There's no real point in making this too long, I just need to purge this out of my mind so I can walk away. I work some at a comic shop. Since practically all they order is Marvel and DC, I could and have read any of their published comics for free and put them back on the shelf. No revenue generated for Marvel or DC. Since I can get into movies for free, I could and have seen movies with their properties in them. No revenue generated for Marvel or DC. But beyond all that, I could just pirate all their stuff. No profit generated for Marvel or DC. The thing is, pirating is too easy. It's a false justification that I thankfully don't even have to apply in this situation. Because when I looked at the stuff that I was reading for free from Marvel and DC, there wasn't much there. Daredevil and Wonder Woman, that's it. Criminal if and when it comes back (maybe Brubaker and Phillips will play the long game and take it to Image). Not much to drop, but I was still hesitant. I mean, boycotting them doesn't really solve anything. Besides them not getting any of my money anyway, the comics exist solely for the merchandising and movies. That's where the real money is made and why these companies can barely be bothered to admit that the market is cannibalizing itself and losing readers consistently.
The whole process of thinking about this started when the Kirby family's attempted lawsuit didn't even go to court because the contracts are airtight. Sure, I knew Kirby and the vast majority of the old guard didn't get shit for all the groundwork they laid. I knew Alan Moore had been boned extensively by DC. But it was all out of my hands. I just wanted to read comic books. But then the snowball got rolling. Frank Santoro says goodbye to Marvel. Steve Bissette calls for a boycott of Marvel. James Sturm says he won't go see Avengers. The Gary Friedrich debacle where they singled out a guy, who by the way has no health insurance and is struggling to survive, for practices which all kinds of fucking hacks and wannabe company-men pull off on a regular basis. "Marvel's" The Avengers. Before Watchmen. Excellent posts by Sean Witzke, David Brothers, and Abhay Khosla and a series of tweets by Tom Spurgeon. But what really did it was the message implied in an idea of good will, the idea to donate money to the Hero Initiative or the Jack Kirby Museum Fund if you went to see the Avengers. I remember thinking it was a good idea that was unfortunately going to produce lackluster results, but what I took from it the most and what really finalized my decision was this part:
"Plus, of course, you - the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world - want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do."
I don't think this is what was intended, but that is the most damning and truthful thing ever written about comic fandom. The general public don't give a shit and shouldn't be bothered. But comic fans should know and respond better. We know about Bill Finger, Siegel and Schuster, about how Stan Lee somehow is elevated to godhood for only partial contributions, and about Steve Gerber. Certainly comics are not alone in this regard, you don't have to look hard to see where older creators were treated terribly in the world of films, music, and movies. This is not an ethical industry, but more importantly and why it is so damning, it is so arrogantly public and nonchalant about it still to this day. There also is no desire to change. Before Watchmen is the zenith of this, taking something that once stood to represent steps towards improvement and tossing it aside. Still, let's clarify: I don't think any of the people that consume Marvel and DC's products are evil. I don't think anyone who works on their products is evil. Certainly the industry pays relatively well and making a living being a cog in the wheel is far from isolated to comics. That reads passive aggressive, but I don't know anyway else to put it. Harlan Ellison manifesto, etc...
But "they've got you hooked?" Marvel and DC put out some decent to good stuff, sure. But what happens if you don't see Avengers or read the umpteenth incarnation of Daredevil? You maybe miss some good work, but why not read stuff that doesn't have a moral stain all over it? If you really like comics, there's plenty of stuff out there. If you only care about reading about superheroes, well, you've got to make up your own mind. I haven't read that many superhero comics relative to a ton of people, but I've read plenty of all levels of quality. There's still things to say about superheroes, but there's been enough to sate me. I'm good. So I'm officially unhooked. I have around 10 older Marvel and DC comics I'm going to get and then I'm riding into the sunset on Fury MAX, which looks to be an exit of incredible greatness. Who knows, maybe not just making a clean break here and now is proof that I'm even worse than the people who want to fuck all these people over so they can keep reading 100 Superman comics a month, because they're at least honest while I'm here puttering on about this garbage.
A specific point: the Before Watchmen row, unlike everything at Marvel, has made me go personal, which is kind of petty, but fuck it, it's my decision. This will not affect Marvel or DC in the absolute slightest. I just feel like I'm doing the right thing. It's invigorating in a way, like I'm moving forward positively. Pathetic? Yes and no, once again who cares, this is what I'm feeling, I'll be in the bathroom. So some people I'm done with period, specifically the ones who have said a bunch of stupid shit surrounding Before Watchmen. Stracynzski has always sucked, so no loss there. But Azzarello? That guy has written some damn good comics and is clearly a smart guy. Unfortunately, "There really is no controversy" and "Comic fans don't like new things"? Sorry, you lose. Just shutup and don't say anything OR just say, "I'm doing it for the money" or "I don't care." Darwyn Cooke? Jesus, just click on that Abhay link above. Hell, here it is again. We're all hypocrites, but you just took the prize! So I dumped all the comics of theirs that I had and won't be buying anymore, no matter if they're from Marvel or DC or not. Nobody point me towards something dumb by JG Jones, I've still got this Marvel Boy sketch that is awesome.
So no more Marvel or DC. Too long, apologies.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
We Got Arrested at Night
Recent thoughts...
Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore
Expectations can be weird. I had heard that this book told a continuing tale that stretched across centuries, and that is technically true but not the whole picture. Moore tackling similar spanning agendas in works like From Hell and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fixated my mind a combined tale of resounding mythological and mystical significance with allusions to everyone and everything that happened within those time periods.
But that's not how it plays out, even if what happens is related. In From Hell, Moore was talking about the 20th century through his version of Jack the Ripper. But Voice of the Fire starts out in 4000 BC and ends up in the 1995 AD. Each of the 12 chapters moves the story forward into differing time periods. However, far from making the story more grandiose, it instead makes it more personal. In From Hell, all the stops were pulled out to show this single period in time and how it was manifested, along with Moore showing off, which he does all the time. Voice of the Fire is like the greatest hits of Moore's hometown and residence of Northampton. Each vignette takes on the air of meaning solely for the people affected within the story. Those occurrences and meanings certainly resonate later, but not in a cause and effect way. Unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Moore really wants you to know he's being clever while throwing around his commentary, there is a not a need and/or desire for annotations. Instead, all the references are as blatant as can be. Moore often calls attention to them vividly that I wondered what was going on. But as I said before, this is due to the expectation that Moore's previous work had left me with. Before the last chapter, I wasn't sure what I had read. I got that Moore was looking at myths, psycho-geography, and to put it too simply, how things change but still stay the same.
