The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "The Ferrett" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:58 am
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While We're On The Topic Of Monogamapolyamoritism And Relationships....
....The Joy Of Theoretical Non-Monogamy. A very fine article stolen from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) moominmuppet, who I don't get to see nearly as often as I'd like.
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09:42 am
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Strange Ramblings On Polyamory Vaguely Inspired By A Distant Post
“Polyamory doesn’t work,” said my friend. “I’ve just seen too many of those relationships crash and burn. You just can’t make it work.”
The problem with that is, of course, the goal of polyamory. What is it? It’s pretty clear for the other side, but poly’s a little more mutable.
See, as a non-poly guy in a monogamous relationship, I have the luck of not having every sexual interaction I have be the trial for my entire relationship style. When I had, oh, fifty failed relationships before I finally latched onto my lovely wife, I didn’t have to hear about how each of those fifty crash-and-burns were proof that monogamy’s innately substandard. (And thank God, because with fifty failed relationships, I evidently had enough problems floating around.)
Yet monogamy also has a culturally built-in end-goal. See, I got married. That’s what monogamous couples of all stripes are supposed to do – heck, there’s a war being waged so that gay couples can share in my monogamous uniting process. And marriage is designed to be forever, thanks to that whole “‘til death do us part” clause.
So if I make it to the end with Gini, and one of us dies before we get divorced, then I score a win for monogamy! I am now proof that monogamy works, because we clung to it all the way down. And that’s regardless of whether I actually signed on for that victory condition or not!
Isn’t that grand? Especially since we get to ignore the vast majority of people who don't get there, or the multiple failed relationships that generally precede a victorious marriage?
But poly has no clear end goal. I mean, is poly supposed to be eternal? I’ve seen any number of poly relationships end not with a bang, but with a whimper, as two people slowly lose interest in each other and move on without any hard feelings. It’s not a breakup, just two folks evolving in opposite directions.
Is that what poly’s supposed to do? Well, according to the monogamous goal of capital-F Forever, no. But should we judge polyamory by a one-relationship standard? I’d say not.
And more importantly, is every breakup bad? I’d say not. Certainly there are any number of marriages that fail not because the people involved are evil, but because two healthy people continually grow and change in the course of their lives. Sometimes, what you needed at age twenty is not what you need at age forty… And sometimes, two people diverge.
That doesn’t mean that your relationship failed. It means things changed. Ideally, your partner evolves along with you, but sometimes that’s not healthy. Sometimes, you can have a short relationship that doesn’t work out yet is entirely satisfying for what you needed then.
It’s not cool to say that your divorced ex-partner is still a good guy and you still love him – just not enough to stay. In a monogamous society, you’re supposed to find the blame and assign it straight away so you can figure out who broke the monogamy. Because it’s clearly a fault with you guys, not the system.
Which is not to say that poly doesn’t involve high drama from time to time. ‘Course it does! You’re juggling more people, and more people means more opportunities for things to go wrong. When poly relationships crumble, often they do so in an avalanche of hurt feelings as not just one, but several people are pulled into the maelstrom. Poly’s trickier to pull off in a stable way, and I don’t think anyone really debates that.
But I don’t think that every breakup is a sign of unhealthiness…. Just as I don’t think that every end-goal victory for monogamy is the sign of a strong relationship. Certainly we all know two desperate people who’ve latched onto each other and refuse to leave. There are a ton of radically unhealthy dynamics that can cause two people to unhappily superglue themselves at the hip through life, though one suspects they’ll be kicking their heels off in heaven once they’re finally released from that damned contract.
That’s not really a score for monogamy. If anything, it’s a checkmark against it, in my book.
The problem is that I’m loath to say that any relationship style flat-out doesn’t work. I’m not particularly comfortable with BDSM master/slave relationships in my own personal life, but I do know a few people that it seems to work for. And I’ve seen some long-term poly relationships that would terrify the shit out of neurotic, clingy ol’ me, but appear to be just fine for all involved.
