Unrealized Potential

The other night Scott and I went to see the movie “Lucy.”
We did so, despite the fact that we object to the central premise of the movie, because it was from Luc Besson and featured Scarlett Johansson, and we thought that would make for an interesting combination.  Kind of like if you blended the action from “Taken” with the physics-bending visuals of “The Matrix,” but with Scarlett Johansson instead of Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves.
Besides, the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have firmly established that I greatly enjoy watching Scarlett Johansson kicking people’s asses.
Unfortunately, while there were some great scenes of batshit insane action, the movie proved disappointing.
As a friend on Facebook put it:

It's hard to think you could screw up "what if Scarlet Johansson became Dr. Manhattan?" but they managed it.

Yes.  Yes, they did.  And I don’t say that just because the movie didn’t feature Scarlett Johansson sharing Dr. Manhattan’s fashion sense, though that certainly would have helped.
(It couldn’t have hurt, anyway.)
But no, the issue was that central premise that Scott and I decided to grit our teeth and ignore.  The movie made that an impossible feat, however, as that premise was woven into virtually every scene.
That premise being that we humans only use 10% of our brain, that we all have lurking within us a vast, untapped potential.  After all, look at all we’ve accomplished with a mere 10%.  Just imagine what we could do, what sort of superhuman abilities we would have, if we could unleash even a few more percentage points of our potential?  What would happen if we used 100%?
That’s the question that the movie seeks to answer when Johansson, as the titular Lucy, is exposed to a drug that unlocks that potential.
The problem, however, is that the “10%” thing is just a myth, one that has been so thoroughly debunked that it’s almost inconceivable that anyone would still think that it’s a viable plot device.
Further, even if you don’t have much of an understanding of how the brain works, just stopping to think about it for a few minutes will lead you to conclude that it’s bullshit.
Let’s do that thinking right now, shall we?  All it takes is answering a simple question:  If you truly believe that humans only use 10% of their brain, would you mind if I shot you in the 90% you aren’t using?
Sure, a 10% chance of being permanently injured or even killed might not seem like great odds, but the fact remains that you probably aren’t willing to part with 90% of your brain.
In reality, we do use 100% of our brains, we just don’t use that much all the time.  We couldn’t; different areas of the brain perform different functions, some of which are in direct conflict with each other.
How could using your brain’s total capacity actually be a good thing anyway?  Think about how well your computer works when its CPU usage spikes up to 100%.  If you were using 100% of your brain, to continue with the computer metaphor, it would be even worse than that, because you would not only be using 100% of your processing power, you’d be using up 100% of your available storage and all of your RAM at the same time.  That doesn’t sound like a computer that’s performing better than a “normal” computer.
Of course, I don’t think that’s really the idea that the 10% believers are getting at anyway.  What they really seem to think is that there is either some greater efficiency that can be achieved within the brain, or that there is some as-yet unknown mechanism in the brain that can be accessed to unleash superhuman abilities.
However, there are still some underlying problems with that idea.  We may not have a complete understanding of the brain and how it works, but do know enough to know that there is no hidden mechanism.  And while there could be some improvements to efficiency, they’re not going to lead to being able to read minds or control gravity.  Mostly they’ll just improve your memory or your ability to maintain focus.  Which, you know, great.  I’m all for it.
But the idea that the brain is capable of so much more, that it has hidden godlike powers is just silly.
Let’s consider it from two perspectives.
If you’re a creationist of any stripe, this would indicate that whatever god or gods created humans completely overengineered the brain when making humans, then installed some sort of governor in it to throttle it back by 90%.  What for?  I mean, I could see building in some redundancy or whatever, but that approach just seems both bizarre and cruel.  And it’s also silly; the brain, as it’s used in its current state, is already capable of pretty amazing things.  Why not just build it as is, particularly if you’re not going to allow any of the other features to be turned on?  Of course, maybe I’d understand the designer’s thinking better if I used more of my brain’s potential.  Too bad the designer made sure that it’s impossible.
In evolutionary terms, this would indicate that at some point in its evolution, the brain overshot the mark, developed all of these amazing capabilities, and then turned off its access to them.  This does not align with any sort of evolutionary theory.
And sure, you can point to various people who have amazing mental abilities – though not quite so amazing as what Lucy displays – such as the guy who can draw a detailed picture of an entire city after flying over it in a helicopter once, or point to some of the experiments that have been done with stimulating different portions of the brain, or things like synesthesia.
But those abilities usually come at the cost of other abilities and functions of the brain.  They don’t really indicate that someone is using any more – or less – of his or her brain’s potential, just that the existing potential is being used differently.