But then I got to the final chapter and things coalesced. Removing the writing from the story and into Moore's own life (apparently, as it's obvious Moore is working subjectively with parts throughout the whole book), Moore finishes wrapping up Northampton, filling in the details from the previous chapter's endpoint of 1931, up to 1995. It's a depressing endpoint, Moore laying out a ruined, wasteland-esque town of inadequate council housing, faceless corporate-enveloping sprawl, random acts of deadly violence, and several occurrences relating back to the previous chapters, the town still progressing through time by spinning its wheels. In effect, Moore's book functions as a history of Northampton, prosed up to provide a record of how the town developed into the morass he sees today. His tone in the last chapter is a mix of caring elitism and incredulous scorn. Moore makes sure to mention the laborious nature of the research put into the book, tomes and records dug up that have lost all relevance in their obscurity. But at the same time, Moore goes to ask his uncle about a certain historical event, in of all places, a bingo hall. But then he maintains that he cannot really describe the book to him. Is Moore saying that all the information he dug up is really contained within the unsuspecting people of the town? Yet, somehow they do not have the capacity to understand or utilize it? Does he connect this back to how the denigrating town, and by extension the modern world, has no room for the supernatural or the occult? Or is Moore even talking about any of this? Outside the explanations and recounting, how you feel about the end probably speaks to your ability to tolerate good old fashioned bitching, none more so than when Moore tunes into the television broadcast to crucify all the content it can conjure. Then again, if I had written through Northampton's cycle, fueled by death, deceit, subjugation, misery, decapitation, limping, loss, razing, and burning, I might bitch a little myself. Moore is trapped between revealing the wonders inherent in his environment while being able to manage the horrifying traits of the people, places, and things manifest. I'll let him blow off some steam.
Oh, and the first chapter is written from the perspective of how Moore thought a caveman would process his thoughts. It's equally enlivening and frustrating, and the book has a hard time ever reaching that level of insanity thereafter.
Vanishing Point, directed by Richard Sarafian
Not a whole lot to say. Good car chases, some potentially interesting character dynamics get annihilated by retreaded and awkward exposition dumps, and the landscape of the early 1970s gets equally handled and fumbled, as the movie uses the functional tabula rasa of the main character to throw current events at him. Props to Barry Newman still, who plays the lead like the manufactured and purposefully decent megalomaniac he is, smiling straight into California on Benzedrine, making sure he gives them a hell of a challenge if they're going to grant him his way out.
Elektra: Assassin by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz
Take a trip back in time to a period in comics you might have thought you had figured out from reading Watchmen and Miller's own Dark Knight Returns. Those works are far from the insanity on display here. The book is clearly a tug of war between the creators. You have the steady capsule-gridded panels that Miller flooded Dark Knight with on one page, opposite the functional splash images Sienkiewicz packs into all the panels, splash page or not. Miller often bluntly describes what is happening or what will happen on the page with the narration. It leads to an admirable quality of comprehension mixed with the frenzied metal of Sienkiewicz, but possibly a less interesting comic in the end? I mean, it reads well but Sienkiewicz almost feels throttled, even when he's speeding, like he's on rails. Which makes sense, he's drawing at some basic level from a script, no matter how he develops and presents it. Not to remove Miller's contributions, but Sienkiewicz's style is one that screams for his singular output (yet he's mostly been a collaborator, so what do I know). Then again, the comic is often at it's best when Miller begins to drop in manic, staccato narrative information in disjointed bits that Sienkiewicz distills into images of crushing weight and impact. Two hundred miles an hour is still two hundred miles an hour, no matter if the path is preset or not. Ostensibly chocked with "meaning" given the setting and particulars (Cold War, military industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, US intervention, governmental misconduct), the whole thing instead is a gigantic indictment that never went to trial because all the particulars would've rigged the system if they hadn't blown it to hell beforehand. Forget relevance, says Miller, and look in wonder at how gloriously hatefucked the world is. Revel in the glory and ridiculousness before man initiates judgement day.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg
The Nazis are back ya'll and we threw the Satan slavers to the curb. This is a reboot film for a series that never had any real continuity, following Temple of Doom, which in hindsight went a little too far into brutality according to Spielberg. All because George Lucas got dumped. Way to go George Lucas's wife, you ruined it for us all! Not really, because this is still pretty solid. It unfortunately comes across as a compromise that might even be the right one, sure, but not the best one overall. Nothing here can match the aforementioned misanthropy and organ removal of Temple of Doom, nor the airplane fight scene or the swordman shooting "gag", or really any scene from Raiders. Connery is fine but the familial dynamic is Spielberg ramming how these guys are the same person yet hate each other yet love each other eventually down your throat. See George, don't give up yet! *back slap* Still, the opening sequence is excellent and the Nazi turncoat woman's name is Elsa, which is close to Ilsa, which is a non-turncoat Nazi woman's name in Hellboy, which an awesome comic series that I need to re-read daily. The Last Crusade is good on it's own, but can't hold up to what came before.
Akira Volume 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo
It's a ballsy move when you're close to 600 pages in to basically drop the clear focus of the series in Tetsuo. But that's what Otomo does here. Maybe it suffers a bit, as there's no real mystery over whether or not Tetsuo is dead, but that's not what Otomo is really going for. Instead, every other character gets pushed ahead and motivations are revealed, culminating in the back half of the book being a a meeting point of everyone involved through lots and lots of violence. Unsurprisingly, the storytelling and the action sequencing are excellent, with Otomo solidifying his ability to perfectly lead the eye across the page. But it's the climax that makes it. After spending such a huge amount of time hyping the potential of Akira up, with plenty of moments that were already insanely powerful on their own, Otomo had a lot to deliver on. So he responds by going off for about 20 pages with nothing but wholesale destruction on a city-wide level, splashes and huge panels only. Each page is a pinnacle for him to supersede on the next, until there's nothing left. Except for Tetsuo to show back up on the last page now that Akira is awake. Delivered.
