Spring Review #3: “Please Don’t Turn Down My Music”

Well, someone’s a genius.

Because from the moment I saw Tony Stark working away in his lab to Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized (!!!), from the moment he said to Gwyneth Paltrow (a girl I’m positive I went to school with, aren’t you?) “please don’t turn down my music”, I knew two things: one, that this movie was going to straight-up play me as much as any latter-day John Cusack vehicle has ever tried to…

…Only this time it was going to work, goddamnit!!!

And two: that thanks to its actors this movie was going to do what no superhero movie has so far managed to do — what very few superhero comics manage to do these days — which is the very essence of why anybody has ever read a superhero story at all, from 1938 to right this minute.

Impossible as it would seem, I was about to identify with the hero.

I was about to be just like the hero.

Iron Man?

I am Iron Man, motherfucker.

And thus begins my review of Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele. On an appropriate note, don’t you think?

So if you’re all uploaded, Jarvis — let’s fucking go.

Aaaaannnndd…first question!

Do you like the stupid stuff, or do you like the smart stuff?

Me, I like the smart stuff, but I don’t have any illusions about why that is. I like the smart stuff because it’s the easy stuff…maybe not easy to write, but sure as hell easy to like. Of course in real terms, all of this stuff is smart: it’s a lush record, and down at the part where you get the joint between turntable and microphone there’s a lot of carefully-hidden structure. All rapping is off-balance, falling forward while your feet catch up. Rapping is sports, action, poetry in motion, a controlled chaos…rapping is the fall arrested just in time, just before disaster, by the deus ex machina of the well-oiled musical breaks that you run up against, and the outgoing lyrical hook shot that almost seems like pure luck, pure grace, a sudden accidental fluency before the line drops out of sight.

It isn’t, though.

It’s all just part of the plan.

Which is basically what I like about the hip and the hop: the part where it all suddenly collides, and even a dummy like me can see the pattern that was there all along. You see, my tastes aren’t sufficiently elevated, to appreciate the stupid stuff as it should be appreciated. I’m only good once I put the glasses on.

It’s a failing, I know. I miss most of the poetry that way.

A sufficiently lushly musical record helps to clue me in, though, and as I said, this one is that one. Totally weirdly like listening to the White Album.

Or maybe more like London Calling?

Woudja believe…Venus And Mars?

Sorry about the needless reference to Get Smart. I’m actually not even joking, though. It sounds like every double-album ever made, and don’t be so quick to dismiss McCartney, he’s as formally playful as anyone and more than most, you just don’t see it under that ‘the cute one” garbage he always lays on with a trowel, and besides he doesn’t exactly boast about it. He’s actually having us all on, a bit. I think he’s having a laugh. Sometimes he actually sings about nothing, except it’s all salted with these weird made-up characters and situations and feelings and ludicrous crap…but is any of it any more ludicrous than any other ludicrous crap, that any pop song’s routinely salted with? In the end, all of it’s all on purpose. This man’s flying into fancy, falling forward, falling around the earth…he’s singing the stupid stuff, but not just because it’s stupid. Not just because he can’t think of anything better or smarter or of more worth. But better and smarter can’t make you veer shockingly into the banal, just when you thought you were going to hear something really deep! Pop-culture references, dumb things that rhyme — McCartney always did this, and he still does it all the time. It isn’t bad. I’m not even sure you could legitmately call it cheap.

Lennon did it too, you know.

But, okay…not as much.

Hey, you ever wonder where Iron Man’s freakin’ propellant comes from? Yeah, he flies from Malibu to the Middle East and back — that’s a lot of fuel, man. I love comics, they’re one big magic trick. I remember seeing Spider-Man 2, and just for one split-second being annoyed with Doc Ock’s fusion reactor that starts driving itself…I thought: “that’s not what would happen”, but then I remembered this was comic-book science, and I felt all right again. And laughed. See, they almost fooled me. Meanwhile, Ed was saying “yeah, yeah, whoa, impressive fusion technology, wow…say, what was that you were saying about the artificially-intelligent arms that jack into your spine? And you do that for…what, because you have a burning need to pick things up, sometimes? You’re crazy, movies.” He said the same thing about The Sixth Day — “cloning? Oh, horrors! But that technology where people just scan other people’s minds all the time and put them on DVDs so they can fast-forward or rewind — that shit’s fine. Nothing to see here, just normal everyday technology beyond all semblance of SCIENCE…!!!”

Okay, whatever, so I’m doing it. So what? It’s fun. Hey, feel free to get your own blog and not do it, y’know? But this one’s by request.

Pretty musical stuff. It’s the music, really, that makes it. The words slip in and out of relevance and meaning, sometimes they suck, and then other times you laugh and realize they don’t actually suck, that they’re funny instead, and you missed it. But the music is always backing it up; and that’s where all the cues are, and the clues are. See, now I’m not even meaning to do it, it’s just happening. Maybe I should just cool that off. Anyway, about Iron Man…

I liked it, like I said, because I could identify with the hero. Very critical stuff, this shit, because the rest of any superhero movie is just the stuff you ignore, in a way the suspension of disbelief that’s paid for by the acting. Hey, you notice how I can’t make one lousy rhyme that isn’t on the vowel-sounds, even in print? This is not what you get with the crazy manic first half of Supreme Clientele, it may not be the smart stuff, but it is ALL predicated on the plosives and the fricatives…

Sorry, looking for a rhyme there? Like I said: I can’t supply you with it…

…And that’s pretty impressive, if nothing else by dint of being taxing.