Let’s get back to the movie itself for a moment.  At one point in her march towards 100% Lucy states that she no longer feels pain or fear.  That, to me, indicates that she’s actually using less of her brain’s potential.
Why, you may wonder, does this bother me so much?  After all, I’m perfectly capable of suspending my disbelief.  I regularly consume – and enjoy – stories about men, women, aliens, robots, and gods who can fly, control the weather, and perform all manner of impossible feats.  Why couldn’t I just let this particular trope slide, the way I do things like, “He was born on another planet and our yellow sun supercharges his cells,” or “He has a magic hammer,” or, to go back to the mention of Dr. Manhattan, “He was disintegrated in a nuclear reactor and then put himself back together, developing godlike abilities in the process,” or hell, even the “metagene” from the DCU or the “X gene” from Marvel?
I suppose it’s a combination of things.  For one, it’s just really overused.  It ranks up there with “all of humanity’s technological achievements are based on reverse-engineered alien technology.”  For another, it bleeds over into real-life in a way that some of those other things don’t.  I’m unlikely to meet someone who actually believes that someone being bitten by a radioactive spider will do anything other than lead to radiation poisoning, but there are plenty of people who honestly believe the 10% thing.
(The alien technology thing bothers me for similar reasons, though a real-world belief in that is somewhat less common, but the main reason it bothers me is because it’s insulting.  I’m not always humanity’s biggest fan, but I know better than to think that we’re incapable of coming up with brilliant ideas on our own.  People often suck, but they’re also pretty amazing.  Which is why I get so irritated when they suck.  But I digress.)
But that’s why it irritates me in general.  In the specific case of this movie, it was because of how thoroughly invested they were in this bogus idea.  If the 10% thing had just been a quick handwave explanation for her having these powers, I would have been able to just roll my eyes, and then go with it.  But they didn’t stop there.  At various points, we were informed of what percentage Lucy was at, and there were extended scenes featuring Morgan Freeman, as some sort of brain “expert,” giving a lecture about the 10% myth as though it were some sort of credible scientific theory.
While Freeman’s character does, when questioned, admit that it has no scientific basis – which, leads you to wonder why he’s being allowed to lecture on this in front of scientists and science students without being booed off the stage, and instead being greeted with rapt attention and fawning praise – he rattles off ideas about what powers a person might have upon achieving certain percentage points.  Which, of course, aligns exactly with the powers that Lucy develops.  Still, just using some weasel words about it being his hypothesis isn’t good enough, given that he has nothing on which to base this hypothesis.  As I said to Scott during one of the lecture scenes, “And if I reach 30% of the way up my ass, I can pull out this speculation about what kind of powers people would have if they used more of their brain's potential.”
Honestly, the lecture scenes – which would have been even more interminable if they weren’t intercut with action sequences in which Lucy displays the abilities Morgan Freeman pulls out of his ass – reminded me of something you might see in an anti-evolution Chick tract, minus the Bible-believing freshman who stands up and demolishes the misguided scientist’s theories.  Which is to say that it was a lecture that had only a superficial resemblance to reality and involved someone spotting off nonsense to a room full of credulous idiots.  It’s like setting up a strawman and then forgetting to knock him down.
With that said, there were elements of the movie that I enjoyed, with some really cool action sequences, and Johansson doing a great job of portraying the shift in Lucy’s personality as she continued developing her potential.
Honestly, unlike the human brain, the movie had a lot more potential that it could have tapped into.  Dropping the lecture scenes would have helped, though much of that was included for the purposes of including some sort of pseudo-intellectual ramblings about the meaning of life and the nature of humanity, which I’m sure seemed deep and meaningful to some people – particularly given that they were imbued with the gravitas that comes from being spoken by Morgan Freeman – but ultimately they had no substance.
And just coming up with a different explanation – anything* – for how Lucy developed her abilities would have made it the kind of movie that would let you say, “It was good for what it was.”  But you can’t really say that about it, because its attempt to be more than what it was proved to be an insurmountable obstacle.
Also, they really should have gone the Dr. Manhattan route when it came to Johansson’s wardrobe.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that Scott and I did a double feature that night, and “Lucy” ended up being the second movie of the night, following our viewing of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Pretty much any movie was going to suffer in comparison to that one, so my perception of the quality of “Lucy” was probably a bit skewed.
”Guardians,” unlike “Lucy,” is definitely a movie that is “good for what it is,” with “awesomely entertaining” being what it is.
It’s already making all of the money, and it deserves to, but if “all of the money” does not yet include yours, you need to make some changes in your life.  Use more than 10% of your brain and go see it.