Ghostbusters II, directed by Ivan Reitman
Everyone always talked about Murray as Peter Vankman, but where the hell is the love for Rick Moranis? Ghosts show up and get busted and the writing is good enough to where everyone can be consistently funny and sometimes downright hilarious. And these guys are still having a hell of a time acting this shit. But Rick Moranis? Not a line wasted. These movies are funny and entertaining and there's plenty of room for that.
Akira Volume 4 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Volume 3 dropped Tetsuo and this volume drops Kaneda, which means a huge part of this massive story loses its two main characters for large periods of time but this is different. You always knew Tetsuo was coming back, but when he did it wasn't necessarily what was expected, but that's to Otomo's credit, and it's crystal clear why it's that way when Akira's magnitude is finally revealed. Likewise, it's easy to see that Kaneda is coming back, but he doesn't have the resilience of Tetsuo. So when he reemerges in the supernatural/out of body method, it's...odd, with no indication. When Tetsuo came back, Otomo didn't need to say anything yet ended up just off enough. Further, Kaneda's absence made me realize how much I missed the guy. I've never been a big fan of non-stop wisecracking characters, especially in something as ridiculously catastrophic as Akira. But it turns out Otomo was better off with Kaneda because of the levity he brings to the proceedings. That is the biggest cliche as I'm looking at it on the page, but it rings true because he's such a ludicrous contrast to everyone else that he grounds everything. Instead, lackluster ciphers like Chiyoko get more attention, her entire character being that of a resilient he-woman on the journey of killings. The start of the book is still really strong, as the story jumps forward and everything is just a bit off-kilter, owing to Otomo holding back details that later get fleshed out. Despite the bombastic art being the real draw of this comic, Otomo can nail the smaller moments, like he does with the Colonel throughout the whole volume. And the art is as amazing as ever. While previous editions showed Otomo drawing a dilapidated and degrading cityscape, the constant backdrop to his intimate action sequences, here we have the aftermath of cataclysmic destruction of a whole city. It's a whole new form of architecture porn and Otomo is the tenth dan. This volume wraps up with a classic "storm the castle" scene that alternates between ragtag machine gunners, heat seeking missiles, and the always welcome psychic showdowns. But, Kaneda? Yeah, I miss the dude and this volume drags some because he's MIA. It's not like I'm going to pack it in without getting to the finish, but I could use a re-up.
Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore
Expectations can be weird. I had heard that this book told a continuing tale that stretched across centuries, and that is technically true but not the whole picture. Moore tackling similar spanning agendas in works like From Hell and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fixated my mind a combined tale of resounding mythological and mystical significance with allusions to everyone and everything that happened within those time periods.
But that's not how it plays out, even if what happens is related. In From Hell, Moore was talking about the 20th century through his version of Jack the Ripper. But Voice of the Fire starts out in 4000 BC and ends up in the 1995 AD. Each of the 12 chapters moves the story forward into differing time periods. However, far from making the story more grandiose, it instead makes it more personal. In From Hell, all the stops were pulled out to show this single period in time and how it was manifested, along with Moore showing off, which he does all the time. Voice of the Fire is like the greatest hits of Moore's hometown and residence of Northampton. Each vignette takes on the air of meaning solely for the people affected within the story. Those occurrences and meanings certainly resonate later, but not in a cause and effect way. Unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Moore really wants you to know he's being clever while throwing around his commentary, there is a not a need and/or desire for annotations. Instead, all the references are as blatant as can be. Moore often calls attention to them vividly that I wondered what was going on. But as I said before, this is due to the expectation that Moore's previous work had left me with. Before the last chapter, I wasn't sure what I had read. I got that Moore was looking at myths, psycho-geography, and to put it too simply, how things change but still stay the same.
But then I got to the final chapter and things coalesced. Removing the writing from the story and into Moore's own life (apparently, as it's obvious Moore is working subjectively with parts throughout the whole book), Moore finishes wrapping up Northampton, filling in the details from the previous chapter's endpoint of 1931, up to 1995. It's a depressing endpoint, Moore laying out a ruined, wasteland-esque town of inadequate council housing, faceless corporate-enveloping sprawl, random acts of deadly violence, and several occurrences relating back to the previous chapters, the town still progressing through time by spinning its wheels. In effect, Moore's book functions as a history of Northampton, prosed up to provide a record of how the town developed into the morass he sees today. His tone in the last chapter is a mix of caring elitism and incredulous scorn. Moore makes sure to mention the laborious nature of the research put into the book, tomes and records dug up that have lost all relevance in their obscurity. But at the same time, Moore goes to ask his uncle about a certain historical event, in of all places, a bingo hall. But then he maintains that he cannot really describe the book to him. Is Moore saying that all the information he dug up is really contained within the unsuspecting people of the town? Yet, somehow they do not have the capacity to understand or utilize it? Does he connect this back to how the denigrating town, and by extension the modern world, has no room for the supernatural or the occult? Or is Moore even talking about any of this? Outside the explanations and recounting, how you feel about the end probably speaks to your ability to tolerate good old fashioned bitching, none more so than when Moore tunes into the television broadcast to crucify all the content it can conjure. Then again, if I had written through Northampton's cycle, fueled by death, deceit, subjugation, misery, decapitation, limping, loss, razing, and burning, I might bitch a little myself. Moore is trapped between revealing the wonders inherent in his environment while being able to manage the horrifying traits of the people, places, and things manifest. I'll let him blow off some steam.
Oh, and the first chapter is written from the perspective of how Moore thought a caveman would process his thoughts. It's equally enlivening and frustrating, and the book has a hard time ever reaching that level of insanity thereafter.
Vanishing Point, directed by Richard Sarafian
Not a whole lot to say. Good car chases, some potentially interesting character dynamics get annihilated by retreaded and awkward exposition dumps, and the landscape of the early 1970s gets equally handled and fumbled, as the movie uses the functional tabula rasa of the main character to throw current events at him. Props to Barry Newman still, who plays the lead like the manufactured and purposefully decent megalomaniac he is, smiling straight into California on Benzedrine, making sure he gives them a hell of a challenge if they're going to grant him his way out.