People are individuals. I tend to think any blanket statement on any lifestyle statement is just a way of quietly asking others to tell you that what you want is not just okay, but actively good.
You know what doesn’t work? People. People are fucked beyond comprehension. And any time they manage to interact properly for any amount of time that makes them happy is something I have a hard time dismissing globally, y’know?
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12:02 pm
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Answering A Vital Question
"Why," you may ask, "Does the standard outfit for nerds include a goatee and glasses?"
Well, the glasses are because we can't see. But the goatee! Why does every nerd sport a lovely chin-bristler? Why not a full beard, or - gosh - go clean-shaven?
There are two answers, my friend.
The first is that the goatee gives men the illusion of a chin. If you're thin, it gives you a little pointy dangly thing to angle your face. If you're pudgy, the goatee hangs down to cover that unsightly second or third chin. Plus, because all the hot fantasy movie guys sport goatees, like Aragorn, we secretly believe that we are siphoning off some of that movie magic to become just a little more badass, even as we sit on the couch and stuff our face with Cheetos at the local Doctor Who marathon.
The second is that we're lazy. Shaving a full face takes time to go around those inconvenient edges of the lips and chin. Trimming a full beard is awkward and scratchy. But shaving a goatee face involves a couple of quick strokes down the clear slalom of your cheeks, and wham! Done in fifteen seconds. No risk of cutting, no time at all.
And voila! We are unique and beautiful snowflakes. Or not.
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11:32 am
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Busy With Work And Random Panic Attacks
But I would like to say that based on yesterday's picture request?
You are a bunch of startlingly attractive people. Take a bow.
Actually, don't bow. I rather like looking at your faces!
Tags: cool photo meme results
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02:45 pm
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I Am Curious, Weasel
So rather than thinking about the deadly neurotoxins flooding through my brain*, I'd like to make a strange request: I'd like to see what you all look like. But it's only fair that you should have to endure me, first. So here! Have a look at my ugly mug!
As zarhooie said when she did this, "That is what my face looks like. I want to see what yours looks like, too. There's one catch: NO PHOTO ICONS. None. That is cheating and will not be tolerated. Big pictures are more betterly." And the good news is after seeing my face, clearly you all realize you're much better-looking than I am.
So go! Show me! I wanna put some eyes on commenters! Or something.
* - Thank you, GlaDOS, for giving a name to the crushing panic attacks and other wildly self-destructive impulses my brain is putting me through right now. One can only hope it clears up soon, because these sleepless nights are taking their toll. Worst. SAD. EVAR.
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11:04 am
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Mindfuck: When You See It, You'll Shit Bricks
There is a subset of Demotivational Posters called "Mindfuck," which present an innocuous-looking image with the promise "When you see it, you'll shit bricks." Some of the images have weird, creepy shit that only appear when you look closely. Others, on the other hand, are just normal images and the mindfuck is that you spend five minutes looking at the damn thing in a vain attempt to find something out of the ordinary.
So for the benefit of all, I've decided to collect the best of of these mindfuck posters in one place and tell you whether there's anything in them or not, and where to look if you want to. Some of them are kinda creepy. Some of them are lame. Some may have nothing at all.
( Mindfucks ahoy! Image-heavy content arriving! )
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02:50 pm
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Yeah, You Knew It Was Coming
"Unca Ferrett?" said the little girl at one in the morning, hovering nervously by my couch. "I had a dream about a doggie and it was on fire and now I can't sleep."
I can't say I hadn't expected this. Four-year-old Carolyn was spending the night so her mommy and daddy could have an evening to themselves (and so we could be wrapped in Carolyn cuddles), and she usually didn't sleep well in strange places. She'd had a dream about a doggie the last time, too, and so I hugged her tight and told her that no doggies were on fire.
She looked at me now. "What do we do now? I'm not tired."
And she wasn't. I could see it in her eyes. The four hours of sleep she'd gotten apparently had been enough - though I might lull her into more of it. Knowing that I still had hours of work before me - it was a late night - I said, "Do you want to watch a movie?"