*For example, they could have used a variant of the alien technology trope that I dislike and said that the drug was made from alien DNA, and it wouldn’t have bothered me if they had just stuck with that as the launching point to kick off a bunch of mind-bending action and didn’t dwell on it overmuch.

Is It Safe? Yes And No.

Here are a couple of pictures I've done.
The first is safe for work (and is "safe" in another way, in that it's the same old, tired, predictable kind of thing I always draw).
The second, which can be seen by clicking on the "Read More" link is decidedly NOT safe for work.
Here's the first one, a picture of Scarlett Johansson (of course) wearing a dark wig:

Yep, it's a drawing, all right.  How exciting.

The second is of Playboy Playmate (December, 1989) Petra Verkaik.
I have a particular fondness for Petra, not just because of her rather impressive endowments, but for some other intangible aspect that I can't quite put a name to.
I'm not alone in that regard - she's a very popular Playmate,being the most published woman in that magazine's history.
She is still active as a model via her Web site, and still looks amazing, especially given that she's nearly 50.
In fact, in the reference photo used for the drawing I did, she was at least in her early 40s.
So, click on "Read More" if you want to see a drawing I did of very naked lady with very large breasts.

Read more »

Twofer

Here are two drawings for the price* of one:

They have a "rocky" relationship!  ...I'll show myself out.

First up is a picture of Blok and the White Witch from the Legion of Super-Heroes.  One of the things I’ve always liked about LoSH has been the unlikely romances between Legionnaires, such as the one seen above between a very fragile carbon-based woman and an incredibly dense and nigh-indestructible silicon-based…well, not a man, exactly, but he is the male of his species.
In a similar vein LoSH had the unlikely pairing of Dawnstar with Wildfire, the latter of which is a bundle of sentient “anti-energy” who inhabits a vaguely human-shaped containment suit.
I guess that unlikely romances appeal to me, given that any romance, whether with someone composed of carbon, silicon, or anti-energy, seems increasingly unlikely for me...
In any case, I’m not entirely pleased with how the picture turned out – the Witch’s face is just…odd – but it’s not as though putting any more work into it would have really improved it, so there it is.
I’ve had the idea for the image in mind for a while, but I was finally prompted to draw it by a post on Legion World, a LoSH fan page on Facebook.
One of the things that makes me indescribably happy is that Legion World actually has an album dedicated to my artwork.  As difficult as it is to believe, I have fans! 
The album primarily consists of my Ladies of the Legion series, but on Friday the image from this post showed up on Legion World’s timeline with the caption “Legion World needs more Jon Maki!”
How could I do anything but oblige?
I do think, though, that "needs more Jon Maki" is a phrase that someone would use to activate or deactivate a doomsday device, given that it's the sort of thing you wouldn't expect anyone to say in a million years.

Yep, it's a picture, all right.

Then there’s this picture of Scarlett Johansson, which I did as kind of an experiment.
Overall, I’m pleased with it, but as is always the case, it didn’t quite turn out the way I saw it in my head.  Oh well.
(I won’t bore you with the details of what makes it an “experiment.”  Content yourself with knowing that in drawing it I deviated from my usual technique.)

Bonus Birthday Department:
Today is my brother Brad’s birthday.  He’s 50.  That…that just kind of blows my mind.  I remember when my dad turned 50.
Speaking of my dad, April 3rd would have been his 78th birthday.
On April 1st, my sister Kim turned 46.
And, of course, my 41st birthday was this past Saturday.
…
It wasn’t a terribly exciting day.  I spent most of it working on the Legion picture, then went out for a nice dinner with Scott, Stacy, the twins – who were so well-behaved in the restaurant that some other patron felt compelled to compliment Stacy on it before leaving – and Jamie and Casey.
Then I came home and went for a walk to work off some of the food I ate.  In particular, this:

I probably didn't actually walk long or far enough.

