Random Video featuring Master Billy Quizboy

Spoilers

Last Friday's Doctor Who episode referenced the idea of "spoilers" a few times and it got me to thinking about them both in terms of fiction and in life.

When it comes to big, highly anticipated movies, popular TV shows, or books spoilers are frequently everywhere. Personally I tend to think most art is better if you go into it clean, but I still sometimes can't help myself from clicking that link somewhere on the web that's going to tell me what happens at the end of the movie. Most of the time it doesn't really matter, in most movies or TV shows, the trip is as important as the destination, so even if you know where the story ends you can still get some enjoyment from it.

But what if you could have spoilers for real life? If you could look into the future and see if that new job is going to work out or how other life decisions turn out. One could conceivably live a life without mistakes. My question is, would that be a good thing? I tend to think not. The risk of things going disastrously wrong is part of what makes life exciting. That said, if I had access to these life spoilers, could I resist them any better than I can resist finding out what's going to happen in "The Dark Knight"? Probably not.

Speaking of spoilers, I love this shirt.

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Politics and Religion

So, it's a slow night and I'm watching a movie on TCM, "The Best Man" released in 1964. It's about two presidential candidates fighting for the nomination of their party and how dirty the process can get. There's a scene early on, where the dying ex-president is talking to the candidate played by Henry Fonda and the two men are talking about the dance they have to do for the public regarding religion. Neither man is particularly religious; when asked "Do you believe in God?" the Henry Fonda character evades the question by saying he's a member of the Episcopal Church (trying to imply that he believes without coming out and saying it). Of course, he's got to play this game because it would be impossible for a non-believer to win.

The scene still has resonance today, and begs the question, why do we require our leaders to publicly demonstrate their religious faith in order to get elected? I can understand wanting to know a candidates faith, as it may shed some light on what influences a candidate's decisions, but why do so many voters see religious faith as a requirement of office? And what exactly does this requirement mean? Could a Jewish candidate be elected president? Muslim (probably not given the current climate)? Buddhist? Taoist? Agnostic? Atheist?

Just a question that I'm wondering about in this election year.

Frappr Map

I just wanted to play around with this a little bit. I encourage anyone who visits to put a pin in the map.

Historical Trivia

I've been reading a book about FDR recently (Franklin and Lucy by Joseph E. Persico). It's a very interesting book as a whole, but my eye was caught by a tiny piece of trivia that was mentioned in passing and not particularly important, but it was something that I had never known before. Apparently FDR had a miniature pig collection. That just blows my mind. Sometimes it's easy to forget that these larger than life historical figures, like Roosevelt, were people and had the usual human compliment of quirks, like collecting pig miniatures.

Random Video featuring Dr. Horrible

I discovered this teaster over on Ain't It Cool News.


Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Being a fan of pretty much everything Joss Whedon has worked on from "Toy Story" to his recently completed run on "Astonishing X-Men", I'm going to have to check this out.

"I'll take Creepy Directors for $1000, Alex."

Read this. Equal parts hilariously funny and terribly offensive.

So, why exactly is it necessary for Sienna Miller to sport falsies to play the Baroness. Is he casting a movie or staffing a Hooters. I was a big fan of the G.I. Joe cartoon, comics, and toys as a kid and I don't remember the Baroness as being particularly busty. Is it somehow important to the story, does some crucial story beat that hinges on the Baroness's cup size?

Assuming there is some necessity for a big-breasted Baroness (the alliteration is almost justification enough), is this the best way to broach the subject with your actress? "I like girls with big boobs." Stephen Sommers, you're a class act.

Anticipation Builds

I'm am getting so psyched to see "The Dark Knight". "Batman Begins" continues to stand for me as the best of the superhero movie adaptations (though, this year's "Iron Man" is a very close second) and I'm hoping that the sequel will surpass the original. Of course, as this image reminds me, the anticipation is tinged with sadness as this will be one of the last times we'll be able the see Heath Ledger on the screen.

Random Video featuring Flight of the Conchords

On a lighter note...

