Riding with Batman

Back in high school, when my humor ws much, much less refined, one our euphemisms for homoeroticism (one of many, trust me) was "to ride with Batman." I think this originally came from the Snickers advertisement where a football player gets hit and, punch-drunk, starts thinking he's Batman. Maybe we picked up on the 'special connection' between Bruce Wayne and his young ward. Holy codpiece, how right we were!

My new favorite Batman panels!


This will probably be the last post until Monday, since I've got a long weekend full of grading papers and group projects. Plus, I'm planning on getting the meat sweats on Sunday.

Advanced Personhood? I'm still a Beginner!

Well, I slept through my alarm this morning, and woke up to find that the Weather Channel's prediction of "Some Flurries-1 inch" had become "Heavy Snowfall-3 to 5 inches-roads terrible." It took me 30 minutes to get from the Hotel to my office. You might say, "Wait a minute! That's not bad! I drive farther than that each day!" Bear in mind that the Hotel is literally across the street from campus, and (on days with better weather) I've walked from the Hotel to my office in about 20 minutes.

Now that I'm actually in the office (all I have today is a meeting with a student and the final pedagogy seminar ever!), I have a pounding headache. Over the weekend, I managed to walk backwards into the ceiling fan in the guest bedroom. At the time, it didn't hurt so much, probably because a few minutes later my 3-year-old nephew tried to tackle me while I was sitting on the floor and did a picture-perfect Guillotine Knee Drop into my groin. That pretty much allowed me to ignore any other aches or discomforts for about 15 minutes.

Anywho, all that aside, last night I watched Dimitri Martin's new stand-up comedy special (the hotel doesn't get NBC, so I couldn't watch Heroes). Let me preface this by reminding you that Dimitri Martin is really, really funny. His stand-up style combines the monotone delivery of Steven Wright with the use of a large drawing pad full of pseudo-props (I'm not sure who to credit the drawing pad with - I've seen Zack Galifianakis use one too). Martin's recently been on the Daily Show as a 'trendwatcher' - his segment at Ohio State where he set up an extracirricular deathmatch tournament was awesome. Plus, he's really, really funny:

"There was this real nice lady at the store yesterday. She told me, 'If
you need any help, I'm Jill.' I thought, 'Wow, I've never met anyone whose
identity was conditional.' If I didn't need help, would she be Mike?"

Admittedly, part of the reason I found this joke so funny was a recent discussion of logic loopholes in everyday conversations over at Kurt's Nightmare. It's also funny because I just got done reading 50 poorly written papers, but I think it's funny anyway you look at it.

Anywho, after watching Dimitri for a little while, I noticed something strange. Admittedly, had I been 1) not exhausted and 2) not trying to also read a book for class, I might have noticed earlier. The entire hour-long special was sponsored by Microsoft, and the only commercial breaks were a series of short fake PSAs for the Institute for Advanced Personhood, a complicated advertisement for Microsoft's new OS, Vista. I don't know if I can blame Dimitri Martin for selling out. Lord knows I'll be happy to sell out at the first opportunity.


PS - here's a link just for JP, who made a point to visit the blog (and possibly read it too). I give unto you, the most trusted internet pundit ever:

http://incrediblehulk.blogspot.com/

Batman sneaks out of the old folks' home when they serve Orange Jello

Yesterday, I found myself reading Paul Pope's miniseries Batman: Year 100. It had looked interesting when it was released last year, but I had never read the single issues (read: Jon didn't buy the single issues). It was interesting, especially the style of the book's art, but overall, left me with a hollow feeling, like after I eat the last Pop-Tart in the box.

For those of you who aren't massive Batman fanboys, a brief explanation. Frank Miller (who is a fascist, trust me) wrote two excellent Batman stories: The Dark Knight Returns, maybe the most famous Bat-comic out there, about an elderly Batman fighting Reaganite government forces (bear in mind, it was written in 1986) and damned hippies who want to give the Joker therapy; the other is Batman: Year One, which was pretty much the explicit source for the newest Batman movie.

Okay, so I'm a sucker for Batman, and I'm also a sucker for "What-If?" stories about dystopian futures. The gist of Pope's book is that Batman is still operating in 2039, exactly 100 years after the first published Batman story (so it's not just a clever title). As you might expect, Batman fights crime, but this time crime is in the form of corporations and governments (such a radical view!) instead of guys in purple 3-peice suits and clown makeup.