Okay, I’ll stop. It IS fun, though!

Okay, stopping now.

So, Iron Man. Where does the propellant come from? Well, it comes from a place concealed by the ARC reactor, of course: it comes from the power of a hung lantern. Heck, where do you think it comes from in the comics? But for the movie, they needed the mystique of that buzzword power-plant, that prize miracle MacGuffin, to power the movie itself. Marvellous addition. Also I note with pleasure Jeff Bridges’ ability to HAM IT UP as a villain, at first he is just Jeff Bridges, America’s greatest jovial-prick-playing actor — and I should point out how pleased I am that the movie didn’t waste any more of my time than it had to with his “I am the bad guy” revelations, as soon as it was logistically possible for him to show his true colours, the script had him come out with ‘em — bet you’re looking for bad rhymes here — and they could’ve so easily gone hacktard on this and made me wait right until the end to find out what I knew ten minutes in, but they didn’t, which was nice — but then he turns into a cackling supervillain in a way that makes you see just how fucking irritating these guys would be in real life…

Uh…

Okay, so sue me; so I guess you found ‘em.

…Listen, just what have you got against fun?

Back to Ghostface: hey, is it just me, or is one half of this genuinely different from the other?

Was this, in fact, a double-sized record?

Shit, I’m so good at this I should write crosswords. Okay, I don’t know, maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe I just need to go back and listen to the first half again. But to me it sounded different, and maybe that’s why I liked it so much: because I’m a sucker for that loose, sprawling double-album thing, that just sucks you in — I mean there were twenty-one tracks on this thing! I was expecting maybe a dozen.

Anyway, I liked it.

So there ya go, Sean!

Gay Thor Carves The Turkey

…And I proceed to get a lot of weird Google traffic, no doubt. But seriously, there are papers out there about this, aren’t there? “Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bridge”, stuff like that?

This post is the result of a combination of a few things, Bloggers: Marc Singer’s hilarious fake superhero theses, the fun I’ve been having lately over at The Fractal Hall, and a little bit of Dave Fiore…whose site I suppose I could just search for “gay thor”, but that would be too easy, and not as much fun.

But really it starts with something RAB said to me while we were doing the Kirby Zodiac: that in the greatest run of Thor ever, the real antagonist was Odin, over and over and over again…and for some reason current Marvel scripters just seem unable to pick up on that thread, to the title’s detriment.

But I’ll go further than RAB, and say that Thor is the queerest of all superheroes.

Quick recap: young studly high-school star quarterback of the Aesir, Thor, is punished by Odin for his lack of “humility” (really a refusal to overlook the greater good in favour of preserving the Order Of Things — although we might as well believe this refusal was largely motivated by ego, because we’re told it is — me, I think he took the car out without asking), and so spends a certain amount of time trapped in the human identity of frail lame Dr. Don Blake.

Unfortunately for Odin, this “humility-learning” works way too well — when Thor returns to activity, he’s lost the ego, but is still set against the Order Of Things.

Whoops!

Our boy’s grown up, and he’s voting Green!

Damn!

In mythological terms, this has a pleasing comic-book-ization of the story to it. Key things: in the Elder Edda, Odin creates the first man and woman “as yet unfated”, even as he himself is about as thoroughly fated as it’s possible to get. So he won’t escape Ragnarok, but they will. In comic-book terms, then, by making Thor a human being he frees his son from fate too. And in the comic book this is the answer to everything, equivalent to creating unfated humanity in the myth: Thor’s essential humanity, and ties to humanity, will save the gods from foreordained doom in a kind of evolutionary moralistic social-progress 60s TV-show way. At least, that’s the implication. When the gods accept the value of difference and vote to desegregate Heaven, then Mr. Spock will be the one who saves the ship from the Romulans, because the bigoted crew-member will see the light just in time to sacrifice himself to save Spock from being shot…uh, or something, y’know? Anyway, universal brotherhood, and all that, hurray!

It’s kind of brilliant, because of the way it blends up a whole bunch of common household ingredients, and repurposes them into spectacular fireworks. Take Hercules, for example: because that’s really his mythological role, of course, that “half-human chosen one” malarkey, so when he shows up in Thor comics to beat up on our hero because Odin’s weakened him because he’s being too human…I mean that’s some kind of crazy triple-thick milkshake there, that is the old “fighting the opposite number” superhero thing taken to wildly recombinative extremes. And the message is, Hercules doesn’t have Thor’s problems — he’s precisely escaped all of Thor’s problems — so he’s carefree to the point of irresponsibility. Ah. Hmm, yes…

But wait! There’s more!

Odin, of course, did not begin his mythological history as Chief of the Gods. The most important Norse gods originally were Tyr (god of war, natch), and Thor himself, who as the god of storms commanded the fertilizing rain to fall by thrusting his phallic hammer deep — deep, baby! — into the Earth. Yeah, messed-up stuff, but that’s religion for you. Later on the Norse myth gets complexified quite a bit, but at the beginning you have a very simple Father Sky and Mother Earth thing happening with that. And Thor, naturally, is not Odin’s “son” by any stretch at this point…but then when he becomes Odin’s son (by the Earth herself, as it happens), that whole “fertilization” thing gets quite a bit more rummy…

But then we get Balder to come along and pick up the slack with the other flavour of “fertility god” stuff that you commonly see in world mythologies, so it’s okay again. Kind of.

Until, that is! Along comes Jack Kirby, who sends Thor off to the “college” of the human world.

And when he comes back to Asgard for winter break…suddenly everything goes all Coronation Street.