Then I sat around for a while, and did some more work on the picture.
Exciting stuff.
While we were waiting for the others to arrive, Jamie mentioned that’s she a bit behind on reading this blog.  I told her she wasn’t missing much, and then she, somewhat sheepishly, said that she and Scott had been discussing my blog and how most likely the two of them and my mom are probably the only people who actually read it.
I said that’s not true.  After all, my mom very rarely reads it these days…
As for the birthday gifts, I got a set of wrist weights from Jamie and Casey, and a card telling me that I was, in the short term, getting a whole lotta nothing from Scott and Stacy, as my gift had not yet been delivered.  At least that’s the story they went with…
While I was sitting around late that evening, I got a text from the (former) boss lady, who was finally getting around to responding to a text I sent her on Thursday, as she’s been extremely busy with the new gig.
So busy, I noted, that she seemed to have forgotten my birthday.  As she wasn’t making any references to it in her messages, I said, “My birthday today, btw.”
She responded, “I have it on my calendar.  Your card is sitting on my kitchen table and I am an asshole.”
I told her that I wasn’t going to disagree with her assessment.
I did actually take some time off from work in honor – or something – of my birthday, including today, but now my time is nearly up and I can guarantee that the next four days are not going to go by as rapidly as the past five did.  *Sigh*

*Yes, seeing my drawings is free, but even that price is probably too high.

Meh

*Yawn*

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."

All The Fuss

So this is the image of Scarlett Johansson that all the fuss was about:

I wanted to draw this because I liked the interplay of light and shadow and...nah, it was because boobs.

...yeah, I know; it probably wasn't worth the effort.  Still, there it is.