One of the coolest things about Year 100 was the way Pope dealt with the narrative continuity of Batman. In Year 100, several people are researching the 'history' of the Batman legend (I'll complain about this in a minute), and they find that a "Bat-Man" broke up a spy ring in 1939 (shout out to early Detective Comics), arrested colorful psychopaths in the 60s (old Adam West tv show), and last appeared as an older, heavier man fighting in a landfill in the late 80s(Miller's Dark Knight).

So, you're saying, if this is 2039, Batman's got to be pushing, in a technical sense, really freaking elderly. Assuming he was at least in his mid-20s when he started fighting crime (after all, it takes some time to dedicating yourself to perfecting your mind and body to avenge your parents' deaths), Pope's Batman is financing the costs of batarangs with Social Security checks. Yet, when he's seen in the book (and it's somewhat clear on the cover above), Batman looks to be in great shape. If anything, he's lost weight and toned up since Dark Knight. In the book, Batman himself wears fake vampire fangs when fighting crime, presumably so his enemies will think he's inhuman (another reason Kurt Busiek's Astro City: Confession is awesome). But IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED WHY BATMAN IS STILL JUMPING OFF ROOFTOPS. He's 130, people! Old people sleep and watch Matlock (or, if you're my grandfather, complain about customer service). They do not kung-fu fight corrupt federal troops.

Secondly, NOBODY in the year 2039 remembers Batman. This is a guy who dresses up in tights and uppercuts the most memorable bad guys around, and nobody remembers him? That's like if nobody today remembered who Richard Nixon was.

What the hell, Paul Pope? I guess if you want good dystopian future Batman, it needs to come from Saturday Morning Cartoons. Thank God for Bruce Timm.

I am intrigued by your views and wish to subscribe to your newsletter...

One of the biggest annoyances of my field of study is trying to explain to people outside of the field exactly what it is I do. Usually, I just tell people that I "teach composition" (not completely false) or that I'm working on my Ph.D. in Film Studies (technically, I am taking a film course). Every once in a while, I try honesty, and tell them that my Ph.D. work is in American Popular Culture. Usually, this means that I immediately feel I need to justify my work and study to someone who watches reruns of "Will and Grace," and thinks that Crash was art because it won an award.

Next time, I'm just handing out postcards with this on it:


For more, check out conanvsbear.com

Vengeance has no Mercy! (Knee-thrust!)

Lucky for me, the streets were pretty much cleared of snow when I began my trek this morning. The downside was the heavy fog that set in around Piqua (perhaps the fog, too, was strong, vibrant, growing!) that reduced visibility to about 50 feet, and looked like that one scene in Fargo, or the video for "Karma Police" without Thom Yorke walking backwards and burning me. I survived the killer fog and arrived at Bowling Green a little early, so I decided to induldge in a little breakfast heroin: the Sausage McGriddle.

Now, I know that this is a 100% artificial sandwich, molded from corn syrup and advanced chemical "taste-makers." However, of all the fast-food breakfast "foods," I find myself craving McGriddles and getting cold-turkey-shakes, so I've gotten in the habit of eating one every other week, even if they do make my pee smell orange.

Without a doubt, the single most important thing that happened this weekend was my watching THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE. The rest of today's blog will be devoted to this topic.

The Protector

(While that would make a sweet movie, let's try it again)

Actual Movie Tagline: "Vengeance Has No Mercy!"

That's an image of Tony Jaa, the Thai answer to Jackie Chan (who has a sweet, albeit minor cameo in Protector), surrounded by 50 or so goons with broken bones. This is one of the few movies where there is literally nothing I can say about this movie that will be an exagerration. When I say, for example, that the movie's climax involves a 6'10" Australian Strongman suplexing an elephant, you will see an elephant getting its elephant ass dropped!

