Byrne and Dwyer, and of course Buscema, but that’s just me.)

Nitpicks:
I like William Hurt, and I think he did a fine job playing the character he was given (the same holds true for Sam Elliott in the 2003 version), but the problem is that the character who appeared in the movie and was called General Ross was not General Ross. Ross should always be presented as a puffed-out, bombastic blowhard, his face almost perpetuallly purple with rage as he spits and sputters. There is a reason his nickname is “Thunderbolt,” after all.
And The Abomination without a pair of Speedos? WTF? Also, why wasn’t he green?

Random Coolness:
The coolest aspect of Marvel starting their own film studio and making their own movies is that this allows them to make movies that cross over with each other. For example, there are a lot of references to Stark Industries in the movie, and a cameo by Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark. The plans are, of course, more ambitious than simple cameos, though, as eventually the movies about the individual heroes will serve as springboards for an Avengers movie that brings all of them together. Also, while the much-talked about Captain America cameo was cut from the movie, there were frequent – albeit subtle – references to Cap and his origin, and, while avoiding spoilers, I will say that we did get some tantalizing glimpses at what we can expect to see in a future Cap movie.

Okay, so I actually ended up writing more about the movie than I’d intended to, so I suppose I should move on to something else.
After leaving the theater I stopped at Best Buy, even though I had no particular reason to do so, and didn’t end up buying anything. It just seemed like I should so something while I was out in the world. After leaving Best Buy I stopped at Giant to pick up a few things, which, naturally, meant that, thanks to the time wasted at Best Buy, by the time I headed out to my car the promised thunderstorm had hit, and I was caught in the deluge.
More than the fact that I got completely soaking wet, and the panic of other motorists at the sight of OMG! FALLING WATER! meant that my drive home took about ten minutes longer than it should have, the thing that annoyed me most about the rain was that, after having been mowed on Wednesday, my grass, as a result of the oppressive heat and the brutal, unrelenting sun, had dried out quite nicely and was looking like it might not need to be mowed again for a long time to come. Now, with the rain, it’s perked right back up, and will no doubt need another mowing this week.
Stupid nature.

Iron Man: Short Review

Frickin' awesome.
I had only two complaints, one of which matches up with the only real quibble I saw in most of the reviews I read, namely that the musical score was pretty weak. Not horrible, certainly, but just lacking any real oomph.
Still, any movie that includes the song Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies is okay in my book.
The other complaint I have is specific to me - and to my bladder. There is a rather important scene that's included after the credits, which was very, very cool, but the credits were too goddamn long. My kidneys were already feeling like they were going to explode when there was still a half hour left to the movie, so I really didn't appreciate the additional wait.
Anyway, great movie, and quite possibly better than Spider-Man 2. I haven't decided on that yet.

Yes, My Evil Plan Is Working!

It isn’t often that my evil schemes come to fruition, which could actually be why I don’t often hatch any evil schemes, though I suppose it’s equally possible that causality could flow in the opposite direction.
But this “chicken or the egg” conundrum aside, the point is that today one of my rare evil schemes came to its even rarer fruition.
Of course, it was only “evil” inasmuch as Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which is to say that it really wasn’t very evil at all.
Despite the fact that the forecast earlier in the week had called for rain all weekend, it’s a gorgeous day. Currently sunny with a temperature of 86.
So, a bit before 2, I stopped by my boss’ office to give her an update of the status of some of the things I’ve been working on, and when I was done, just as I’d planned for her to, she said, “Well, it’s a nice day, so if you want to take off a little early…”
So I did.
And what am I doing with this extra time off, earned though my Machiavellian scheming?
The laundry.
Yes, my devious methods have truly borne glorious fruit!
Later tonight I’m going to see Iron Man with Scott and a bunch of other people. So far everything I’ve read about it has been overwhelmingly positive, many claiming that it’s the best super hero movie since Spider-Man 2, which is a very bold claim indeed.
(Spider-Man 2 just barely edges out Batman Begins in my best super hero rankings because a. that lousy week that Peter has at the start of the movie so perfectly captures the spirit of the character and b. there is a fight scene on the side of a frickin’ building, to say nothing of the fight on the elevated train.)
So that should be good.
In any case, I suppose I should get back to enjoying my ill-gotten gains.