Because as RAB noted, the essential conflict in Thor comics is that Thor won’t give up his attachment to the human world even though Odin tells him he now must. Coming home to Asgard, he is taken out on the town by his buddies, who’ve missed him: remember that time we went to the state championships, Thor? Remember that time we met those girls down by the river? So good to see you, man! So…what’s Midgard like? Have you talked to Sif since you got back? What are you doing Friday night, are you having dinner with the old man, or…?

Ah. Heimdall, Baldur, Fandral…hate to tell you guys, but…Friday night Thor will spend trying to figure out how to break it to his father and to all of you that while he was away at college, well…he met someone…

“Oh yeah? So what’s her name?”

Um…

“Isn’t Midgard an all-mortal school? I didn’t know there were any Goddesses down there on Earth…”

Yeah, about that…well…there aren’t.

“Wha…?

Now, actually this all works out fine, because Thor, to his friends, is still the Greatest Guy In The World. And they can get adjusted to this staggering change in him. Whew! But then, they’re only invested in him as friends. Odin, though…that’s a different story. He’s sent away his near-perfect son, to punish him as good fathers must, and he’s got back a way better son out of the deal so that’s good…but damn it why is he so gay, now? He must just be doing it to get back at Odin. No son of Odin’s could be gay, right? Anyway he’s got to grow up to run the kingdom! I mean college life is fine, but he’s supposed to come back home later, and take up his responsibilities!

Not get new ones!

Poor Odin; it’s tough, you know what I mean?

Good news for Loki, though!

And poor Thor: his friends accept him for who he is, and realize he’s still the same person he always was (just more honest with himself, which in superhero terms works out to: saves their asses more with a hammer), and even his brother doesn’t really care…so why can’t his Dad see that his sexuality doesn’t have to change anything? It’s not that he’s mad for being sent away…he sees now that Odin was right, and actually it was a good thing, probably the best thing that could’ve happened. Because in a way he was always Don Blake, deep down; this just gave him a chance to see that.

Odin: “So you’re saying this was MY fault?”

Thor explains he’s finally happy with himself. So why can’t his father be happy for him?

Odin says he’s gonna beat the gayness out of Thor if he has to.

So Thor goes back to the Island Of Misfit Toys, after Odin cuts his allowance (in superhero terms: his powers) in half — yeah, that’ll teach him to have learned his own values — and he does a bit of old-fashioned martyr-style noble wallowing. His friends start visiting him. He says, “no, you work for the old man…I don’t want you to get in trouble just because he’s pissed-off with me.”

And on and on it goes…until then one foggy Christmas Eve…

And that’s what it’s all about, Charlie Brown.

American Thanksgiving.

Hey, it’s a little early yet, but have a good one, folks!

God, this was a sloppy post…

Five Senses And It

Whoof, Bloggers! Lot of work sitting at the computer today, and I have no idea what I’m still doing up.

However, since I am…

Rather than write something big and long and wrongheadedly “lyrical”, I thought I’d share with you a little article I came across, about a type of synaesthesia I hadn’t (strictly speaking) known existed. Regular readers of this blog — such as they may be — will know that I have a great disdain for articles about synaesthesia…

(Oh what the hell, here’s a link…)

…And let me assure you, this article inspired nothing unusual in that respect. Stupid synaesthesia researchers, stop trying to make me feel like a weirdo…!

But I had never encountered the “sound for sight” thing before, so I was curious about it. My synaesthesia is the boring kind, “grapheme-colour” synaesthesia mostly (I think they call it), with only the lightest dusting of temperature and textural cross-sensations…pretty vanilla, really. Like, maybe butterscotch ripple at best…

So I was curious about the real strong-flavoured synaesthesia that sound-for-sight represents to me. That I always knew was a possibility, but always thought of as an outlier one.

And…

Imagine my surprise!

Because I can hear that goddamn thing, wow! I laughed out loud when I did, too: suddenly it seemed so obvious.

So chime in, folks: can you hear it too?

And if you can…did you laugh?

(Uh…it takes a while to load, though…)

Paging Adam Star!

No, it’s not a new Japanenglish anime, Bloggers…although, what a title!…but has anyone seen Adam Star? Is he living on top of an Aztec pyramid these days? Has he hoisted a tent high into the Amazonian canopy, is he riding a bus up Everest on acid like King Mob, has he become a character in a Greg Egan novel constrained by the orthogonal nature of space and time, has he turned all Shaper or Mechanist, is he trapped on some Morrisonian MTA, is that what we haven’t heard from him lately? Someone has won the contest to help me determine what the next Game will be on this blog, and I was thinking today of how I might politely put it to them that I cannot presume to write a Marvel or DC Tarot without Adam volunteering to be my editor. It would just be insane to even try it.

Though perhaps not quite as insane as doing an…

Adam!!!

A Star Wars Tarot!

With R2-D4! Grand Moff Tarkin! Greedo! Clarinet-Playing Alien!

Okay, you may not want to do that. But how about a Counter-Star Wars Tarot! According to that brilliant guy who says Obi-Wan killed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru! A Starwarsersive Tarot.

I’d work on that.

So, I need the third part of your Christopher Nolan Trilogy. Post. Communicate. Tell me what you thought of the Kirby Zodiac (sure I got that one right, anyway)…I will even tell you my special parties-only Kitchen Sink Kabbalah if you return.

Folks, let’s all flood Adam’s blog...maybe that’ll wake him up…and if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat.

I tell you…that blog was our last hope.

No…there is another.