Elektra: Assassin by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz
Take a trip back in time to a period in comics you might have thought you had figured out from reading Watchmen and Miller's own Dark Knight Returns. Those works are far from the insanity on display here. The book is clearly a tug of war between the creators. You have the steady capsule-gridded panels that Miller flooded Dark Knight with on one page, opposite the functional splash images Sienkiewicz packs into all the panels, splash page or not. Miller often bluntly describes what is happening or what will happen on the page with the narration. It leads to an admirable quality of comprehension mixed with the frenzied metal of Sienkiewicz, but possibly a less interesting comic in the end? I mean, it reads well but Sienkiewicz almost feels throttled, even when he's speeding, like he's on rails. Which makes sense, he's drawing at some basic level from a script, no matter how he develops and presents it. Not to remove Miller's contributions, but Sienkiewicz's style is one that screams for his singular output (yet he's mostly been a collaborator, so what do I know). Then again, the comic is often at it's best when Miller begins to drop in manic, staccato narrative information in disjointed bits that Sienkiewicz distills into images of crushing weight and impact. Two hundred miles an hour is still two hundred miles an hour, no matter if the path is preset or not. Ostensibly chocked with "meaning" given the setting and particulars (Cold War, military industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, US intervention, governmental misconduct), the whole thing instead is a gigantic indictment that never went to trial because all the particulars would've rigged the system if they hadn't blown it to hell beforehand. Forget relevance, says Miller, and look in wonder at how gloriously hatefucked the world is. Revel in the glory and ridiculousness before man initiates judgement day.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg
The Nazis are back ya'll and we threw the Satan slavers to the curb. This is a reboot film for a series that never had any real continuity, following Temple of Doom, which in hindsight went a little too far into brutality according to Spielberg. All because George Lucas got dumped. Way to go George Lucas's wife, you ruined it for us all! Not really, because this is still pretty solid. It unfortunately comes across as a compromise that might even be the right one, sure, but not the best one overall. Nothing here can match the aforementioned misanthropy and organ removal of Temple of Doom, nor the airplane fight scene or the swordman shooting "gag", or really any scene from Raiders. Connery is fine but the familial dynamic is Spielberg ramming how these guys are the same person yet hate each other yet love each other eventually down your throat. See George, don't give up yet! *back slap* Still, the opening sequence is excellent and the Nazi turncoat woman's name is Elsa, which is close to Ilsa, which is a non-turncoat Nazi woman's name in Hellboy, which an awesome comic series that I need to re-read daily. The Last Crusade is good on it's own, but can't hold up to what came before.
Akira Volume 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo
It's a ballsy move when you're close to 600 pages in to basically drop the clear focus of the series in Tetsuo. But that's what Otomo does here. Maybe it suffers a bit, as there's no real mystery over whether or not Tetsuo is dead, but that's not what Otomo is really going for. Instead, every other character gets pushed ahead and motivations are revealed, culminating in the back half of the book being a a meeting point of everyone involved through lots and lots of violence. Unsurprisingly, the storytelling and the action sequencing are excellent, with Otomo solidifying his ability to perfectly lead the eye across the page. But it's the climax that makes it. After spending such a huge amount of time hyping the potential of Akira up, with plenty of moments that were already insanely powerful on their own, Otomo had a lot to deliver on. So he responds by going off for about 20 pages with nothing but wholesale destruction on a city-wide level, splashes and huge panels only. Each page is a pinnacle for him to supersede on the next, until there's nothing left. Except for Tetsuo to show back up on the last page now that Akira is awake. Delivered.
Ghostbusters II, directed by Ivan Reitman
Everyone always talked about Murray as Peter Vankman, but where the hell is the love for Rick Moranis? Ghosts show up and get busted and the writing is good enough to where everyone can be consistently funny and sometimes downright hilarious. And these guys are still having a hell of a time acting this shit. But Rick Moranis? Not a line wasted. These movies are funny and entertaining and there's plenty of room for that.
Akira Volume 4 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Volume 3 dropped Tetsuo and this volume drops Kaneda, which means a huge part of this massive story loses its two main characters for large periods of time but this is different. You always knew Tetsuo was coming back, but when he did it wasn't necessarily what was expected, but that's to Otomo's credit, and it's crystal clear why it's that way when Akira's magnitude is finally revealed. Likewise, it's easy to see that Kaneda is coming back, but he doesn't have the resilience of Tetsuo. So when he reemerges in the supernatural/out of body method, it's...odd, with no indication. When Tetsuo came back, Otomo didn't need to say anything yet ended up just off enough. Further, Kaneda's absence made me realize how much I missed the guy. I've never been a big fan of non-stop wisecracking characters, especially in something as ridiculously catastrophic as Akira. But it turns out Otomo was better off with Kaneda because of the levity he brings to the proceedings. That is the biggest cliche as I'm looking at it on the page, but it rings true because he's such a ludicrous contrast to everyone else that he grounds everything. Instead, lackluster ciphers like Chiyoko get more attention, her entire character being that of a resilient he-woman on the journey of killings. The start of the book is still really strong, as the story jumps forward and everything is just a bit off-kilter, owing to Otomo holding back details that later get fleshed out. Despite the bombastic art being the real draw of this comic, Otomo can nail the smaller moments, like he does with the Colonel throughout the whole volume. And the art is as amazing as ever. While previous editions showed Otomo drawing a dilapidated and degrading cityscape, the constant backdrop to his intimate action sequences, here we have the aftermath of cataclysmic destruction of a whole city. It's a whole new form of architecture porn and Otomo is the tenth dan. This volume wraps up with a classic "storm the castle" scene that alternates between ragtag machine gunners, heat seeking missiles, and the always welcome psychic showdowns. But, Kaneda? Yeah, I miss the dude and this volume drags some because he's MIA. It's not like I'm going to pack it in without getting to the finish, but I could use a re-up.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Grow Up
Sports blogging isn't something I ever planned on doing outside of general MMA stuff. And really this is more hate blogging. Here's the question: when did sports become laughably serious?