Never 3

Friday morning when I got up, I noticed that, as it occasionally does, the light next to one of the drives in my server was flashing.
Typically, if I log into the server, it doesn’t actually detect any issues with the drive, so I just reboot the server, it comes back up, the light stops flashing, and I’m good for some period of time before it happens again.
This time, however, was different.
The server actually did see a problem with the drive.  Deciding that, even though I’d woken up earlier than usual and had a little extra time before leaving for work, I would deal with it later, and I simply told the server to take the drive out of the pool.
When I got home and checked on it, I did a quick look through the data spread out across the remaining drives and determined that, based on the backup database error the server was reporting, the only data that had been stored on that particular drive was the archived backups of my other systems.  With the exception of my main system, Odin, and my tablet, Mother Box, not much changes on my other computer very often, and they aren’t especially critical anyway, so I could afford to lose those older backups.
Note that I don’t have the server’s drive mirroring turned on, which would make it duplicate data across all of the drives in the pool.  Mostly because I don’t want to end up losing half of my available storage, but also because I don’t really have anything on my servers that’s terribly irreplaceable.
Most of my personal photos are available in the cloud on Facebook, Google, and etc., and as for my drawings, well…let’s face it, the world wouldn’t really be all that much poorer for the loss of them.
Anyway, all I’d really be losing in that case are the original Photoshop files, as the finished jpegs are also out in the cloud, for the most part, which would be a pain, but nothing devastating to me or to anyone else.
In any case, it looked like my data was mostly intact.
Over the weekend I made the upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite 6.  In fact, I decided to take advantage of the Adobe Creative Cloud membership, which gives me the ability to pick and choose which CS applications (such as Photoshop) I want to install (via download), and the ability to spread out the (tremendous) cost of the suite across an annual set of monthly subscription charges.
(I also get 20 GB of cloud storage, and the cost of my membership includes upgrades to later versions – Adobe recently announced that they’re planning to release new versions annually.)
No longer having Photoshop CS5, I no longer had access to the “Recently Opened Files” associated with that version, so when I fired up CS6 and decided to get back to work on the picture I’d most recently been working on, I had to browse for it.
So I browsed.  And browsed.
And browsed.
…
While very little data had been lost by removing that drive from the server, it apparently had been canny enough to know exactly what file I would be looking for and ensured that it wouldn’t be available.
And, as mentioned, it wasn’t really a catastrophe, because, let’s face it, the world will keep turning even if it doesn’t have yet another drawing of Scarlett Johansson done by Jon to completely ignore or to look at with bored indifference.
(Note:  I was working on yet another drawing of Scarlett Johansson.)
However, it was annoying, as I’d put a lot of work into it, and was pretty pleased with how well it was turning out, given that the reference image was a crappy, dark, low-resolution screen capture.  (Turns out the reference image was also on that failed drive.  Well-played, Universe.  Well-played.)
Today I was looking at Odin, with its gargantuan case, and I thought about those fancy hot-swappable drive bays jutting out from the side…
So I set to work on pulling one of the drive bays out.  This proved more difficult than I’d anticipated.  I searched in vain for the manual for the case, did some googling, found a video of someone swapping a drive in the case, and set back to work on pulling one of them out.
Eventually, I found one that did, with some effort, slide out the same way the bay in the video had.
I looked at the cage that slid out of the bay into which I would place the drive, thought, “Hmm, there’s something in there.  Looks like an SSD.”
At that point, my heart stopped.
I had just yanked out my C: drive.
While my computer was running.
With the greatest speed I’ve ever managed to muster, I slid the drive back in.  Amazingly, the computer seemed none the worse for wear – perhaps I”d replaced it quickly enough for the system not to notice.
Then it made a sound like someone derezzing in the Tron movies, I got a BSOD, and the computer went into power save mode.
Son of a -
Sighing, and saying, “Of course I yanked out the C: drive,” I hit the power button and waited to see if it would boot up.
It would not.
After a frantic search, I finally found the manual for the case, and flipped to the section about hot-swapping drives.
It was then that I noticed that I had neglected to actually unlock the drive bays.  So not only had I pulled out the C: drive while the system was running, I had forced it out when it was locked in place.
Nice.
I unlocked the bays, slid the C: drive out and back in again, and booted up.
This time it worked, and my heart finally started beating again.
(Note that this wouldn’t have been utterly catastrophic – even if the drive had failed as a result, I could have simply put in a new one and restored my system from the backup on the server, because I did have an active, recent backup to work from.)
Once I confirmed that everything was working properly, I set to work on putting the failed server drives into one of the open bays, making a note to myself to never, ever pull out Drive Bay 3.
I slid the drive in.
Nothing happened.
I rebooted.  Still no sign of the new drive.
Eventually, looking through the manual for the motherboard and inspecting the configuration, I determined that none of the open bays is actually hooked up to anything, so I can plug in all the drives I want; the system is never going to notice.
Not feeling like dealing with cabling issues, I determined which bay contained my D: drive, and swapped that out and replaced it with the failed server drive.
Success!
Turns out that there was a lot more data on the drive than I’d thought, and I’m in the process of moving it back over to the remaining server drives.  I still need to pick up a replacement drive to get back to my previous storage capacity, but even with the missing 2 TB, I still have a lot of free space, and I’m actually thinking about buying a new server anyway, as they’re relatively inexpensive, and it’s honestly the easiest way to upgrade to the latest version of the Windows Home Server OS.
In any case, the main takeaway is that it’s never, ever Drive Bay 3, and that, soon enough, there will be yet another drawing of Scarlett Johansson by Jon for no one* to care about.

*Except Scott, of course.

Like I Said, "New Year, Same Jon"

Jon drew a picture of Scarlett Johansson?  What are the odds?

A picture of Scarlett Johansson?  The world's gone mad!

Okay, what actually is notable about this picture is how quickly I managed to churn it out, thanks to some new techniques I've been playing around.
Basically, rather than drawing/painting multiple layers of line art and color, I've taken to drawing and painting on fewer layers in black and white, then colorizing them.
I'm not 100% sold on the results, but it does take less time.
So there you go.

Assembled

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

When In Doubt, There's Always Scarlett Johansson

Last weekend I felt the need to draw something - which is hardly unusual - but I didn't have any particular image in mind, and none of the reference images I looked at proved especially inspiring.
Eventually, after giving up looking at other images, I came up with a new motto: When in doubt, there's always Scarlett Johansson.

So there you go.

Of course, it took me almost a week to finally get around to finish the picture, which puts me back where I was last weekend. Ah well.

Briefly Noted

Also worthy of mention:



Threshold has an equal fondness for Scarlett Johansson.