Oh, Yoda, be quiet…everyone know you’re just an hallucination anyway…

Countdown On Hold

Hello, Bloggers. I had a post up here, you may have noticed…about the Canadian election…

But, I had to take it down. I’ll put up something else later, I think. But for now…

It’s difficult for me to say precisely why I felt moved to remove it. I guess I’m a little conflicted about this election, now that it’s over. While it was going on, I personally encountered a number of honesty-rich conversations about it, many more than I encountered last time we danced to this tune; it was quite clear in the weeks leading up to Voting Day, as it’s quite clear now, that this was a BIG one. Very big.

I’m still dissatisfied with how it turned out, though. Despite all the honesty.

Of course I’m freakin’ thrilled that Stephen Harper didn’t secure a majority for himself — this, I am sure, would’ve been a disaster for the country. But otherwise, I feel a bit cheated. There were actually quite a few things about this experience, that I am discovering do not sit quite right with me. I’ll probably say something about a few of them in due course. But as something in the nature of preamble, let me just say that I find myself intensely disappointed in the caliber of my punditry this time around. All this game-playing: and I know it’s their job, but I’m a tad miffed at being informed that the guy I just voted for is out, baby, out — his career’s over, apparently. That’s that, done. DONE.

I just voted for him.

Now he’s toast?

When I think of all the people I haven’t voted for over the years, who I’ve actively (at least, as actively as I could) voted against…I note with disapproval their inability to get gone, their stubborn refusal to become that magical thing, toast. And now I sit here faintly disappointed with merely having the country be saved from undoubted ruin…and meanwhile everybody else seems eager to get back to bullshit-as-usual.

It’s aggravating. I just voted for this guy!

So, that’s where the countdown’s going to start from, when it gets back going. This was a very interesting election, in many, many ways. But I can’t help but feel that somewhere around here, the plot’s gotten lost.

So as soon as I find it…I’ll let you know.

Apologies to my one commenter. You may keep the information about the goddamned kitten though, America.

Back soon. Hold my spot.

The Kirby Zodiac REVEALED!

Here it is, folks! Slight apologies to those whose Signs are more skimpily-described than others…you see, RAB and I were just doing this for FUN…

And stay tuned after, you folks who got personal replies (and Todd)…because I may need your help with something.

Anyway…!

Aries:

“You are KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH, and you live in a world of pure ENCOUNTER!!! Armed with nothing but your WILL, you are the ultimate explorer of a world gone mad and wild, where the maps have all changed and the histories have all been erased — but in you the NATURE OF MAN lives on, and so although you don’t know where you came from, or where you’re going, or what lies ahead, you struggle on, making your OWN purpose out of what you FIND! Because this is not just an ancient Earth, but also a brand-new one…and each day brings a brand-new discovery — and a brand-new FREEDOM — that has never existed before! So THIS, finally, is your true inheritance: the FUTURE…!”

Taurus:

“You are…DEVIL DINOSAUR!!! In an age when giants walk the Earth, you are the mightiest of all! You show the world a FIERCE exterior because past adversity has left you scarred. You may be scared of letting anyone get too close, but that’s only because your inner gentleness still makes you feel vulnerable in spite the thick hide you’ve developed. Yet if some small furry creature needs your help, this same fearsome quality can also make you a staunch protector and a valuable friend.”

Gemini:

“You are…MACHINE MAN!!! Expressions such as “losing face” and “face the facts” may have a bit more magnetic resonance for you than they do for other folks…because your biggest concern is what face you choose to show the world. Sure, you enjoy clever wordplay for its own sake, but those sardonic quips might also be a carefully crafted facade to conceal the truth that you’re really a neurotic bowl of quivering emotional jelly inside. If “The Man” expects you to conform and be predictable, he’ll be surprised at just how hard it is to get hold of you. You REALLY hate being pinned down. Whenever it seems like someone is trying to keep you tied down in one spot, that’s when you’ll reach into your bag of tricks, cancel the gravity equation, and fly away. But it’s important to remember that others have helped make you the person you are today, and may even have made real sacrifices on your behalf. As long as you keep them in mind, you won’t go completely to pieces…and if you do, you’ll be able to pull yourself together again.”

Cancer:

“You are WHITE ZERO, a man looking for answers in a world swept free of questions!!! And this life of comfort should be a PARADISE to you, dreamer: you may have anything you desire, and be anyone you wish…so why is it, then, that you are so restless? What kind of inner wish can you be nurturing, that this perfection is so inadequate to fulfill? You cannot even say; the dream is a hundred times more meaningful to you than reality is, and yet you would sacrifice everything you are to have it be THE OTHER WAY AROUND…you seek out disappointment like others seek out satisfaction, gambling dream and reality both in the hopes of winning something that is BETTER THAN EITHER…and when you finally break open the empty circle of the Self, you will find it: not in the mere receipt of enjoyment, but in the power of CREATION that you were BORN TO EXERCISE…”

Leo:

“You are ODIN!!! All-Seeing! All-Powerful! All-Wise! And yet even you cannot avoid NECESSITY — even you cannot hold off Time, and Fate, and Change. You cannot even hold off the fallibility of your own heart! Your word has been unquestioned Law since the beginning of the world, and the order of things that you have maintained for so long, at such cost, has been created out of pure unselfishness, for nothing but Love…but that’s another cosmic force you can’t control, All-Father, and it’s time you realized it. Because you only rise to your true greatness when you permit others to give it as they wish, freely…but when you try to compel it, you send this universe it’s your duty to protect spiralling towards chaos and ruin. The universe has blessed you with a thousand thousand gifts beyond measure; now it is time for you to give it YOUR blessing in RETURN…”