Yep, this is coming from a lifelong Kentucky resident who threw off his Tasmanian Devil UK shirt and cried in the floor when the Wildcats lost in overtime in the 1997 national championship. Fortunately times have changed at least a smidgen, and while I rarely miss a UK game, I've become more and more disgusted by the sports landscape. After UK blows a team out by 20 points and I hear endless bitching about how we won but played like shit I start wishing for the return of Billy Gillespie. At least then we had halfway legitimate claims to bitching. If UK doesn't win the national title the whole year is a failure and the team and coaches should be lucky they aren't executed. But that shit is small potatoes compared to this latest greatness from Rodney Harrison.
The short story is at the Patriots post-Super Bowl party, Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light decided to do a little dancing. This is apparently unacceptable because the Patriots lost, DAMN IT! Wallowing in misery is the only acceptable response and if you act in contrast, no matter your other successes, you are misguided at best and offensive at worst. Listen to this garbage:
"When we lost the Super Bowl, any of my Super Bowl losses, I was so devastated the last thing I ever wanted to do was party, let alone dance or take off your shirt," he added. "It's just immaturity. It's not right. He made a mistake and I'm sure he feels absolutely stupid about it at this point. There's a time and place for everything."
Apparently a jovial attitude after a hell of season and a close game doesn't cut it. I feel weird talking about this, because I do think sometimes I take sports too seriously in general. I think that a majority of the disdain shown towards sports fans is sad, insecure elitism. That said, come the fuck on Mr. Harrison. Professional sports players work hard and make sacrifices in return for making damn good money and playing a game for a living. Rob Gronkowski just had one of the greatest seasons a tight end has had in NFL history. I'd say that guy's got a few reasons after the season is over to exhale and bust a move for a bit if he feels like it.
Harrison again:
Yep, this is coming from a lifelong Kentucky resident who threw off his Tasmanian Devil UK shirt and cried in the floor when the Wildcats lost in overtime in the 1997 national championship. Fortunately times have changed at least a smidgen, and while I rarely miss a UK game, I've become more and more disgusted by the sports landscape. After UK blows a team out by 20 points and I hear endless bitching about how we won but played like shit I start wishing for the return of Billy Gillespie. At least then we had halfway legitimate claims to bitching. If UK doesn't win the national title the whole year is a failure and the team and coaches should be lucky they aren't executed. But that shit is small potatoes compared to this latest greatness from Rodney Harrison.
The short story is at the Patriots post-Super Bowl party, Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light decided to do a little dancing. This is apparently unacceptable because the Patriots lost, DAMN IT! Wallowing in misery is the only acceptable response and if you act in contrast, no matter your other successes, you are misguided at best and offensive at worst. Listen to this garbage:
"When we lost the Super Bowl, any of my Super Bowl losses, I was so devastated the last thing I ever wanted to do was party, let alone dance or take off your shirt," he added. "It's just immaturity. It's not right. He made a mistake and I'm sure he feels absolutely stupid about it at this point. There's a time and place for everything."
Apparently a jovial attitude after a hell of season and a close game doesn't cut it. I feel weird talking about this, because I do think sometimes I take sports too seriously in general. I think that a majority of the disdain shown towards sports fans is sad, insecure elitism. That said, come the fuck on Mr. Harrison. Professional sports players work hard and make sacrifices in return for making damn good money and playing a game for a living. Rob Gronkowski just had one of the greatest seasons a tight end has had in NFL history. I'd say that guy's got a few reasons after the season is over to exhale and bust a move for a bit if he feels like it.
Harrison again:
"The leadership has to step up and someone has to pull [Gronkowski] to the side and say, 'Look young man, this is inappropriate, this is not the time nor the place. You need to grow up,'" Harrison said. "And that's what it comes down to. I like this kid. I think he's a good kid, works hard, is unselfish. But he made a mistake ...
Grow up? I know that competition at the highest level is going to be taken very seriously. Maybe if Gronkowski had been remixing the Super Bowl Shuffle during a close game on the sideline somebody somewhere might have a point (then again I remember the Derek Anderson debacle from a while back, so yeah, nevermind). Unfortunately for Harrison making any sense is the fact that the game and the season were over! Is there some mandatory grief period where the fun machine is temporarily deactivated? This isn't the followup to a funeral. Grow up? No thanks if this is what's in store, somebody bust out that giraffe and that dumbass song we all sung until they quit running the ads.
Harrison to play us out: "There's a certain way of representing yourself and your family and that's not the right way."
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH LIGHT AND GRONKOWSKI'S FAMILIES? Oh no, pro football has absorbed the UFC/boxing standby of invoking family every second so we can over saturate your brain to the point where when you hear family, the only one you wish you were a part of is the Mansons. I think at this point we've taken the "Team as Family" concept way too far! "This guy is dancing! I KNOW SOME KIDDOS THAT AREN'T COMING TO THE NEXT SLEEPOVER! HIS WIFE WAS ALWAYS GANGBANG FODDER!"
Just quit, please.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Fun Formalism
(FYI, it's not that formalism is intrinsically not fun, it's just that it's formalism)
So Brandon Graham posted a link to the torrent of his recently-concluded comic series King City from Image. It's really good and has been written about by plenty of people better than me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but the one that stuck with me the most was from a backup story in the second issue. Check out these first two panels.
So Brandon Graham posted a link to the torrent of his recently-concluded comic series King City from Image. It's really good and has been written about by plenty of people better than me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but the one that stuck with me the most was from a backup story in the second issue. Check out these first two panels.
They knocked me on my ass. Formalism is a slippery slope. I remember the sequences from Asterios Polyp where Mazzucchelli was screaming COMICS on the page so loud that sometimes I just wanted to tune him out, despite the mastery on display. Graham substitutes screaming with subdued effortlessness. While Mazzucchelli wanted to make sure you knew about all the tricks the medium was capable of, Graham cares only about using those tricks to do cool shit. When I read this sequence, it took me straight out of the flow of the story and the panels, just like when I read the Asterios Poly sequences, except the above gave me a huge grin, while Asterios Polyp left me staring at the page. Both are showing off in a sense, but Graham comes off like a guy you could talk to about ridiculous comics stuff all day, while Mazzucchelli would be too busy presenting a research paper at an academic conference.