"Yuh," she said. We checked out our vast supply of DVDs, and found that Aladdin had "a big kitty that was too scary" and Finding Nemo had a scary shark and the Muppet Movie had "a car that gets bumped" that was apparently terrifying, and no movie we had wouldn't be fearful. And so twenty minutes passed as we checked out movies, but Carolyn was still awake.
"Why don't we play a game?" I said, and we did, throwing some dice around as we played a crude game of "war." Then we played a little pretend, and got some milk, and ran around for a bit. Then, still awake at two in the morning, she looked up at me and said, "What do we do now?"
And I didn't know. I had no clue. I have daughters, but I inherited them at the ancient age of six. By the time I got to them, all the hard work was done, and they were pretty much self-entertaining when they needed to be. I had a kid who clearly should be asleep and yet wasn't asleep and I had run out of ways to entertain her.
So I did the unthinkable: I woke up Gini, apologizing all the while. "What do I do?" I whispered.
Gini, half-slumbering, had more authority than I'd had fully awake. She looked at Carolyn and the way she was standing and said, "Do you need to poop?" Carolyn nodded and trotted off to the bathroom, and she snapped crisply at me: "Step one: Empty the child."
Then she looked at Carolyn and said, "Right. You. Off to bed." Carolyn protested. "But I'm not tired!" She cried, and came running to me, but I deferred to the true master, and Gini shuffled Carolyn off to the room. She laid Carolyn down, and read her a story, and talked with her about doggies as they hugged in the bed, and within half an hour they had fallen asleep - Gini much more fitfully, but she had quieted Carolyn and Knew What To Do.
That's the magic of mommyhood. When I'm clueless, the mommies know what to do. They know children so intimately they can decide, correctly, that a child is tired even though they say they aren't and swear they're not and act like they're not. It's amazing. They just know.
Look, I like kids. And as long as the kids have ideas, I'm golden. But there comes a point where the kids get bored or cranky, and then Gini does the heavy lifting. I've seen her occupy a bored three-year-old for half an hour with nothing more than a ketchup bottle and a container of sugar packets. She made up that dice game that I played earlier to entertain Carolyn. She knows how to turn shrieking sobs of frustration into more-acceptable sniffles and less hurt feelings.
That's the brilliance of it. Gini's good at mothering, but so are mothers. Being an only child, that's a mystery I've never fathomed. Kids are an alien mindset to me, so close to adulthood but sometimes so distant, and Gini knows how to talk to them in ways that don't confuse them or diminish them. She just does.
And that's amazing.
So congratulations, all you mothers. It's the grunt work you do that you're being celebrated for today - the thousand little ways you know your children, the invisible ways you monitor their moods and build their egos and push them, one faint step at a time, towards competence and adulthood. That's the most complicated job in the whole world, because you often get your best feedback a decade too late... And you manage.
Here's to you.
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02:35 pm
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Um... Can I Have A Glass Of Holy Fuck?
I've always admired Vincent Bugliosi as one of the greatest legal crime writers of all time. His book Helter Skelter was a masterful look at how you need to sum up the prosecution for what could have been a sketchy murder case. Outrage was a thorough indictment of why O.J. Simpson was guilty, guilty, guilty, and how the prosecution bungled what should have been an open-and-shut case.
I figured with the release of his lapbreaking tome The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (which, yes, convinced me it was just Lee Harvey Oswald), he would have set his sights on the biggest murder case of all time and be done. How can you top JFK, I thought? You can't do it. That's as big as there is, right?
But he's managed. Seriously. Trust me, just click on the link. And if he does this with his usual precision to detail, I'll be there reading it on Day One.
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09:55 am
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Special Bonus Help Round!
If you were a fan of Home on the Strange, you'll be happy to know that yes, I'm starting up a new nerdcore webcomic. This is a much more stripped-down comic sans the big storylines, just allowing me to riff on nerd culture whenever I see fit. But I'm a little blocked here, and I need your help.