Virgo:

“You are BLACK BOLT, KING OF THE INHUMANS!!! And though you rule the most naturally high-spirited people on Earth, their expressive nature is something you yourself can never take part in — because to protect THEM, you must control YOURSELF, with the utmost rigour. Your every move, your slightest gesture, is a marvel of grace, economy, and restrained power: you will never act, until the need to do so becomes overwhelming — until your fine sense of judgement tells you that the crisis point has finally been reached. You will wait motionless as a statue, absorbing and organizing the forces of the universe…and then suddenly you will MOVE, like a flash of LIGHTNING, discharging your energies with ultimate force, to achieve your objective! But, it is not your matchless power that keeps your people safe; rather, it is your matchless PRECISION, that inspires their trust. Heavy lies the head, son of Agon, that wears the crown! However that self-disciplined service preserves something precious: your people’s freedom to be absolutely in their own power, in a Great Refuge free from fear…

Libra:

“You are ALICIA MASTERS, and nobody knows it, but you’ve got a superpower: though blind yourself, you can make others SEE!!! Whatever their origins, whether they’re monsters, space gods, or entirely NEW forms of life, you can show them how to find the balance that they lack, even if they didn’t know they were lacking it! Because you’re pretty brave, lady; pretty good at facing up to reality, even though you’ve had every reason to run away and hide from it. Anybody may be able to see you’re beautiful, and talented, and kind, and empathetic…but not too many suspect the hidden steel that’s in you, the willingness to commit to what’s right even if it costs you what others take for granted. You can’t fly, and you can’t punch down buildings, but you’ve got an X factor in your corner that can change any bad situation for the better: you know how to be HONEST, and you’re always willing to HELP. Now, if we can only find you the right boyfriend…!”

Scorpio:

“You are…SERSI OF THE ETERNALS!!! You’re beautiful — charming — inspiring to watch! To say more would exhaust the adjectives in a thousand languages! But you’re NOT swayed by flattery! You love a good party, but you HATE bad manners. You can be the perfect hostess, yet still delight in skewering pomposity and pretension. But despite your outgoing, extroverted, vivacious and seductive nature, you find yourself strangely drawn to the shy, intellectual sort. That timid, humble scholar may not be the life of the party, but you’ll find a way to draw him out of his shell and show him wonders he’s never imagined. Because as old and experienced a soul as you are, you know that life is for those who are willing to embrace the NEW…well after all, what else is there that’s WORTH embracing?”

Sagittarius:

“You are JOHNNY STORM, THE HUMAN TORCH, and yours is a life of ADVENTURE!!! But, you’re no Peter Pan…you’ve seen your share of tragedy as well as triumph, and sometimes you’ve had to grow up fast. Maybe, faster than you should? Well, but you’ve always been FAST, Johnny — there’s not much that can slow you down! And even less that can HOLD you down: because isn’t it the nature of flame, to rise? Sure, sometimes you may wonder if there isn’t something wrong with you because you can’t seem to SETTLE down, but when you’re lighter-than-air, “down” is a direction you just can’t go in for very long…! And you know better than most, that none of us have any choice but to be who we are — that when we try to deny ourselves we create a life of misery, but when we accept ourselves we become the heroes of our own stories. Heck, sometimes we even end up saving the world! So they call you a hothead, but is there anything wrong with being bright, and quick, and able to ride your own updraft? You’re responsible enough when you’ve got to be; the rest of the time, you’ve earned the right to be a free spirit…so if things are getting a bit gloomy around here, why don’t you cut out and go do something fun, instead? After all, SOMEBODY has to…”

Capricorn:

“You are “TERRIBLE” DAN TURPIN, and you’re NO shrinking VIOLET!!! So long as you’ve got a job to do, you’ll do it, come hell or high water, and you’ll spit in a chief’s eye, or a commissioner’s, or even a God’s along the way if you have to! The universe may be bigger than you can imagine, and the dangers in it may be greater, but that doesn’t absolve a man of his responsibilities — it just presses them on him more firmly. Lights in the sky and super-weirdoes don’t change any of the facts that matter…and so you DON’T see anyone else wearing a derby these days — does that make you a UFO? Of course not! It just means you stick with what works for you. And who here was told they were gonna live forever, anyway? You may be hard on the people around you, but they know you’re harder still on yourself, and so you know you’ve earned their trust…but watch out, Turpin! Practical only is as practical does, and if you get yourself killed for nothing that isn’t practical, that’s trying to be a damn HERO — and that’s what they’ll call you if that’s what you do, and you know what? They’ll be RIGHT…and is that really want you want CARVED on your TOMBSTONE? So remember who you are, if you can, and don’t get sucked into somebody ELSE’S idealism by pursuing your own too doggedly…”

Aquarius:

“You are…BIG BEAR!!! There’s something in the air around you: perhaps it’s an excess of free floating atoms, ready to be sent wherever they’re needed to reinforce your basic integrity…or maybe it’s a cloud of opportunity, rising like steam from the hot stove of your IDEALISTIC nature! But whatever it is that’s always surrounding you, it still makes you bigger than you seem: big in patience, big of heart, and — when you want to be — bigger than life. Sure, because the world and you are great friends, and growing greater each day; so who can really tell where one leaves off, and the other begins? Still, though this life’s got all the right ingredients, it’ll need a bit MORE baking before you’ll be happy with the recipe…because a person can read all the cookbooks in the world, but in the end success still comes down to good old-fashioned TRIAL and ERROR! Fortunately, you’re the sort of person who doesn’t mind trying out new things — well, that’s good for you, because there’s a LOT of them to TRY…!”