My Comfort Zone

Generally speaking, I'm fairly permissive when it comes to issues of sex and relationships. My take is, if everyone is of age and consents they should feel free to do whatever makes them happy. More to the point, if I'm not involved in the relationship, then who gives a shit what I think about it? No one with a well-developed sense of self, that's for sure.

However, when a specific issue is brought up, it is hard not to think about it and make a judgement, regardless of how irrelevant my judgement may be on the matter. A friend of mine recently mentioned a problem with someone being judgemental about a relationship choice. I'm going to have to be a little oblique here out of respect for privacy (hopefully I'm being oblique enough to avoid pissing anyone off while still conveying enough information to make this readable), suffice to say, the choice is outside the norm, but not so unusual as to be unexplored territory or even particularly shocking. While it was easy for me to offer a supportive and sincere response to the issue at hand, my mind immediately started making its own judgements on the relationship, and while my opinion wasn't a negative one, it wasn't one of resounding support either.

Ultimately, I suppose I could let myself off the hook by saying that the judgement boils down to the choice simply not being for me. Not the path I would take, but then, no one asked, so why does that matter. Again, who gives a shit what I think about the relationship in question; what I find interesting is that, for all my claims (very sincere claims I believe) to open mindedness and respecting others' choices, there's still a part of me that is inclined to make snap judgements. And I don't say that to condemn that part of me. If it affected the way I treat people, then it would be worth condemning, but it doesn't and I suppose it's harmless to have an opinion about something that is really none of my business.

As I sit here thinking about it, I think maybe this tendency to judge comes from the way I tend to see people, as stories. I'm sure that's a horribly sociopathic way to think about other people, but when I meet someone I tend to be less interested in his/her now than I am in where he came from or where she's going. And, of course, all stories call on us to make judgements about the choices of the characters.

Or maybe I'm just full of it. Hard to say. At the end of the day, this is all just so much naval gazing, but a little naval gazing now and then can be useful.

Apologies to anyone who might be offended by my "talking out of school" so to speak. You probably know who you are.

Must...Buy...Wii

As if the lure of Wii Sports wasn't enough . . .

LucasArts is coming out with a game that lets you wield the Wiimote as a lightsaber. I practiced for this game throughout my childhood. I must play it.

Collaborative Fiction

When I was a kid scouring back issue bins I came across a few issues of a series called DC Challenge. The idea was simple, each issue would end in a cliffhanger and the next issue a new creative team would come in and continue the story. The comic was about as bad as you'd imagine it would be, but there was still something appealing about it, there was a sense of fun to this creative hand-off that was irresistible to me. This was my first exposure to the idea of collaborative fiction.

This isn't, of course, a novel idea. Collaborative fiction existed before DC Challenge and continues to exist. Do a Google search and you can find a number of these projects around the web. And there are role playing games. In high school I had a group of friends who were in to RPGs and who drew me into their gaming sessions. It was the storytelling aspect of these games that appealed to me (because, lord knows, I couldn't be bothered to learn any of the rules) and looking back I really regret that it didn't occur to me to record those games in some way and then go back and write them up as stories.

Anyway,the point of this trip down memory lane is that I've gotten the idea of collaborative fiction on my mind. It popped into my head in the shower this morning (the shower, of course, is the place where all good ideas reside, waiting to reveal themselves). So, now I've got an itch to start a project of my own (because, as it turns out, I'm far too egotistical to merely contribute to one the the existing projects I referred to earlier). It would be easy enough to set up a website and establish the rules for contributing. The obstacle is that, unlike this or my haiku blog where it doesn't really matter if anyone actually visits, the collaborative part of collaborative fiction means that some web traffic would be a necessity. How can I drive traffic? It's a bit of a puzzle for one as shy and retiring as myself, one that I'll have to give some further thought.

Updates as they are warranted.

RIP George Carlin 1937-2008

The New Classics?

So, Entertainment Weekly has been making top 100 lists of "New Classics", books, movies, TV shows made since 1983. I tend not to devote much headspace to this sort of thing since, while they're fun to take a look at when the pop up, lists like this are always complete and utter bullshit. That said, there was one thing on this list that puzzled me a bit. Sitting right in the middle at #50 was Baywatch.