Now With A Title!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers - whether bad-ass or otherwise - out there, and especially to my mother.
Second of all, I haven't seen Iron Man 2 yet, as we're going to see it in IMAX on Wednesday, but as it is, I already have one quibble about the movie.
Namely, while Scarlett Johansson is undeniably hot in her Black Widow outfit - I mean, duh, it's freakin' Scarlett Johansson - I really think it would have been a better choice to go with latex as the material for the costume.
So, to make my case, I give you this:



'Nuff Said.

Even When I Succeed, I Fail

So this picture I did of Scarlett Johansson is pretty good, right?



I mean, I think it is, and we all know I'm not particularly inclined to be charitable towards my own work.
But even though it's a good picture, and in that respect, a success, it's still a failure, as it doesn't look at all the way I wanted it to look when I started working on it yesterday afternoon.
In all, I probably spent about 12 hours working on it, though much of that was in an effort to try to get it to look the way I wanted, though eventually I decided it was a lost cause and that I should devote my time to making it look as good as possible.
And this is the end result. Am I pleased with it? Sure, why not?
But I'm also kind of irritated with it.
Oh well.

I Can Haz Scarlett Johansson Clone?

(From an e-mail posted by PZ Myers on Pharyngula)

Hello dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

I would like inform you that Scarlett Johansson “actress” actually is a clone from original person Scarlett Galabekian last name, who has nothing with acting career, surname Galabekian, because of adoption happened in 1992. Clones was created illegally by using stolen biological material. Original person is very nice (not d**n sexy), most important - CHRISTIAN young lady! I'll tell you more, those clones (it's not only one) made in GERMANY - world leader manufacturer of humans clones, it is in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Mr. Helmut Kohl home town. You can not even imaging the scale of the cloning activity. But warning! Helmut Kohl clone staff strictly controlling all their clones (at least they trying) spreading around the world, they are very accurate with that, some of them are still NAZI type disciplined and mind controlled clones, so be careful get close with clones you will be controlled as well. Original person is not happy with those movies, images, video, rumors and etc. spreading on media in that way it would be really nice if we all will try slow down that ''actress'' career development, original Scarlett will really appreciated that. Please remember that original Scarlett Galabekian family did not authorize any activity with stolen biological materials, no matter what form it was created in it was and it is stolen. It all need to be delivered to authorize personals control in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Original Scarlett never was engaged, by the way!

Her close friend Serge G.

P.S. CONTROLLING ACTIVITY OF ANY CLONES IS US MILITARY OPERATION.

That's The Spirit

I have to say that I'm pretty damned pleased with how this picture of Scarlett Johansson turned out:



For the record, this is Scarlett as Silken Floss in The Spirit.
There was a scene in the movie in which, wearing this outfit, she spends a considerable amount of time leaning forward, making it virtually impossible to focus on whatever the hell else was going on at the time, and making me marvel at the structural integrity of the bra and its ability to withstand enormous stress.
In any case, a lot of the preemptive hatred for the movie revolved around Scarlett's character. In the comics, Silken Floss - I told you that most of the female characters had goofy names - is a nuclear physicist and an accomplished surgeon, but based on the trailers it seemed that she had been relegated, essentially, to the role of secretary.
That's not actually the case in the movie, as she's considerably more than a mere secretary, and as The Octopus goes on at length about his own ingeniuty and his remarkable breakthroughs in the field of genetics, Ms. Floss gives him a lot of significant looks that pretty clearly indicate that he's not giving credit where credit is actually due. (Okay, so she wasn't a nuclear physicist, but she was still brilliant.)
Personally, I would have preferred that Scarlett's character be much more like Candyfloss (Go on, check the link; there's pretty much no chance that you have any idea what I'm talking about.)
I started on the picture yesterday afternoon, but couldn't really build up enough motivation to actually work on it, and kept finding other things to do, until I finally started working on it in earnest late in the evening. By the time I started building up some serious momentum I noticed that it was after 2 AM.
After getting derailed by the need to sleep, I finally got back to work on it sometime this afternoon.
Anyway, beyond doing the laundry and watching some TV, working on the picture is pretty much what I did all day.