Pisces:

“You are…DUBBILEX!!! People are drawn to you, but sometimes they don’t quite know what to make of you. As far as some of them are concerned, you might as well be a Man from Mars. Are your lack of pretension and goodnatured demeanor such PUZZLING qualities…or do people somehow sense hidden spiritual depths below that easygoing surface? Your developing powers are only just beginning to manifest themselves. Who knows what wonders you could yet perform? Your friends will tell you that you’re weird and wonderful by their standards — but what are YOUR standards? How do you measure yourself? What’s EMERGING from that brain of yours? If you do some research into yourself, you may just find out.”

Comments, astrological Bloggers?

Questions?

May I just take this opportunity to point out something about this game that I fear may otherwise go unnoticed?

Ahem:

“You are…THIS WAS SO FUN TO MAKE!!! Who knew, Kirby-Lover, that the KING OF COMICS had wrought so well?!? All that talk of MODERN mythology — well, perhaps we dismissed it as hyperbole and perhaps we DIDN’T — but should it really have taken us this long to give it a “TEST-DRIVE”, and see for ourselves if it worked? We’ve been lazy, I fear: we have RELIED on our “inkers” too much, when maybe it all worked perfectly well already, in pure pencil FORM! Maybe — against all expectations — it really WAS, the thing it SAID it was…!”

Just plain too much fun. Hope you enjoyed it, Bloggers. Do tell us what you thought of it.

Oh, and you email people who’ve (hopefully) stuck around…

What Kirby character would you have liked to see here, that we missed?

You can just say who it is, and what sign it should’ve been, and why…or if you like you can write a big blurb for it (which is fun to do), but if you don’t want to do that it’s okay too: it won’t be counted against you, I’m just looking at the matter not the (questionable, I suppose) art.

Winner gets to suggest the next Game!

Okay?

Things To Do In An Elevator When It’s Dead

I often think of things like this:

Elevators admit no natural light.

Of course we rarely consider that elevators are naturally lightless: on a day-to-day basis, we have no evidence of them being so, so it rarely crosses our minds that darkness is their natural state. Well, such is the smoothly laminar flow of the background electricity in our lives as city-dwellers that we’ve lost track of the phases of the moon, so why should we be surprised at thinking when the lights go out in an elevator it’s an interruption of the natural order of things, rather than a reinstatement of that order? The same holds true for wearing eyeglasses: wearing them, we take them for granted, and set the implications of being without them at nothing. Hence, the de-listing of eye exams from medical services covered under public insurance in B.C. — we can all see fine anyway, so glasses must be a frill. Right?

Right! Thatis, as long as you have a spare pair of glasses lying around for emergencies.

But what’s comical is when you don’t: suddenly, then, upon losing or breaking your glasses, you become immensely dependent on other people. You can’t work; you can’t drive a car. People start looking at you as though they’re thinking of putting you out on an ice floe somewhere.

Our lives are full of invisible supports.

Here’s a few of them that apply to the modern technological age:

Glass
Paper
Ceramics
Cement
Rubber

Lose any of these, and things go south in a hurry — ceramics are important for steel-making, rubber means we can cheaply use other modes of high-speed powered transport besides the train, cement is a life-saving shortcut around the tedious necessities of brick or stone, and to conceive of the modern age existing at all without paper and glass is I hope all-but-impossible. Paper and glass are critical in so many ways it’s difficult to list them at all: without paper, for example, we would have no organizational structure capable of supporting large commercial enterprises, no fiction or history or education outside the circle of the campfire, and no money besides coinage. And these aren’t even the things we think of when we think “paper”! Without glass…no, that list’s even longer, I can’t even begin it. Suffice it to say, that without the prevalence of these technologies, we’re back in the 11th century overnight. 11th-century Scotland. Bleeding the cows to fortify the milk.

But wait, there’s more.

More generally, there are technologies employed all across the human world since antiquity, without which our species would have folded like a cheap tent put up by a gang of hypothyroid five-year-olds. And our modern technologies may have reduced our reliance on these, but they haven’t made them any less fundamental. Ordinarily we never think of them: but take away glass and paper and cement even for a day, and they suddenly once again become our safety net — without them, we aren’t back in the 11th century A.D., we’re back in the 111th century B.C. Or back even further than that. Witness:

Knot-tying
Sewing
Basket-Weaving
Pottery
Glue

How important are these? Unimaginably important, because they’re all about fastening and gathering and storing. A Stone Age hunter-gatherer without a basket is a Stone Age hunter-gatherer without a community, because they can bring nothing back to that community…an agricultural community without pottery (the primitive form of ceramics) is an agricultural community that carries water from its well in cupped hands alone. And of course knot-tying, sewing, and glue are fundamental technologies even today…but I’ve learned my lesson from glass, and won’t exhaust myself by expanding on their obvious utility.

Because there’s pattern here if you want to look for it, so save your strength for that. The modern technologies of the first list are mostly about the creation of materials: Big Infrastructure. The second list is about the invention of processes: basic manufacturing. Both lists are lines of development that cut across all societies…uh, to mix a metaphor or two.