Is there anyone out there making comics having more fun than Brandon Graham? If you're up for a fool's chase, start looking.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Mean Streets: Small Time is Fun Time
I haven't seen all of Martin Scorcese's movies, which is my fault. But of the ones I have seen, this one stands out for, surprisingly, it's relentless humor that stems from its hyperbolic characters endlessly crashing into the invisible walls around them. A lot of the usual is present: New York, Catholicism, Italian-Americans, and the life of crime on the street. It's the last one that's most important. At the start of the movie, Harvey Keitel narrates, "You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets."
Speaking of narration, Keitel doesn't quite get into unreliable narrator territory. Delusional narrator might be better, which I guess is unreliable in its own way, but Keitel as Charlie isn't what I think when I use the term. He's not hiding anything from the viewer, just himself. There's no buried secret or big plot twist. He's just often full of shit when he talks to you. Okay, yeah, he's unreliable, I give up. Scorcese (and his co-writer Mardik Martin) is probably just as unreliable, naming the film "Mean Streets" when the group of guys that walk those streets are insulated and removed from what you expect when you see the words Mean Streets combined with Scorcese (oddly enough that might be a reaction that stems from everything that Scorcese did after this, ie every other movie he's made). Let me draw my own parallel (as if everything before is Scorcese's crystal clear vision that I'm reading off Wikipedia). It's purgatory, one of Scorcese's often-called upon themes, now affecting the living.
All the characters are stuck in templates that associate with the streets. We have a lower Mob member (Keitel as Charlie), loan shark (Richard Romanus as Michael), and a bar owner (David Proval as Tony) on one side overlapped with a colossal screw up/debtor who slips in and out with all of them (Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy). We get to see the most of Keitel and how he relates and interacts with everyone. It's there from the start, where he talks about how meaningless the church is and is then immediately there alone. It might be meaningless, but he can't move on by cutting himself off or just accepting it. Charlie can't make a stand on his relationship with his girlfriend because it goes against the wishes of his uncle who holds the key to his upward mobility in the mob, despite having real feelings. Most notoriously he can't jettison Johnny Boy, who owes money all over town and is the personification of dead weight walking. Too bad that dead weight is hilariously entertaining and an outlet for him. But it's not just Charlie. The main group of four characters seem like teenagers playing gangster, dipping their toes in but making sure to get the hell out before anything serious happens. They have their petty conflicts and arguments, but then they're out messing around, off being in and around oddball trouble and skirting away from the cops.
But no matter how careful you are you can get sucked in or trapped. The characters seemingly are in a holding pattern, but little things cause them to break it. Since Charlie wants to appear serious and stay in the good graces of his uncle, he won't be seen not only with his girlfriend with epilepsy, who is disapproved of, but with Michael in front of his uncle, who's waiting for payment from Johnny Boy on debts. They're all pawns, but Charlie doesn't want to show his uncle his other buddies, because then he might realize he's just like them. For his part, Michael is willing to let the debts grow and grow and take Charlie's promises that Johnny Boy will get back on track. Charlie is unwilling to compromise on Johnny Boy to an asinine degree. Yet amidst all this is more running in place, goofballs who want to declare their membership entering through the side door. Charlie approaches one of the girls he fancies that dances at Tony's about being the hostess at the restaurant he's about to acquire (through no action of his own, by the way) and sets up a meeting with her at a place afterwards which he promptly jettisons while in the cab as he drives by. The guy can't even have a real affair! Tony has a tiger in a cage in the back room of his place. Not as a power symbol or anything, but so he can get in the cage and cuddle with the motherfucker! Michael accosts Charlie's girlfriend about Johnny Boy's whereabouts, knocking the groceries out of his hand before she runs him off. Oh, did I mention he picks up the groceries for her and puts them back in the bag?! These guys can't even shake down a woman for God's sake! All of this belies a point: Mean Streets is hilarious.
Some of it is clearly intentional, some maybe not. But I certainly found myself cracking up out loud much more than I would have expected, and the majority of it was non-cynical (a first?). Two scenes stand out. In the first, the four go to a bookie who hasn't paid the return on a bet he owes for Tony I believe (it might be an unnamed guy, I watched this four days ago and should've done this sooner, but I'm lazy/I suck). Everything starts out okay in a underground pool hall until Johnny Boy sets off a brawl. I'm almost lukewarm to call it that because the entire scene is ridiculously awkward, and not in a realistic manner. It's more like the fights I saw in high school, where people jumped around, avoided contact if at all possible, and blustered more than injured (except for that one time a guy I went to high school with repeatedly smashed a guy's head into a dumpster...he's a later Scorcese guy I guess). It also reminded me of a theater production, except it was choreographed by a drunk. And what happens? Everybody makes up when the cops show up and it's all good. The other is when something occurs (shaky ground, I think a shooting, which I'm going to get to) and everybody flees the scene, with two gay patrons from the bar forcing themselves into the car with the four others. While the former was stilted, this is plain comedy, with everyone being either nervous, appalled, drunk, horny, or a combination. I cracked up through this whole thing, until the two non-treehouse members get booted unceremoniously.
So we have characters stuck in the junior version of a hostile environment. They might be okay with it, but at some point someone is going to barely cross out of the safe zone. Except in a case where tension is building by inches, it explodes. Michael finally comes after Johnny Boy and then the blood finally flows, in a precursor to a scene involving two of the same actors three years later in Taxi Driver. But even when the blood flows and someone has actually done something, the ambulance is there to play us out. Because it's too late for all of them. The barriers are there, inescapable, and the streets are keen to insure the status quo. Oh, and that shooting? Everyone is in the bar doing nothing and David Carradine is drunk as shit laying on the bar. A random kid comes in and sits. Carradine rolls off and lurches into the bathroom, where he is promptly shot in the back by the kid. However, Carradine doesn't care. He assaults his attacker, following him out in the street until he tackles him with his dying breath after the kid empties all six shells from the revolver. Here we have a man tanked to the gills, who takes six bullets while he gives his last breaths trying to enact equal punishment on his attacker. He's committed, unwavering, and pushing through the worst of what the streets have to offer. He's everything that everyone else in Mean Street's isn't, what they do and don't want to be.