As anyone who knows me knows, I'm terrible with character names. (I joke that half the reason I wanted to team up with yuki_onna for My Name Is Might Have Been is because I knew I'd get great names like "Bombay Sapphire" and "Ignatius Slim.") And I have three characters that I can't think of a good name for.
The first is a blatant shill for me, a tall guy with a goatee and glasses. He's going to be my voice for speaking on various nerd issues. But I'm not calling him Ferrett.
The second is his wife, a slender Asian. She is the sarcastic straight man to his eternal snarking, and generally gets the better of him. (I am, as I did from HotS, cribbing quite a bit from my own personal life - though thanks to roniliquidity's co-writing, Tom and Karla evolved far beyond what Gini and me are.)
The third is not-Ferrett's buddy, who is the guy he goes shopping for DVDs with - basically, a third character to talk about his wife with.
This isn't the first time I've asked for name help - author Cherie Priest suggested the name "Andy Tanner," and shortly after she received a huge Tor book contract, clearly as a result of suggesting a name for a second-tier webcomic strip. This is the fame and fortune that awaits you should you choose a proper name.
Also, if you're an artist and this sounds like something you'd have fun with, let me know. Unlike HotS, I'm hoping to work with multiple artists on the new project. In fact, I've got a bit of a plan for that, but that's something for another time.
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02:06 pm
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Because I Am Supremely Bored And Doped Out
I am having difficulty processing, thanks to my SAD and the new and delightful emergency medication I've been placed on. So if you have any secrets you want to share with me (or anything that would entertain), send 'em to theferrett@theferrett.com. I'm delightfully groggy!
Normally, I'd just do a "tell me a secret" post and screen the comments, but I have another vital question to ask:
Poll #1185288 Pixar
Open to: All, results viewable to: AllThe Best Pixar Feature Film Is.... Who's better?
Sorry, guys, but it's gotta be Pixar. The classic Disney films are nice, but The Incredibles is one of the greatest films of all time. Aight? Or not. Fight.
Also, I've been meaning to mention my friend olliesmama's new community ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) todays_thought, which posts a noteworthy question every day and asks you to consider it. Go check it out! And then entertain me, if you can.
For comparison, it's taken me about fifteen minutes to type this up. Whee Celexa!
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09:43 am
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EEEP EEEP EEEP EEEP EEEP
My wife smacks the snooze bar and staggers back to bed, tumbling sleepily into my arms. It's different every time.
She snuggles close. I feel the weight of her arm across my chest here, the feel of her bare thigh upon mine here. She melts into me, seeking me out for enough comfort that she can grab a few extra minutes of sleep before the alarm goes off again. The configurations are a thousand variances of joy; sometimes she attacks me from the side to nestle into the crook of my arm. Sometimes, she lies on her back and wants me to hug her tight.
It's a unique and beautiful moment, and it will only last nine minutes.
Sometimes, I fall asleep, too. But some mornings, I just lie there, listening to the ebb and flow of her breathing, feeling the slow tug of time passing. This moment is ephemeral. This moment is eternal. This love is colossal.
Nine minutes, and everything changes.
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02:23 pm
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Thank You, rbradakis!
Who doesn't want a GlaDOS ringtone?
(Sorry, Eric. Yours is good, but not the coolest.)
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11:52 am
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A Thought On The Nature Of Friendship
Early in our courtship, Gini once said that "you give me wings." Which was her way of saying that I tried my best to lift her up, to encourage her to reach for things she didn't think she could get. I tried to be a net benefit in her life, on the whole.
And when she told me, two years later, "I feel like you've taken my wings away," that was a wake-up call for me. I realized that in the course of our relationship, I'd stopped thinking about her and started thinking too much about me. I'd started trying to subtract from Gini to make her fit in the space that made me comfortable, which was completely and utterly wrong. And I started to change that.
I think that, by and large, there are two types of close friends: Those who are committed to being a net bonus in your life, and those who want you to be where they're comfortable.
