Posts from — August 2008

Bahlactus loves Ithorian on Arkanian action.

Image from FlirtyKitty’s Flickr.

Pictured above is some delicious raisin pie. How good does that look?

You know what doesn’t look good? Fitness. It looks like hard work, sacrifice and, worst of all, no pie.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on what my wife refers to as “The Fitness Express,” which means that I exercise five times a week, cut back on my daily calorie intake and basically have all of the joy sucked out of my sad little life.

Logically, I know I need to get in shape. I even stopped making lameass ’round is a shape’ jokes a few years ago - because I’m capable of growth and personal advancement. But the pie, well, it’s a compelling fucking argument.

If I’ve seemed more disagreeable or irascible lately, it may have something to do with a marked decline in my alcohol consumption. And that, too, all goes back to fitness. Whiskey, my wife is fond of informing me with a smug grin, has calories, too. That’s totally true, but it also makes me able to interact with the world. Or, at the very least, interact with the world without getting angry.

Why do I get so angry? People like George Stella.

Who is he? The host of the blessedly no-longer-airing Low Carb and Lovin’ It, a show in which he commits the Herculean task of making healthy, low-carb versions of genuinely good foods and pretending that these ‘improved’ dishes are just as good or better than the originals. He’s obviously banking on the lie being big enough to pass for truth, but he fails so thoroughly at it.

Check it out:

The fake enthusiasm for what he’s preparing and the soulless eyes make me really wary of fitness, like it’s a cult or something. The number of times he talks about loving the food sounds to me like he’s trying to convince himself that he loves it, and that wolf-hungry look he gets when he talks about the unhealthy version of his recipes really kills my ability to take him seriously. All this does is convince me that eating like this is the diet equivalent to ShamWow or other products sold only from shady infomercials and state fair kiosks.

Memo: It’s not a Cheesesteak if you put two ounces of meat on a leaf of lettuce and lightly dust some shredded soy cheese on top of it. That’s a salad, whether you hold it in your hand or not. A salad.

I don’t want to become that guy. He’s an asshole, hopped up on some Mosquito Coast, convert-the-ignorant power trip. My biggest fear about losing weight is that this will happen to me, too.

So, you know what, fitness? Get out of my face and let me enjoy my pie.

As one might expect from a book about the next generation of young heroes hanging out in a clubhouse, the current volume of Teen Titans has been chock full of brutality and murder. And I’m not even counting the Titans East Special.

Surely, with Sean McKeever coming on board - the fan-favorite scribe who wowed Marvel readers with his fun, all-ages friendly comics - Teen Titans would start espousing the sort of tone that the book was intended to have. Then again, this is the book where Deathstroke the Terminator kneecapped Impulse with a shotgun in the first story arc.

Looks like the answer is no. Pal and fellow Dazzler Fan blogger Rich Lovatt just eviscerated Teen Titans #62 and, well, it’s pretty deserved. Bad form, McKeever.

Or is it McKeever’s fault? The brutal deaths of two fun, old-timey characters sounds like an established MO for some higher-ups at DC. And just who’s editing Teen Titans? Hmm.

Maybe it went a little something like this:

SM: I think I want to do a one-shot issue about Wendy and Marvin.
DD: Oh, cool. Let’s kill ‘em.
SM: …That’s one way. But I was maybe thinking they find Wonder Dog, like on the cartoon, and -
DD: He eats them. That’s amazing! Remember when we did that with Sobek and Osiris in 52? Everybody loved that!
SM: Actually, there was a lot of complaining. Don’t you remember the Internet?
DD: Of course I remember the Internet! There are dozens of people complaining that Wendy and Marvin exist. I say we give ‘em what they want!
SM: …Fine.

For a good 10-12 minutes, the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo tantalizes even the most self-respecting Star Wars fan with the immersion it offers up on a very slickly produced plate.

When I say “immersion,” I don’t mean the kind where you get inside The Secret Apprentice’s head (though the character has far more personality in the few moments he’s allowed than I’d ever reasonably expect), but am really referring to the sense of control I have over the violent proceedings.