Getting Into The Spirit

Sometime around 2 AM on Wednesday morning I found myself half awake and wondering, “What’s that noise? And where is that breeze coming from?”
Driven by curiosity, I forced myself fully awake and discovered that my ceiling fan was on full blast.
This was puzzling enough on its own, but became even moreso as I fumbled in the dark in search of the remote. After all, if I turned it on – via the remote, which is the only method – I must have done so in my sleep, and given the difficulty I was having with finding the remote while fully awake I can’t help but be baffled at the thought that I was somehow more adept at finding and manipulating the remote while not actually conscious.
So I don’t what the hell was happening there.
Yesterday I headed down to Manassas to spend Christmas Eve at Scott and Stacy’s. I brought along the Riff Trax version of the movie Crossroads – the Britney Spears movie, not the Ralph Macchio one – as my way of repaying their hospitality with something dreadful.
And – apart from the various scenes featuring Britney prancing around in her underwear – it really was dreadful.
After that we watched Krull, as it’s been years since I last saw it, and, really, why not?
This morning found me on my way to Manassas once again for Christmas breakfast. While there, I got this from Scott and Stacy:



For the record, that’s Starfire.
I commented that at least this time around I don’t have to worry about Kathleen breaking Starfire’s fingers off the way she did with the Black Canary figure I got from them last year.
While I don’t have much Christmas spirit, and I was not visited by any spirits in the night – unless it was a spirit that turned on my ceiling fan, but that was a little too early on Christmas Eve morning to be a very well-timed visit – I did get some Christmas spirit in the form of seeing The Spirit this afternoon.
The earliest show was 2:15, and given that by 11:30 we’d finished the breakfast, everyone else there was eager to get into some sort of gameplay to pass the time. Because I didn’t want to suck the fun out of the room, which was rapidly filling with dog hair that was starting to overpower the generic Zyrtec I’d taken, and I had to give my family a call, I decided that I would head home and just meet them at the theater.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road yesterday or today, but driving still managed to be annoying, as the people who were on the road were uniformly driving well below the speed limit. I don’t know if they were all just being hyper-cautious for fear of being pulled over in some holiday sting operation, or it was just that the more reckless and aggressive drivers had decided to take a couple of days off, but either way it was irritating as hell.
Though I left for the theater with what I thought was plenty of time to spare, I didn’t get there until 2:00. I wasn’t expecting the theater to be as packed as it was – at least not that early in the day – and neither, apparently, was the theater management.
The people working there were overwhelmed, the ticket kiosks weren’t working, and between buying tickets and a drink and some candy I spent nearly 20 minutes standing in line.
When I got there, Scott and Casey were nowhere to be found. I thought about calling them to ask if they wanted me to just buy their tickets for them, but this thought didn’t occur to me until I was near the front of the ticket line, and the theater is a total dead zone for cell phone service.
I saw them come in while I was at the concession stand and met up with them while they were getting their snacks.
We ended up missing all of the previews and the first couple of minutes of the movie.
As for the movie itself, there’s been a lot of hate for it online for months now, as with The Day the Earth Stood Still, and as with that movie, once again, I don’t get it.
What the hell do you people want? I mean, seriously, The Spirit was a hell of a lot of fun. Sure, it looked a lot like Sin City, but personally I don’t view that as a bad thing.
Admittedly, in his comics work, for years Frank Miller has been showing signs of, to put it delicately, being bug fuck insane (The goddamn Batman, I’m looking at you…), but this movie had the right kind of Miller insanity.
I suppose that’s the problem with the haters; if you aren’t wired in such a way as to appreciate Miller’s sense of humor, then yeah, the movie is going to fall flat. But if that’s the case, what the hell are you going to see it for in the first place, or even bother reading about it and watching trailers?
I mean, there is no force on earth that could compel me to see Marley and Me – multiple showings of which were sold out today, by the way; when Scott mentioned that I said, “People are…well, you know what I think about people” – so I don’t see any point in agonizing over how awful it’s going to be and subjecting myself to the torment of watching clips or reading about it just so I have something to bitch about on some forum.
On the other hand, apparently a lot of the online outrage is a result of how much the movie differs from the source material. The Spirit is considered a classic, and its creator, Will Eisner, is a legendary comic book icon. In fact, one of the highest industry honors is the Eisner Award.
I can’t really speak to that, as my exposure to The Spirit on the printed page has been limited to seeing pages reprinted in articles about how great The Spirit is. I’ve meant to read more, but, well, I haven’t.
Beyond what I’ve read about The Spirit, my only other exposure has been the god-awful 1987 made for TV movie – which was undoubtedly a failed pilot – starring Sam “Flash Gordon” Jones in the title role.
So basically, this is what I know about The Spirit: it had a lot of femme fatale characters with goofy names who pranced around in skimpy outfits, the main character was a cop who died and somehow returned to life, one of his principal adversaries was someone called The Octopus, and he had a horrid, racist caricature of a kid sidekick named Ebony White.
As far as the movie goes when it comes to those elements, it’s check, check, check, check, and thank god, there was no Ebony White.
So…what’s to complain about?
But, if you don’t like it – even if you preemptively don’t like it – you don’t like it, and, so, whatever. Good for you. Storm every forum you can find and unload all the bile you need to.
I, however, enjoyed it immensely – as did Scott and Casey – and that’s just how it goes.
And for the record, Scarlett Johansson is positively inhuman in her hotness, and I wouldn’t mind having a photocopy of Eva Mendes’ perfect ass.
So yeah, I think it was a good directorial debut for Frank Miller, and the perfect vehicle for him, but I do hope that if he moves on to other projects he’ll move away from the Sin City style a little, as a little really does go a long way.
As a random aside, regarding that 1987 Spirit movie, I distinctly recall having difficulty setting up the VCR to record it. We had just gotten a satellite dish, which added another layer of complexity to setting the VCR to record, which was already complicated enough. In those days there was no such thing as on-screen programming. Setting the VCR to record at a specific time involved turning this array of weird little plastic dials into the correct position to set the time, date, and channel.
Anyway, that was my Christmas Eve/Christmas. I hope yours were at least as good.