But a third list doesn’t apply to all societies, and so may be more interesting still (if any of this can properly be called “interesting”). These are the non-ubiquitous technologies, that nonetheless support very large groups of people, and (more than likely) have driven large-scale, long-term populational gyres through the big ocean of human history by a kind of technological weather — by a kind of system of sociotechnological differentials and action potentials. To wit:

Fermentation
Vacuum (Pumping)
Laminates
Tanning
Cheese-Making

It is just possible everybody has tanning, of course, but I had to stick that in somewhere, and besides its value is different in different regions of the globe. In some places it is literally the difference between life and death, in the most everyday sense; other places it’s more, as the callow Internet youth say, meh. Once again, you may notice this list is all about processes…but with a difference: these technologies exploit natural processes rather than inventing processes that weren’t there before. These are technologies of enlistment, “technologies of the willing” if you like. A list of more universally-applied techniques such as this would probably follow along in the path of “cheese-making”…salting and drying and other basic natural-process means of preserving food certainly know no regional boundaries or limits. But where’s the fun in making a list like that? More importantly, where would be the end of making a list like that: I would probably have to put “gardening” on it somewhere. Although I might perhaps have included the hugely-important technology known as piling up rocks here: one of the foundations of aquaculture, and the beginning of all activities hydrological. But I only wanted five entries per list, to show my little half-formed thesis…

To show it by saying that, in this third list, science is born. The era of war, travel, chemistry, and the Greek philosophers begins, culminating millenia later in a world of computer screens, junk mail, the trucking industry, and turkey dinner with all the trimmings…which I will be doing without tomorrow, as I’m still getting over a bad cold or flu or something.

So Happy Thanksgiving, Bloggers. And spare a thought for the humble sheep shank, too, when you’re busy attacking that turkey leg.

“My Green Dragon”

[Edited to read better, hopefully.]

Why do we want to see comics made into movies? I mean, look around you: we really want to see comics made into movies. We’ll tolerate incredibly bad movies just because they were made from comics, and when an actual good comics-based movie comes along, we are…um, perhaps a bit too happy about it, don’t you think?

What’s the attraction?

Comics do lots of things movies can’t, and comics are worthwhile in themselves. Little kids don’t wish for comics to be made into movies, do they? No, they don’t. So why do we?

Is it that we seek a wider social legitimacy for our geeky hobby?

I’m going to argue no.

Zom over at Mindless Ones puts his finger right on it: just look at the art in that beautiful David Lloyd panel. V’s cloak is moving.

The train is moving, too.

It’s all moving.

It’s a moment, frozen apart from other moments, but it’s paradoxically full of implied motion. Powerfully implied motion. That’s part of the artistry, part of what makes it fascinating, part of what makes it compellingly dreamlike. On a static page, Lloyd gives us a wonderful evocation of a glimpse…an intimation of symbols and forces gathered in potential, in a vanishingly small slice of time and space that’s nevertheless connected to an infinitely open universe where time and space are not considerations, and through which slice we can pass. As Zom notes, the angle from which we are seeing V is even cleverly distanced from an angle that anyone actually in the comic could have access to — more intimation, and it presses on us. So it compels us, too.

And that’s why we want to see it move. Because we think that to see that image — just that one, precisely, not another one, not an adapted image but that very one — suddenly imbued for real with actual movement to match the movement that it suggests inside our heads, will relieve that pressure of suspended dynamism, or as I’ve said before around here resolve the pregnancy, that we’ve been carrying around from reading it. A detonation, as I’ve also said before: that’s what we seek.

So, that’s thrilling, if we can get it. But, it’s also disappointing on some level, because the pressure of intimation so important to that reading experience is obviously then missing from the corresponding viewing experience, or at least it’s watered-down in it. Though an exceptional director is of course capable of not letting it be missed, not letting it be watered-down, even if he has to substitute something else for it, most directors would stop — as we would — at merely resolving that intimation, instead of resolving it while at the same time subtly restoring it too. Hitchcock would’ve restored it, no doubt: he saw the value in images that vibrated that way, with menace or meaning about-to-be, dimly sensed at the edges or limits of action. But of course, there’s just one Hitch.

However that’s not to say there’s no one else who cares about preserving such things. This was, I believe, just what Ang Lee was attempting in his much-maligned Hulk. Scenes are filmed and then jammed together, creating a virtual “gutter” between figures (Banner Sr. talks to his wife, and she is right there, and yet they seem separated by an unfathomable distance, by a blind spot)…or, as in the case of Betty driving her car through a strange neighbourhood, angles are twisted so that reflections and objects don’t match up. Lichen blends with desert landscape seen from a helicopter, photographs come to life then freeze into stasis again, the desert and the bomb and 50s-style paint jobs emptied of people and the premonitory dream that exists outside time (well, as all dreams in movies do) all get mashed up together. Intimation is literally everywhere — so you get the Hulk fighting in the redwood forest (wow, and what’s more of a comic-art detonation than that!), but you also don’t get all the frozen moments stripped away from you, because Lee goes to extraordinary lengths to keep them anyway. He is always playing with this device, and never lets up. To him, quite clearly, this is the point.

And, isn’t he right about it? I don’t know if this is the best Hulk movie we’ll ever see…but certainly it’s the most dazzling one. The plot is pure dollar-store trash, the rationalizations of the science-fiction element are regrettably incomplete (not Lee’s fault — they wouldn’t let him make a four-hour summer blockbuster with two hours of expository dialogue in it), but the ornamentations are all made of pure gold: when Bruce Banner gets zapped by his gamma rays it is all that anyone has any right to wish for, it is a fantastically augmented moment that’s just like the comics’ brilliant suspense of action even though it is moving — and if things in Ang Lee’s Hulk sometimes get silly (too silly for comics readers? Astounding thought), he still throws music and silence and montage together in such a way that he does get to the heart of how to adapt comics’ best moments to film, with an idealistic faithfulness that’s hard to fault.