For instance, I can take out an AT-ST by picking up the stormtroopers surrounding it and throwing them into it with the Force. I can charge an object with Force lightning and throw it at someone - shocking them. And I can lift a hapless militia member off the ground, impale him with my lightsaber, and then force push him into a cluster of his friends. The number of environmental objects that the player can interact with and the sheer volume of kill methods available make it a feast of options that has prompted me to play the same 10-12 minute demo over and over and over again.

Conventional wisdom (and I’m sure Skip will disagree with me) says that Star Wars games tend to be bad. I mean, we all remember Hoar, right? However, TFU really gives me a sense of being an integral part of the story and somehow manages to be as entertaining to play as the early X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. I’ve seen it described as a mashup of a traditional Star Wars game and the criminally underappreciated Psi-Ops; not only is that accurate, it’s a good thing, too.

I don’t normally touch on video games here, and certainly not to gush about them, but I’m starting to get pretty sold on this being a wise investment of my Xbox dollars. Has anyone else played The Force Unleashed demo? What do you think?

Okay, that’s probably an incorrect title. I love me some Dairy Queen. I am, after all, fat.

What I don’t like is the experience of going to Dairy Queen, because it entails interaction with the sort of people who work at Dairy Queen. Just consider Parker Posey’s performance in Waiting For Guffman for a dead-on portrayal of the empty-eyed lack of skill and personality inherent in working at the DQ.

This is basically the same complaint I could level against every fast food chain - that the people who are best at the job are already overqualified to do the job from an HR/personal dignity standpoint - but the DQ near my house is different because it’s only open on a seasonal basis, meaning that the core of long-term permanent employees who actually care about the success or failure of the Dairy Queen in Kingston, PA is infinitesimal.

I have never - never - had a good experience at this Dairy Queen, and yet it’s so close to my house. And it’s Dairy Queen, so maybe, like the US Postal Service, it banks on a customer’s ability to ignore poor service because of the strength of its brand. Which is stupid. There’s roughly a 60% chance that they’ll mess up my order, even on something simple, like “Reese’s Cup Blizzard,” and the certainty increases to 100% on special orders, like my wife’s perennial “Can you put extra pie crust pieces in that?” That order leads to an extra $.49 charge and NO pie crust pieces at all. It’s a given that going off-menu is going to lead to an increased incidence of employee incompetence, but not on such an apocalyptic level as is on display here.

Last night, we went to Dairy Queen. They got our order wrong - which is a given - but that wasn’t the only annoyance. No. When I started to order, I got cut off with a shrill, “I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU!” Which, frankly, shocks me. I’m a native English speaker, and I don’t have any regional accent at all, and this person can’t understand me? I just got off the phone with the local paper of record, and not once during the interview did the reporter say to me, “I can’t understand what you’re saying.” And I was talking about algorithms.

And listen, I don’t care that she can’t understand me, but at least be polite. At least be apologetic. Tell me your speaker isn’t working right. Because if my wife wasn’t sitting next to me, and if she didn’t really, really want Dairy Queen, I’d have driven away after launching an invective assault that the likes of this Dairy Queen manager hasn’t seen.

But my wife is sitting next to me, with my arm in a death grip signifying “don’t open your mouth,” and she really, really wants Dairy Queen. “Excuse me,” she asks, “what’s in your Turtle Blizzard?”

“WHAT?!”

“Turtle Blizzard.”

“WHAT SIZE?!”

“No. What’s in it?”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “WHAT’S IN IT?”"

I chime in. “WHAT ARE THE INGREDIENTS THAT YOU USE TO MAKE ONE?”

“Jeffrey!” My wife hisses.

“PECANS!” the DQM (Dairy Queen Manager) shouts. “CARAMEL! CONE COAT!” I don’t even know what that last thing is.

My wife asks, “CAN YOU REPLACE THE CONE -” (The shouting is infectious.)

“CONE COAT!”

“Yes. Can you replace that with pie crust pieces please?”