Speaking of narration, Keitel doesn't quite get into unreliable narrator territory. Delusional narrator might be better, which I guess is unreliable in its own way, but Keitel as Charlie isn't what I think when I use the term. He's not hiding anything from the viewer, just himself. There's no buried secret or big plot twist. He's just often full of shit when he talks to you. Okay, yeah, he's unreliable, I give up. Scorcese (and his co-writer Mardik Martin) is probably just as unreliable, naming the film "Mean Streets" when the group of guys that walk those streets are insulated and removed from what you expect when you see the words Mean Streets combined with Scorcese (oddly enough that might be a reaction that stems from everything that Scorcese did after this, ie every other movie he's made). Let me draw my own parallel (as if everything before is Scorcese's crystal clear vision that I'm reading off Wikipedia). It's purgatory, one of Scorcese's often-called upon themes, now affecting the living.
All the characters are stuck in templates that associate with the streets. We have a lower Mob member (Keitel as Charlie), loan shark (Richard Romanus as Michael), and a bar owner (David Proval as Tony) on one side overlapped with a colossal screw up/debtor who slips in and out with all of them (Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy). We get to see the most of Keitel and how he relates and interacts with everyone. It's there from the start, where he talks about how meaningless the church is and is then immediately there alone. It might be meaningless, but he can't move on by cutting himself off or just accepting it. Charlie can't make a stand on his relationship with his girlfriend because it goes against the wishes of his uncle who holds the key to his upward mobility in the mob, despite having real feelings. Most notoriously he can't jettison Johnny Boy, who owes money all over town and is the personification of dead weight walking. Too bad that dead weight is hilariously entertaining and an outlet for him. But it's not just Charlie. The main group of four characters seem like teenagers playing gangster, dipping their toes in but making sure to get the hell out before anything serious happens. They have their petty conflicts and arguments, but then they're out messing around, off being in and around oddball trouble and skirting away from the cops.
But no matter how careful you are you can get sucked in or trapped. The characters seemingly are in a holding pattern, but little things cause them to break it. Since Charlie wants to appear serious and stay in the good graces of his uncle, he won't be seen not only with his girlfriend with epilepsy, who is disapproved of, but with Michael in front of his uncle, who's waiting for payment from Johnny Boy on debts. They're all pawns, but Charlie doesn't want to show his uncle his other buddies, because then he might realize he's just like them. For his part, Michael is willing to let the debts grow and grow and take Charlie's promises that Johnny Boy will get back on track. Charlie is unwilling to compromise on Johnny Boy to an asinine degree. Yet amidst all this is more running in place, goofballs who want to declare their membership entering through the side door. Charlie approaches one of the girls he fancies that dances at Tony's about being the hostess at the restaurant he's about to acquire (through no action of his own, by the way) and sets up a meeting with her at a place afterwards which he promptly jettisons while in the cab as he drives by. The guy can't even have a real affair! Tony has a tiger in a cage in the back room of his place. Not as a power symbol or anything, but so he can get in the cage and cuddle with the motherfucker! Michael accosts Charlie's girlfriend about Johnny Boy's whereabouts, knocking the groceries out of his hand before she runs him off. Oh, did I mention he picks up the groceries for her and puts them back in the bag?! These guys can't even shake down a woman for God's sake! All of this belies a point: Mean Streets is hilarious.
Some of it is clearly intentional, some maybe not. But I certainly found myself cracking up out loud much more than I would have expected, and the majority of it was non-cynical (a first?). Two scenes stand out. In the first, the four go to a bookie who hasn't paid the return on a bet he owes for Tony I believe (it might be an unnamed guy, I watched this four days ago and should've done this sooner, but I'm lazy/I suck). Everything starts out okay in a underground pool hall until Johnny Boy sets off a brawl. I'm almost lukewarm to call it that because the entire scene is ridiculously awkward, and not in a realistic manner. It's more like the fights I saw in high school, where people jumped around, avoided contact if at all possible, and blustered more than injured (except for that one time a guy I went to high school with repeatedly smashed a guy's head into a dumpster...he's a later Scorcese guy I guess). It also reminded me of a theater production, except it was choreographed by a drunk. And what happens? Everybody makes up when the cops show up and it's all good. The other is when something occurs (shaky ground, I think a shooting, which I'm going to get to) and everybody flees the scene, with two gay patrons from the bar forcing themselves into the car with the four others. While the former was stilted, this is plain comedy, with everyone being either nervous, appalled, drunk, horny, or a combination. I cracked up through this whole thing, until the two non-treehouse members get booted unceremoniously.
So we have characters stuck in the junior version of a hostile environment. They might be okay with it, but at some point someone is going to barely cross out of the safe zone. Except in a case where tension is building by inches, it explodes. Michael finally comes after Johnny Boy and then the blood finally flows, in a precursor to a scene involving two of the same actors three years later in Taxi Driver. But even when the blood flows and someone has actually done something, the ambulance is there to play us out. Because it's too late for all of them. The barriers are there, inescapable, and the streets are keen to insure the status quo. Oh, and that shooting? Everyone is in the bar doing nothing and David Carradine is drunk as shit laying on the bar. A random kid comes in and sits. Carradine rolls off and lurches into the bathroom, where he is promptly shot in the back by the kid. However, Carradine doesn't care. He assaults his attacker, following him out in the street until he tackles him with his dying breath after the kid empties all six shells from the revolver. Here we have a man tanked to the gills, who takes six bullets while he gives his last breaths trying to enact equal punishment on his attacker. He's committed, unwavering, and pushing through the worst of what the streets have to offer. He's everything that everyone else in Mean Street's isn't, what they do and don't want to be.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Call of Duty: Black Ops/Template 1 (Version 4.0)
1. Hundreds of guys vs 4 (we fixed the infinite respawn problem, so it's all cool now)
2. Follow until the leader stops moving for some reason and then you're supposed to move up and take charge all of a sudden.
3. Stealthily kill between 3 and 6 enemies before you are discovered/outnumbered. Standard fighting against regular guys commences.
4. Explosion/non-interactive event leads to blurry fall, disorientation, regain composure/awareness just in time to: get saved by ally, save ally with handgun, run to escaping vehicle, or get beat up by non-ally.