And yet boy, did he get faulted for it!

He shouldn’t have, you know: after all, he gave us everything we wanted. Editing as special effect. Time become space, become time again.

“In a way, Hulk was my Green Dragon,” he said in an interview.

Mine too, Mr. Lee!

I’d love to know what Guillermo del Toro thought of it, wouldn’t you?

We’re all a bunch of ungrateful children, probably.

Transience And Surprise, And The Voice Of Fate

No, it’s not a post.

It’s a link!

Not too very long ago, Jim Roeg and I were talking about what comics are really all about:  little weird transient sublimities in art, that catch the attention in steel claws and yank it up through the page.  The story?  If it’s good, I guess that’s good.  If the drawing is nice, that’s nice too.  But the best bit is the feeling of sudden arrest.

Honestly, we should be talking about that more than we are.

Nice one, Zom!

I Don’t Think I Like Him Much, Do You?

My God if I never have to sit through another Town Hall with John McCain it will be too soon! Holy crap, this was the worst TV pilot ever…!

So, here’s the deal:  Obama did well, by which I mean he was predictably all Obama-like, same-old, same-old, he looks like he could do the job okay.  He looks like an acceptably intelligent guy, who is not a hothead or a recalcitrant ideologue.  And McCain. Is. Just. Pissing me off, now!  I mean why the hell is he even running?  Just to gain “victory” in Iraq?  Is Obama dangerous to America’s interests, for real?  Could he not do the job, is that what we’re saying?

Let’s suppose they would each do a fairly passable job, within a fairly confined range of good policies and dumbass fuck-ups.  Now who would you vote for?  But uh-oh, wait a minute…I actually have ZERO confidence in McCain’s ability not to make things a whole lot worse, in a whole lot of a hurry.  McCain is real old, but strangely nothing about him seems quite so ancient as his use of the Bush-league bullshit rhetoric that unseated him in the Republican runoff lo these many disastrous years ago, when I liked him a lot better than I do now.  It is the language of state-bankrupters, reputation-killers, liars and fakers.  It is the cant of the…

Well, this is still basically a PG-rated blog, so I won’t say what it’s the cant of.  But it is.  And that’s not too cool.

Christopher Hitchens, the journalistic equivalent of Dennis Miller, once opined in his dry and brilliant way
that electing John Kerry as President instead of George W. Bush would have led to Hieronymous Bosch-like scenes of Americans being driven through the streets by Islamic terrorists wielding fiery cricket bats, always paddling, paddling, paddling…what America really needed, he insisted, was a Chief Executive who was dumb enough to do the job.

He was full of shit then, like McCain is full of shit now.

Poor Hitch:  such a fine mind, but it seeks out the going ideological crutch like a baby elephant’s trunk seeks out its momma’s tail…a flaw all the more tragic, for being so mysterious.  But McCain inspires rather less sympathy:  he’s declared the kid gloves off, but I think what he really meant to say is head injury on!! Flame down! He’s not making sense any more.  He’s in too deep.  He’s fucked it up.

He’s fucked it up.

And what moronic Krishna, you have to wonder, is whispering in his ear to commit to this battle with such Daliesque weaponry?  Obama talks about America leading its friends and allies;  McCain, in response, brandishes a fish.  And delivers, not a speech, but an ululation.  If a stutter can really ululate.

How is this happening?

I’ve expressed some sympathy for McCain in the past, but…after forty, every man’s responsible for his face, you know?  And this campaign just hit forty, I’m sorry to say.  I find it incredible that McCain prefers this Town Hall format, a format in which he looks like a damn fool half the time, and an old damn fool the other half.  Hey, my Dad is McCain’s age:  he thinks he’s too old.

All the old guys I know, who are McCain’s age:  they all think he’s too old.

He’s too damn old.

And my natural sympathy for him does not extend to giving him a pass on making crooked remarks in the name of “at the end of the day, it’s a game we’re playing.”  This is not Survivor:  President.  Obama keeps saying he substantially agrees with McCain on this thing and that thing, only minus the short-sightedness.  This is a great note for Obama to hit:  he agrees with McCain on a lot of things.  And so what does this mean?

It means McCain agrees with Obama on these same things.

But you’ll never hear him say that.  And that right there is where the fucking unforgivable dishonesty lies.  Obama is saying that while he may have a healthy ego, that doesn’t mean he can’t listen.

McCain is saying that his ego is practically shot to pieces by this time, so he won’t.

And I liked this show better the first time it toured, when it was called Bob Dole.

Against all reason, I still like Bob Dole.  Like Norm MacDonald, I’d have a beer with Bob Dole…and if he’d let me, I’d pay for the both of us.

But at this point, I don’t think I’d let John McCain buy me a bottle of Armagnac.

If the kid gloves are to be off, let them be off.  I used to like John McCain.  I may like him one day in the future.

But today he made me look at him doing his Town Hall act.  And today I blame.

Today I blame.

Now go read Peter B. Gillis’ latest, if you please:  on how a young Earth makes a sad universe, with sad and depressed people and stars in it.  And tell me you don’t feel like rising up and making a change.  This is the worst children’s story ever. Sarah Palin (who as I believe I’ve said before, I wouldn’t trust to match my socks) can see the frickin’ Northern Lights from where she is.  She can see all the stars, not just some.  She can see everything.

But only, I guess, if she looks.

I have just about had it with this American election.  This shouldn’t have happened.  It’s extremely frustrating.

And now back to MGK.