Being committed to being a net bonus in someone's life is scary sometimes, because you can help them evolve right out of your life. You can realize that where they want to be is another town, far away from you, or to take up a new hobby that's going to cause them to spend less time with you, or to find a new partner who's really good for them and is going to make you secondary in their life. But those friends want what's best for you.
Then there are those who want you where they feel happiest about having you. They will also help you to change, but often it's for the worse. If they determine that you should have a boyfriend now, they're going to hammer home on you until you damn well get one whether you want it or not. If you think about moving, they'll make you feel guilty. It's all about what they want - and frequently it will come in the guise of "What's best for you," but really it's not.
You can tell the bad friends because you never really feel like yourself around them. You know, on some level, they're damping you down, because you can't say what's really on your mind.
But the good friends? They're there because they like you, not some edited version of you that's more to their liking. They're there to help you be more of that you - occasionally calling you on your bullshit and reining in your excesses, but generally helping you to become a happier, healthier person.
Good friends? They give you wings to fly. And God bless them, we'll all reach the skies some day.
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11:03 am
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Just A Quick Word
Dear People Who Think The President Will Make Gas Cheaper:
One hates to inform you, but the President does not have a magic wand that he can wave to neutralize the laws of supply and demand. Gas is going to continue to be expensive because a) you schmucks refuse to stop driving everywhere, b) China and other nations are on the rise and want more gas of their own, and c) there is a limited supply of oil.
The President can't fucking fix this. He can do stupid shit like give you a "gas tax holiday" so you can save $30 over the course of a summer, which will cause us to drive more (burning up more of this limited supply of gas) and take away the money used to fund the road repairs, but that's a temporary solution designed to sucker in stupid people. Which you are.
You'd think you would have learned the lesson from Iraq: The President is not a magic being. The reason we got into so much trouble in Iraq is not because Bush isn't sufficiently magical to zap away the terrorists, but because he had poor planning. And lo! As it turns out, the actions of people in other countries can affect America, just like every other fucking country. Gas will most likely never be $2 again. As such, things aren't going to get slightly better for you until you stop fucking driving your big gas-sucking cars, learn to take public transportation when you can, and stop treating the President as though he's the goddamned Wizard of Oz.
Sincerely,
T.F.
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12:45 pm
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Strange Habits of a Psychoweasel
Sometimes, when I'm puttering around the house, I'll remember a conversation I had the night before. Suddenly, in the morning light, the way I phrased my response - a perfectly normal sentence - will sound odd and strange to me. So I'll repeat it.
"That's why people get married," I'll mutter, trying to replicate the way I said it... And now, the way I said it seems positively odd and crazy. The inflection's all wrong. It seems creepy. I thought I had been okay, but in the cold light of the next day I can see that what was supposed to be funny is now the slurred intonations of a psycho. The folks around me smiled, sure, but in retrospect I can see it as the strained rictuses of people who don't want to make a scene.
Or were they? Did I say it properly, and I'm just overprocessing now? I say it again, mimicking the tone to try to hear how it must have come off last night. "That's why people get married. That's why people get married."
Then I'll realize that I can't know how it sounded, so I'll practice in case I have to say it in the future. I'll say it as though I were a perfectly everyday person, trying to perfect the tone so that I can get it right in the future and not come off like a nut.
None of which makes any sense to my poor wife in the next room, who's doubtlessly wondering why her husband's been staring in the mirror, repeating some nonsense phrase for thirty seconds before he finally returns to brushing his teeth.
(It doesn't help that my SAD is kicking my ass hard. That's never a boon.)
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10:59 am
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The Empty Superhero Suit
Almost all of the big names in comics have now had their own movies – X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman. The non-comics-readin’ man on the street only knows a handful of superheroes, and they’ve all had their movies made.
There is one notable exception: Wonder Woman. And therein lies the new problem with making comic movies – Wonder Woman has no actual stories.