“WHY?”

“BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT SHE WANTS!”

“Jeffrey! They’ll spit in my Blizzard! I’ve seen Waiting!”

“FINE. TURTLE BLIZZARD WITH PIE PIECES. WHAT ELSE?”

“Can I also get a hot fudge sundae?”

“HOT FUDGE!”

“Yes.”

“NO, I MEAN THAT’S ALSO ON THE TURTLE. IS THAT OKAY WITH YOU?”

“Yeah.”

“SO WHAT DID YOU WANT AGAIN?!”

This happened for another 3 or 4 minutes.

As we drove away from the Dairy Queen, I started ranting about the erosion of face-to-face customer service, and my wife shut me up in the most efficient way she knew - she started feeding me spoonfuls of hot fudge. I hate that that works, but what can I do? I’m fat.

I swear to you, if the other characters in Mirrors didn’t keep calling Kiefer Sutherland’s character “Ben”, I’d have made the (faulty) assumption that the movie was a 24 tie-in: Jack Bauer Vs. Ghosts. The dude’s an emotional wreck with a hair-trigger temper, and he says things like, “DON’T MAKE ME THREATEN YOU!” That’s pretty Jack Bauer.

Plus, he kind of holds a nun at gunpoint, and that’s REALLY Jack Bauer.

I went to see Mirrors wholly on impulse, without doing any research beforehand. Why? Kiefer Sutherland starring in a horror movie directed by Alex Aja. All of the nouns in that sentence excite me. And if you’re not familiar with Aja’s work and dig horror, you should probably check out his The Hills Have Eyes remake or, even better, Haute Tension.

But here, Aja’s remaking another Asian horror film. How can I tell? The film has a duo of Asian horror staples that you can’t ignore:

• Creepy Children, like a 12 year old girl possessed by a demon - or the malevolent mirror-version of Kiefer’s son
• Evil Water, which is incredibly prevalent in the film’s third act. In fact, you’ll hear Agent Bauer shout, “DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER! IT MAKES REFLECTIONS!”

Mirrors wasn’t bad, but I have to say that I’m getting a bit J-horror’d out. Which is my own fault, or more accurately, the fault of the Hollywood zeitgeist. Unfortunately, with distance, some of the more ridiculous moments - like the nun hostage scene or the way that a taut, atmospheric supernatural thriller devolves into a running gun battle by the end - stand out in my mind. If you’re in the mood to watch a scary movie but not to think very hard about it - and yeah, it does lack some internal consistency - then Mirrors has some good effects, brutal kills and a premise that, if not fresh, is at the very least amusing.

Plus, you know, Jack Bauer.

I’ve gone ahead and launched a music blog with Matt from Alert Nerd, hopefully not the last joint project we’ll be announcing this year, but certainly the one you should have the least reason to care about.

Poisoned Letter is an Elvis Costello blog. Ever the fan of elitist obscuria, I’ve gone ahead and named the site after a scathing ur-version of Brutal Youth’s “All the Rage.” Right now, there are a couple of saccharine testimonials to the influence of the artist on our angry young geek lives, but we promise that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Check PL out, maybe subscribe to a feed, whatevs.

If you buy your cat Kittywigs.

On the real.

Look, I’ve always been pretty against putting clothing on your pets. I think it’s just strange and a little creepy, but I understand that that’s only an opinion. If you want to put a sweater on your dog at Christmas or whatever, that’s fine. I can look the other way. No moral outrage, just personal preference.

But this? This shit is fucked up.

Really. Awesome.

Is it Wednesday already? Damn.

Anyway, I need to pick a winner for my Hawkman contest. I’ve been dragging my heels mostly due to external factors, but also because all of the entries are pretty intriguing.

Let’s take a look at the entries.