The elephant (of course!) is the driving force for the film's "plot," as Tony Jaa's Cam, a traditional Muay Thai elephant bodyguard, must hunt down the evil drug gang leader/dominatrix who steals his elephant. The elephant is stolen, at considerable cost and effort, so it can be served as a black-market entree in Sydney, Australia. None of this, including the film's overly explicit pro-Thai-culture ideology, is as important as the bat-nuts crazy fighting from Jaa. And so, I present:

Ways Tony Jaa will kick your ass, according to The Protector: (with no repeats)

• He will come flying from offscreen and hit you in the throat with his knee
• He will wait until you and a friend are on either side of him, then kick you in the knee while simultaneously punching you in the eye
• He will jab you in the face, so that you back up against a wall, then kick you through the wall
• He will choke you with the handcuffs you put on him, but let you go otherwise unhurt because he respects the law
• He will wrap the strap of your leather jacket around your throat and tie it to your belt, so you choke yourself when you try to fight back
• He will kick the bulb out of a 10-foot high streetlamp and scare you away, since you're not worth any real effort.
• He will perform a blackflip while you ride your dirt bike underneath him, then grab you by the helmet (that you wear for safety) and snap your neck
• He will walk up the side of a plate glass wall and let you drive through it on your spike-covered 4-wheeler (presumably your ass is kicked by the glass wall)
• He will head-butt you in the throat
• He will smash a large vase over your head
• He will kick you through a decorative lattice
• He will through you down a 4-story staircase
• He will punch you in the groin while you attempt to do a one-handed handstand (while breakdance fighting)
• He will beat you with the drumstick to a giant cermonial gong, while using a second drumstick to block your measley Kung-Fu broadsword
• He will let you think you beat him the first time, so that you're overconfident later (see below)
• He will snap every bone in your arm
• He will snap all but one bone in your arm, then lift your arm between hin knees and snap the remaining bone
• He will kick you in the shin, so you fall forward and smash your own head on his waiting knees
• He will stand on your foot, then push you down, breaking your ankle
• He will let you kick him in the knee, and let the strength of his unmoving knee break your kicking leg
• Since you are overconfident from the first time you fought him (see above), he will let you rush him, then he will trip you by log-rolling underneath you
• Once you've thrown him into the skeleton of his favorite elephant, he will tie elephant thighbones onto his forearms, climb onto your shoulders, and smash your head (with the thighbones, of course)
• He will break the thighbones into sharp pieces, then cut every single tendon in your body, while you stand there, quivering
• He will jab the remaining thighbone through your foot, then wail on you while you can't get away
• Since you're an old man (and a cripple), he will not fight you until you attempt to fly away in a helicopter, then he will jump straight up and kick you in the head, making you fall out of the helicopter
• After you stab him with a hidden sword cane, he will let you fly about 15 feet away from the rooftop, hanging from said helicopter. Then he will ump off the roof and knee you in the face.

GREATEST MOVIE EVER

I heart the 90s

(from XKCD's blog)

Every once in a while, mathmaticians are funny. This covers the first 3 months of 2007.

Can I borrow a feeling? (As sung by Kirk Van Houten)

(This image, like the Cobra Commander, came from Chris Sims' Invincible Super-Blog, which is just as awesome as it sounds)

A brief respite between posts, but that just gave me more to write about this time.

First, I need to suggest the required reading of the Onion AV Club's Worst Band Names of 2006. I can only hope that Fellating Dave Coulier makes the list for 2007. Maybe we need to set up a MySpace account, which seems to be what all the young people are doing these days.

Secondly, on to a succinct list of things I learned this artificially long weekend:

1) the kind of lower-class, poorly-educated people you see on daytime courtroom shows are actually the exact same lower-class, poorly-educated people you see in the Dayton municipal court on Tuesday afternoon. On a related note, I missed the memo from the MLA that "I done seen..." is now the acceptable past tense of "to see."

2) sadly, while I done seen nearly 4 hours of courtroom tedium, I done not seen the actual testimony of the old man who hit my car. Apparently, the prosecutor didn't want my testimony (which consisted of me spelling my name, affirming that the police statement I wrote was in fact written by me, affirming that I was not, in fact, driving my Honda Civic on top of the curb, and finally paying 7 dollars to park in downtown Dayton, Ohio) unduly influenced by the defendant (e.g. Old Man who hit my car). Not getting to see him squirm firsthand was only tougher when I talked to the arresting officer afterwards, who was literally laughing at the old guy's defense.

3) after reading a 300-page book on Native American culture pre-1600, I'm much more sensitive to the plight of the "other" who has been unfairly disenfranchised by Western civilization. Plus, I now know that Chief Osceola, the Florida State mascot, is innaccurate and hurtful. After all, the red skinned savages were too drunk to ride horses, especially during home games.