Baywatch? Really? This was the 100 best right? Baywatch had its (surgically enhanced) charms, I suppose, but great television it was not.

Five Comics for People Who Don't Read Comics

I've always loved trying to recommend comics to people I know who don't read them. Unfortunately, it can be hard to work naturally into a conversation. So, rather than try to force-feed recommendations to friends I think I'll just put some up here from time to time. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just the first five that occurred to me.

1. "Bone" by Jeff Smith
I've seen this series get described as Disney meets Lord of the Rings (in a good way). I think a more accurate description might be Walt Kelley's Pogo meets Arthurian Legend. The great thing about Bone is, that it's accessible to younger readers, but has enough complexity to it to be a satisfying read for older readers as well. I read this comic years ago as it was coming out in individual issues. It was bi-monthly for most of its run and the wait between issues could be excruciating. At some point I'm going to have to get the One Volume Edition and see how the series reads all at once.

2. "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen
Mouse Guard is a lot like Bone in that, if you just take a surface glance at it you see a bunch of mice running around with medieval weapons and dress and dismiss it as a kiddie book. What keeps the book from being that is that Petersen takes his characters seriously. They talk and act like you would expect people to talk and act and they live in a deadly serious world with none of the silly conventions you might find in a typical "funny animal" book.

3. "Strangers in Paradise" by Terry Moore
Strangers in Paradise (or SiP as it is sometimes referred) is a difficult series to describe. Quite a lot happened over the course of the series, tragedy, triumph, flash forwards, flashbacks, bits of prose mixed in here and there, a side-trip or two outside the main characters, even an ongoing plot involving a powerful criminal syndicate. Ultimately, though, it all boils down to the relationship between the two main characters, Francine and Katchoo. This comics is all about the characters and their complicated, ever-changing relationships with each other.

4. "Sandman Mystery Theater"
I had a little trouble coming up with a "by" line for this comic. Over the course of its run, Sandman Mystery Theater had two different writers and at least a couple of different artists. That said, the quality of the series remained high throughout the run of the series. Sandman Mystery Theater straddles the line between noir-ish crime comic and standard superhero comic. The Sandman of the title is a costumed adventurer from the '30's (when these stories are set), who has what I think is the coolest costume in all of hero-dom (consisting of a fedora, gas mask, business suit and trench coat), but this series puts him in a very real, very dark and grimy world. Sandman is typically paired against serial killers and other "normal" psychopaths rather than the costumed loonies superheroes normally face, and true to its title, there is usually a true mystery to be solved in resolving the case of each storyline.

5. "DC: The New Frontier" by Darwyn Cooke
This comic is the closest to a traditional superhero story that I've put on this list. The story takes DC's Silver Age superheroes (Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, etc.) and shows their emergence and coming together to face a threat to all mankind (like I said, traditional superhero stuff). The story is set at the time these characters originally made their appearances in comics, the 1950's, so it takes the light-hearted superhero adventure and layers on the troubles of the real world at the time; the Korean War, the Cold War, HUAC, racial discrimination, and instability in Southeast Asia. It makes for a wonderfully rich story and has already been adapted into an animated film "Justice League: The New Frontier."

Fun with Math

So, I came across this article in today's paper. I'll let other folks discuss the societal implications of the actual content of the news story, what caught my eye was the second paragraph:

School officials in this hard-luck New England fishing town say an alarming 17 girls - four times the usual number - became pregnant this year.

This awoke the math teacher in me (who had been hibernating for the summer). Unless the school has 0.25 of a student get pregnant every year 17 is not four times the usual number. Seventeen may be four times the average, or about four times the usual number, but, since four does not go evenly into 17 and since I've never heard of a fractional person getting pregnant, it is not four times the usual number.

There. Done. Persnickety math teacher going back into sleep mode.

Random Video featuring Cookie Monster

I'm with Stephen; Cookie Monster is a traitor to the cause.

To Shave or Not to Shave

I'm seriously considering shaving my head, largely because I hate getting haircuts and am pretty lazy about my hair upkeep. I do wash it (I'm a very clean slob), but not much else...I tend to have mad-scientist hair most of the time (on the good days, on the bad days it's more middle-age accountant hair).