5. Shoot regular guys until: mounted machine gun, enemy vehicle, or heavy fire from structure occurs. Proceed to pick up explosive ordnance conveniently lying on the ground and blow it up. Resume shooting regular guys.
6. Enter vehicle. Blow up other vehicles and regular guys until vehicle is destroyed.
7. See Step 4.
8. Listen to stupidly stereotypical bad guys (probability: 45% Russian, 45% German, 10% Asian) speak perfect English in stupidly stereotypical accents. Note: If bad guy is Asian, perfect English requirement is lifted. Stupidly stereotypical accent still applies.
9. Enter the Matrix temporarily and shoot guys. Quickly leave the Matrix.
10. Apply list to next mission.
2. Follow until the leader stops moving for some reason and then you're supposed to move up and take charge all of a sudden.
3. Stealthily kill between 3 and 6 enemies before you are discovered/outnumbered. Standard fighting against regular guys commences.
4. Explosion/non-interactive event leads to blurry fall, disorientation, regain composure/awareness just in time to: get saved by ally, save ally with handgun, run to escaping vehicle, or get beat up by non-ally.
5. Shoot regular guys until: mounted machine gun, enemy vehicle, or heavy fire from structure occurs. Proceed to pick up explosive ordnance conveniently lying on the ground and blow it up. Resume shooting regular guys.
6. Enter vehicle. Blow up other vehicles and regular guys until vehicle is destroyed.
7. See Step 4.
8. Listen to stupidly stereotypical bad guys (probability: 45% Russian, 45% German, 10% Asian) speak perfect English in stupidly stereotypical accents. Note: If bad guy is Asian, perfect English requirement is lifted. Stupidly stereotypical accent still applies.
9. Enter the Matrix temporarily and shoot guys. Quickly leave the Matrix.
10. Apply list to next mission.
Friday, July 15, 2011
They Live: Or How Roddy Piper Gave Up the American Dream by Beating Up Keith David
Caveat: None of this makes sense, but a few quick words on the alley fight scene from They Live.
"I still believe in the American dream. Everybody goes through tough times." Nada (Piper) says something to this effect early on to Frank (David) while they stare at the city from the slums. Let's get half-assed political real quick. They Live came out in 1988, in the very last twilight of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America". Collectivism was getting the tar beaten out of it. Nada discovers a crazy conspiracy and has to let other people know, Frank being the one he desires first because he has something of a relationship with him. But how does someone who in an individualist, and not even a strictly hardline one at that, go about getting someone to do something? They can tell them but they won't do it for them. Similar to how the the government was getting deregulated and the safety net was getting the axe (even though the state was still getting bigger). Get your ass in gear but don't expect much help if you can't.
Therefore, "Put on the glasses." Nada says it over and over when he has the upper hand in the fight scene. There are countless times when he could just force them over his eyes and the problem is solved but that isn't how he wants it to go down. He wants Frank to do it for himself. Back and forth they go. And finally, Nada just puts the glasses on him. He's finally given up on what he believed. It seems easy to think that happened earlier when the police destroyed the slums where he resided and enacted beatdowns on the inhabitants. But no, there's still room to maneuver. After all, the police are a protective side of the government. They might be a bit draconian, but they're on our side and the government's side. At the same time they're a functionary of a society that is corrupted and part of the state that apparently hasn't been hit by the deregulation bug. But Frank? He's just one man, working hard to support a family and minding his own business. He's the mold of the single go-getter. Sure, he complains about his situation, he's skeptical, but he's the one getting shit done. Nada is similar, he just has the rug pulled out from under him so harshly and quickly that he doesn't know how to react. He's also much more curious than skeptical, which is what gets him into trouble to start with. They're close enough to where it makes sense for them to paradoxically team up, so Nada knows he has to get to Frank eventually. Society, government, consumerism...sure, they're all manufactured lies. But a man like Frank? Nada knows he's as real as it gets, so he can only push him so far. The individual is still alive. Until Frank, in the ultimate act of individualism, refuses to cave. He fights and fights but he won't put on the glasses. So eventually Nada puts the glasses on him. Then the dream is dead.
"I still believe in the American dream. Everybody goes through tough times." Nada (Piper) says something to this effect early on to Frank (David) while they stare at the city from the slums. Let's get half-assed political real quick. They Live came out in 1988, in the very last twilight of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America". Collectivism was getting the tar beaten out of it. Nada discovers a crazy conspiracy and has to let other people know, Frank being the one he desires first because he has something of a relationship with him. But how does someone who in an individualist, and not even a strictly hardline one at that, go about getting someone to do something? They can tell them but they won't do it for them. Similar to how the the government was getting deregulated and the safety net was getting the axe (even though the state was still getting bigger). Get your ass in gear but don't expect much help if you can't.
Therefore, "Put on the glasses." Nada says it over and over when he has the upper hand in the fight scene. There are countless times when he could just force them over his eyes and the problem is solved but that isn't how he wants it to go down. He wants Frank to do it for himself. Back and forth they go. And finally, Nada just puts the glasses on him. He's finally given up on what he believed. It seems easy to think that happened earlier when the police destroyed the slums where he resided and enacted beatdowns on the inhabitants. But no, there's still room to maneuver. After all, the police are a protective side of the government. They might be a bit draconian, but they're on our side and the government's side. At the same time they're a functionary of a society that is corrupted and part of the state that apparently hasn't been hit by the deregulation bug. But Frank? He's just one man, working hard to support a family and minding his own business. He's the mold of the single go-getter. Sure, he complains about his situation, he's skeptical, but he's the one getting shit done. Nada is similar, he just has the rug pulled out from under him so harshly and quickly that he doesn't know how to react. He's also much more curious than skeptical, which is what gets him into trouble to start with. They're close enough to where it makes sense for them to paradoxically team up, so Nada knows he has to get to Frank eventually. Society, government, consumerism...sure, they're all manufactured lies. But a man like Frank? Nada knows he's as real as it gets, so he can only push him so far. The individual is still alive. Until Frank, in the ultimate act of individualism, refuses to cave. He fights and fights but he won't put on the glasses. So eventually Nada puts the glasses on him. Then the dream is dead.
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