4) there is a finite point at which a pancake has been sitting out on the counter long enough that the dog will not even attempt to eat it, or will at least vomit up undigested pancake bits after she bites off a piece. That point is somewhere between 3 and 4 days after cooking.

5) it's much easier to write blog posts in list format, since I only have to think about one idea at a time, and I don't have to develop arguments over more that one sentence.

That said, here's a brief commentary on why I'm liking certain TV shows...

This was initially going to be an unpaid promo for the show The Knights of Prosperity, which is a great show through two episodes, and is produced/written by the same guys who made Ed, one of my favorite shows to ever be re-ran on TBS' daytime lineup. Plus, it stars Donal Logue, who is a complete Steve, as well as Kevin Michael Richardson, who has done fantastic voice work for years on many of my favorite cartoons, and is fun to see in 'real life.'

However, after watching several classic episodes of The Simpsons (local Fox affiliate is currently showing the 'good years' of seasons 4-8), I noticed a major paradigm shift in recent television comedy from 'episodic' to 'serial' narratives.

Classic television sitcoms have traditionally used an episodic format, with each 30-minute show being an enclosed story. The conflicts that arose each week would be resolved by the show's end, and the next week would bring new conflicts and resolutions. Episodic narratives require a cursory understanding of the characters and starting situations (think of the scene laid out by the theme song on Gilligan's Island), there is no need for the viewer to have ever seen the show before (nor watch the next week's episode) to understand what's going on. The few times episodic shows attempt to create a serial narrative (Sam and Diane finally getting together on Cheers), the nature of the show changes completely, usually for the worse.

For several reasons [insert discussion regarding the nature of the Comedy and Drama genre], dramatic programs have often used serial narratives, with the prime example being the ongoing storylines in soap operas, which require years of viewing (before and after) to completely understand the events in any given episode. Characters have deeply developed backgrounds, especially compared to the 1-dimensional stock characters in most sitcoms, and the relationships between characters is much more detailed and evolved.

One of the better aspects of early Simpsons episodes was the show's self-awareness. The characters knew that they were in an episodic narrative ("Don't worry Lisa, in two weeks everything will be back to normal and we'll be on another crazy adventure"). Any significant change in the basic characters would be undone at the end of each week. Two fantastic examples are the judge's ruling that Armand Tanzarian was and is the 'real' Seymour Skinner, or Mr. Burns' son leaving town, remembering that he has a wife and kids (who are not mentioned until the next-to-last lines in the episode). One of the first times the Springfield world was actually changed was the Van Houten divorce, followed soon after by Maude Flanders's's death.

One of the reasons I enjoy Futurama as a whole more than the Simpsons (although the 'prime' episodes of the Simpsons rivals anything ever put on television) is that, while relatively episodic (each 30 minutes is a complete, enclosed story), the series, especially in the 3rd and 4th seasons, began to explore the overarching narrative, particularly addressing Fry's freezing as the Millenium-long plan to defeat the Giant Brains and Fry's unique genetic nature as his own grandfather. In turn, the main group of characters are developed as unique personalities, especially in the relationship between Leela and Fry.

The best comedies today have dispensed with many of the traditional elements of sitcoms (no more laugh tracks, live audiences, and the 'one-camera' technique of Arrested Development and 30 Rock). They've also evolved toward serial narratives, with storylines arcing across entire seasons (Arrested Development) or unifying the entire series (My Name is Earl, Knights of Prosperity). Even shows like The Office and 30 Rock depend on recurring jokes and charater relationships that evolve over the course of the show.

Some credit for the shift from episode to serial has to go to DVD releases of television programs. Watching an entire season back-to-back allows one to see inside jokes, references, and connections between episodes. Conversely, watching a DVD of 12 distinct episodes, while enjoyable (oh, how I love NewsRadio) doesn't have nearly the same appeal.

I promise that my next post will be shorter and include more fart jokes.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

This will have to count as my post for today, since I can't stop laughing long enought to actually write something.