Gates Rants About Comics wants to bring the Hawks back to their Thanagarian roots as agents gone native, defending the Earth against a Thanagarian shadow war. Essentially ignoring the intervening plot and bringing the franchise back to a time when it was arguably at its best. Some nice touches include the Hawks’ attitude toward Earth,

“…since the Earth is so backward compared to Thanagar that the Hawlls consider humans to be kind of like children. Carter is the angry father who wished the kids will stop acting stupid and just grow up already, Sheira is like the mother who is amazed by the child’s progress and wishes to encourage them.”

And perhaps the boldest move of the revamp, tying the mythology behind the Hawkman costume back to the Manhawks - and facilitating a revamp of the Manhawks from simple thieves to religious psychopomps. This revision of the mythos also neatly sidesteps the issue of making multiple iterations of Hawkman work by suggesting that there has only been one alien, extremely long-lived Hawkman who has been changing identities.

Worksintheory suggests this elegant solution, with only a few licensing issues:

I say the he is a rodent exterminator that was transformed into a hawk-like beast after exposure to an experimental rat poison.

Now we exterminates evil with the power of with fleshy wings and super vision.

His arch nemesis will be Verminous Skumm from Captain Planet.

Phil “The Thrill” Looney wants a surfing Hawkman to fight Surf Jams Joker. I want that, too. Deep, deep in my heart I want it. Now that Birds of Prey has turned Joker into the Jason Calacanis of the supervillain world, he has access to some prime beaches. So it’s plausible.

Jason from Phoning It In wants to remove Thanagar and Hawkgirl from the equation entirely and focus on Katar fighting Kobra and having archaeological adventures with a team of action scientists and Northwind, his adopted son. Factor in some apocalyptic macguffins and some political conspiracy vis a vis Checkmate, and you’ve got a fresh take on the character that acknowledges his history without making yet another ‘everything you know is wrong’ revelation about the character. And I’m starting to get sick of those.

Erin Palette graces us with what she hopes will be a Vertigo relaunch of the concept. Ironically, this one has the biggest Roy Thomas factor of all my the entries I got, at least in the sense that she goes ahead and grafts a second DC hero legacy onto the character. Hawkman, she posits, still has wings, a mask and a mace, but he’s more of a straight pulp hero…and he’s the bastard son of Blackhawk. With the blessing of the Egyptian sun god and a new team of Blackhawks to help him out, he punches, swears and shoots his way through barechested adventure and ill-fated romantic encounters. It has a lot of old-school charm.

And over at Alert Nerd, Matt tells us about his vision of Hawkman, the NASCAR Republican to Carter Hall’s staunch conservative. And gives us a version of Hawkman that’s a mashup of Hawkworld and Invader Zim, a Thanagarian trooper sent to Earth just to get him out of someone’s hair.

In other words, he’s not very smart. His chief gift is kicking ass. He does this well, and on a regular basis. He has big appetities and a short fuse.

This pitch respects the prior continuity while eschewing it to make room for a new, non-confusing Hawkman. I envision it as a fun-if-insubstantial book, a bit like Tom Peyer’s Hourman ongoing, which I love.

So now, the moment of truth.

I really liked all of the entries and really appreciate everyone’s participation, but there can only be one winner. But my favorite is Jason’s. It’s a concept that can support an ongoing series, has ties with the greater DCU that can immediately be capitalized upon (launching books in a vaccuum hasn’t proven to be that much of a draw since Infinite Crisis, has it?), has a rich, installed history that isn’t discarded entirely in favor of freshness. It takes the character back to his roots, focuses on a new/old aspect of his personality that’s often overlooked, and trims away some extra baggage that serves to confuse people. He even manages to work in Northwind, who I’m not even sure exists on New Earth.

So bravo, Jason. Email me with your address and I’ll hit you up with your Benjamin Birdie sketch of the winged warrior as soon as it’s completed.

Since I have some extra stuff laying around in the way of prizes, I’m also picking a first runner-up. That’s Erin. Despite its similarity to Moon Knight’s origin, I do love the idea of incorporating the Blackhawk legacy. Email me your address, and you’ll be getting the first two volumes of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead in trade paperback.

So thanks again to everyone who participated and everyone who helped to get the word out. Regular posting resumes soon!