The main thing stopping me from taking the plunge is fear. Two fears to be precise:

1. That it won't grow back.

2. That I'll discover that I've got a funny shaped head. A strange bump or dent perhaps.

Oh, and I'm afraid I'd end up looking a bit too much like Bobby from "King of the Hill"

Movie Review: Get Smart

I wasn't sure what to expect from "Get Smart" when I walked into the theater. I never really watched the TV show on which it was based and the trailers I had seen were fairly bland (though the clip they've been using as a "turn off your cell phones" ad is pretty funny). But the cast was really strong and the basic premise seemed like it might be funny. I'm happy to report that I ended up really enjoying myself while watching this movie.

Not to take anything away from the script, which shows some nice craft in the way it layers in little details that end up paying off later, or the director who did a good job of staging everything, but this one is all about the casting. Steve Carell wisely avoids an imitation of Don Adams and instead plays the character his own way. His Maxwell Smart is a super-competent analyst who is less incompetent than naive in the ways of the field agent (naivete of some sort seems to be a common trait of most of Carell's characters), and Carell brings his usual comedic charm to the role. Anne Hathaway is, of course, ridiculously hot, but she's also an excellent actress (see Brokeback Mountain) who, as it turns out, has some good comedy chops as well. And who knew that "The Rock" was funny? Are we still calling him "The Rock" or can I just call him Dwayne Johnson now, either way he was great in his roll as CONTROL's resident super-agent. And, of course, there's Alan Arkin. One of my favorite moments from the film is when Arkin's character gets into a rumble with the Vice-President at a national security meeting.

It was not a perfect movie by any means, but the flaws were all relatively minor, and the laugh to groan ratio of the jokes was very good. So, overall, I feel that "Get Smart" was well worth my time.

Tee-Hee

I know it's horribly immature, but whenever I see this comic I always have to giggle (in a completely masculine way, of course).

In a similar vein, there's this news story.

Random Video featuring THE NOZZLE!

Rampant Hypocrisy

So I was mentioning my humble blog here to a couple of friends, in a shameless bid for attention, and it got me to thinking. I've decided that the fact that someone like me can freely and easily publish a blog is a prime example of what is wrong with the internet.

I don't so much have a problem with the idea that anyone anywhere can post whatever's on their mind at anytime. On paper (or electrons as it were) that seems like a wonderfully democratic idea. Power to the people and all that. And I'm not particularly interested in the reporting vs. rumor-mongering conflict; I'll leave that one to actual journalists. No, the problem as I see it is this: Here I sit sending the floatsam and jetsam of my mind off into the world but there's no obligation on my part to justify my blog's existance by, oh I don't know, attracting readers. I'm all for self-indulgence, but all I'm really doing here is making the signal to noise ratio of the internet worse. And let's face it, the internet is already 50% noise (along with 49% porn and 1% useful information (hmm, should porn be counted as useful information?)).

This of course does not mean I plan to delete my blog and retreat back into the aether (that would be the hypocrisy part of the title). While I love the net, I also hate it a little bit, so making it worse doesn't really bother me all that much. So I guess I'll continue to sporadically strike a blow for my inner Luddite by continuing to waste bandwidth.

Ugh.

Seriously? This is how we're going to do this one?

So, I saw this on Warren Ellis' site yesterday. Apparently this button, along with a couple others equally offensive, was being sold at a state Republican Convention recently. Now, I'm not going to play the political game of trying to paint all Republicans with the bigot brush because of this. I'm certain that most folks opposing Obama do so on the basis of legitimate differences of policy or ideology. But how is it that the state party in question allowed this sort of thing to be offered for sale at all? It certainly doesn't reflect well on them.

Now, I'll admit I don't have to whole story here. Maybe the folks selling these buttons were run out of the convention on a rail in short due to the outrage of the majority of conventioneers. That's what I hope happened at least. I'd hate to think that no one at the convention recognized the message of the button as offensive, I had hoped we had made more progress than that.