DVD reviews - Jan 6 2007

The Promise

This got some pretty favorable reviews when it came out, and I'm a sucker for the big-budget wuxia genre. While the movie had some absoultely fantastic moments (and admittedly, the cinematography looked really nice overall), the characters were 1/2-dimensional and the plot made so little sense that at one point I just turned the subtitles off. I'm a little bothered by the fact that Chen Kaige seemingly stole the ending for this movie from my unpublished opus (and Part 1 of the Epic Trilogy) Softly Came the Lithographer, written 8 years ago on a graphing calculator. RATING - 2 Sparkplugs

Seven Samurai

I got the fantastic 3-disc criterion version for Chistmas, and decided to make the dog watch this with me last week. The dog, being of refined taste, loved the film and promptly fell asleep on my leg, so by the end of the second disc, I had lost feeling in my left foot and calf. There's not much point in reviewing this movie. If you don't like this movie, I cannot ever take anything you say seriously ever again. Plus, your voting rights should be taken away. RATING - every Sparkplug ever made, plus every Sparkplug that will ever be made

Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

I remember watching this show when it was on Friday nights along with the X-Files on FOX. I didn't remember many details, except I knew I loved the whole "sawed-off double-barrell slung over the shoulder" thing Bowler used, even when I was an impressionable young man. I like(d) this show because it doesn't necessarily take itself seriously, but everyone involved certainly seemed to have fun making it, as is confirmed in Bruce Campbell's autobio. Plus, it has cowboy Elvis and his kung-fu fists! Rating: 4 1/2 Sparkplugs


Stay tuned for my massive rant about how much I'm enjoying The Knights of Prosperity

I was spoiled by hills and trees

Well, at least there was a slightly shorter delay between posts this time. A brief explanation. This blog was first started when I created a 'blogger' account to post to another (more frequently updated) blog. I subsequently forgot I had started it until the beginning of the Fall 06 semester, when I was bored in a computer lab, trying to kill time before an orientation meeting. Now, I'm bored in a computer lab, trying to kill time before my department meeting. Now that I remember my password, maybe I'll actually start posting regularly. But probably not.

Why, you might ask, am I in a lab instead of just using the barely-functional laptop I 'inherited'? Genius that I am, I decided it would be good to get exercise and walk to campus for my meetings today. After all, I tell myself, it's only a few minutes' drive, it can't be that far. Well, distances seem much farther when it's 20 degrees with the gale force wind pushing against me. While it seemed to take forever, I now have 25 minutes to kill (I left most of my books back at the motel).

Now, an update from the last time I posted:

1) I did not get an RV. Nor did I find a cot for my office (I did, however, find a nice clock at the $1 bin at Wal-Mart). I was able to find a decently cheap hotel that would settle on $33 a night with complimentary breakfast (woo-hoo government milk and off-brand cereal) that's right down the street from campus. Plus, the hotel gets HBO, so I've been watching the older seasons of ROME (not nearly as many orgies as I had expected). As expected, it's much better than sleeping on the floor of my buddy's apartment.

2) I did get a laptop, but not from the Toronado trade (more on that later). My younger sister decided she wanted a desktop, since her laptop was 'broken.' Turns out the laptop was just crippled with every single spyware program ever created, along with 3 different copies of Gator. It has a few minor malfunctions (one USB port is broken, the built-in mousepad sucks), but it's allowed me to type many papers while reading ESPN.com in my office.

3) No No-Doz sponsorship. I've switched brands to Vivarin (about 75 cents cheaper), which tastes like salt. On the plus side, I was able to get an online teaching assignment for the summer, which should cut down on my commute significantly.

4) no shirts - me am sad

4 1/2) Finally got rid of the Tornado (Goodwill towed it away while I sobbed), and replaced it with a dog (hereafter referred to as "the dog"), which shares several similarities with the big O: both are white, seem like they're winking at me, and leak transmission fluid onto the driveway.

Over X-Mas break, I got to spend a lot of time with the dog, and I learned several things that the dog does not like:
-When I hold her over the urinal/toilet/kitchen sink and threaten to give the dog a swirlie
-When I put the dog on my head, and walk around, pretending she is a stovepipe hat and I am Abe Lincoln
-When I put the dog in her crate, then sit in front of the crate and eat Skyline (I've only done this once, because I was raining outside, so the dog couldn't go out; plus, I had recorded Venture Bros. on Tivo and wanted to watch it)
-When I throw a towel or blanket over the dog's head and laugh as she runs blindly into furniture/walls
-When I pick her hind legs up off the floor and scream "Franklin Delano Roosevelt Dog!"

And the wife wonders why nothing gets done around the house when I'm home alone.