Ummm....

It's no secret that I think Scarlett Johansson is one of the hottest - if not the hottest - women on the planet. She's so hot it's almost inhuman. In fact, she is my default response to any sort of anti-Semitic remark.
For example:

Raving Drunken Bigot: The Jews are responsible for every war that's ever happened!
Me: Even if that's true, and it isn't, Scarlett Johansson.
Raving Drunken Bigot: They killed Jesus!
Me: Again: Scarlett Johansson.

You can't counter that, or fault the logic. Every war that's ever happened? Dead messiah? Scarlett Johansson is totally worth it.
(My back-up response, should the need arise, is Natalie Portman.)
All that being said, this is beyond weird:

eBay bidding wars begin for Scarlett Johansson's used tissue

Now, if cloning were a more mature science, then I could possibly see the value, as I'm willing to bet that even a mucus-based clone of Scarlett Johansson would still be hotter than pretty much any ten random hot chicks you could name.

New And Exciting?

Hey Jon, looks like you're posting a new picture. Is it something new, unique, original, and challenging?
No? It's the same kind of crap you always post? Oh, okay.



(To be fair, I don't think that this picture of Scarlett Johansson is crap, and actually I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, but...well, I'd like to be able to offer you something different from the usual stuff I post, but it seems clear that just isn't going to happen. So while this is a decent picture, it's essentially the same decent picture I've been posting for who knows how long. But don't let my artistic and existential ennui spoil your enjoyment of it.)

Why So Sad, Scarlett?

Hey look, I did a picture:

I was drawn to this image (no pun intended) of Scarlett Johansson because I like how her expression and posture make it look like she's sulking, and if there's one thing I like, it's hot chicks who are kind of surly and ill-tempered.
(I also liked the dress, the way the sort of starkness of the image, the way the light is reflected in her hair. Oh, and besides that, it's Scarlett freakin' Johansson.)
Also, the source image was really low-res and I wanted to see what I could do with such a crappy quality file.
It's not really anything special, though I did try out a few different techniques with it.
Anyway, make of it what you will.

Oh I Wish...

If you look over to the right and scroll down past the archives you'll see a link to my Amazon Wish List.
Much of it consists of things that no one would ever buy for me, but some items are affordable.
Just in case you feel inclined to give a gift to the humble blogger who gives you the gift of joy so often...
Oh, and just because Danielle Panabaker, Scarlett Johansson, RLC, Carla Gugino, and a host of other lovely ladies aren't on the list, that doesn't mean I won't accept them as gifts, should you be in the position to provide them (Universe, I'm looking at you), or actually be them.