See, when the average Spider-Man fan thinks of Spider-Man, there are a couple of iconic story arcs that immediately spring to mind: Letting that criminal go, and discovering that with great power comes great responsibility. The death of Gwen Stacey and the subsequent death of Norman Osborn. The first time he stopped being Spider-Man. The first time he had to push himself beyond his limits to save Aunt May (“The Final Chapter!”).
Those are all great moments in Spider-Man history, and anyone passingly familiar with Spider-Man will know about them. Likewise, Batman has R’as Al Ghul and his first meetup with the Joker and Batman: Year One, and the X-Men have Dark Phoenix and the time travel story (“In This Issue, Everyone Dies!”). And I’m not a big fan of Iron Man, never the most popular of superheroes, but even I know about his battle with alcoholism and the rise of War Machine.
Each of these heroes has certain essential story arcs that are unique to them. They’re the moments that put these characters on the map, or reinvigorated the characters after a long struggle of aimless, second-tier sales. They’re everything that works about them.
If you’re lucky, the origin story is one of those iconic moments that sells it for you. But that’s not necessary for a great superhero – after all, Daredevil’s origin story is pretty mundane (OH HAI I GOT HIT BY RADIOACTIVE WASTE BEFORE MY UNCLE BEN WHOOPS DAD DIED) and yet Frank Miller managed to salvage that by turning Daredevil into a crazy-ass superninja with a hot even-more-superninja ex-girlfriend.
But if you think about, “Wow, this storyline defines this character,” Wonder Woman doesn’t have one. She comes from Paradise Island, a pretty ill-defined place that’s either a colony of warriors, or a hippie love-fest, or an isolated out-of-touch Greek/Roman enclave, or whatever the writer needs it to be for that story line. Nobody’s really nailed it down so that it matters.
And she comes to, uh, America, to be pretty and fight shit. And get tied up.
I’m scouring my brain trying to think of a Wonder Woman story where I go, “Yeah, that’s when Wonder Woman was at her finest,” and there really isn’t one to pull out. There are pretty decent comic runs, with George Perez being at the top, but nothing where I go, “That’s who Wonder Woman is.”
In the end, Wonder Woman is famous for being an idea – the first kick-ass female heroine, a set of golden bracelets, an invisible plane – than anything she’s actually done. That’s troublesome. But you know who else is like that?
Superman.
Supes has a great origin story, but after that the tales on the ground are pretty thin. He’s Superman, for God’s sake, and he’s famous for being invulnerable and morally correct and a paragon of America. There’s no comic series that I can think of that I go, “Wow, that sums up Superman in a nutshell.”
But there is one story – and strangely enough, it comes from the movies. We all know the tale of Superman facing down General Zod because he loves humanity, fighting off three ex-Kryptonians with no goddamned powers. That’s the tale that sums up who Superman really is for many people…
…and the movies had to make that out of whole cloth. Superman has a whole wardrobe full of some of the greatest enemies in comics, including Braniac and Myxwhatever and Metallo, and yet to really test him the movie producers had to make up someone new.
Why? Because after the origin story, it’s all downhill for Superman. He’s simply a set of great ideas that you can riff on endlessly, making him awesome for creating seventy years of fun stories revolving around his superpowers… But as a personality, it’s hard to pin down who Superman is in a way that challenges him personally.
In other words, Superman fights a lot of battles where he goes, “Gosh, how will I defeat this villain?” But he fights very few battles where his own identity is in danger.
At his core, both Superman and Wonder Woman are sets of interesting powers tied together. They’re not actually people. That’s really good when you’re in the treadmill comics business, trying to tell a story a week – too much specificity gets you in trouble – but it’s hard when you’re trying to find the biggest, most emotional punch you can pack into two hours.
You may note that the most of good superhero movies crib relentlessly from the comics, because they had good source material to work with. They know what challenges bring out the most essential moments in a hero’s personality, because in forty years of writing those are the ones that have resonated.
But what you have with Superman and Wonder Woman is a good idea, and with those kinds of heroes you have to make your own. Which is what we’re going to see.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like Thor. But does he have any iconic character arcs? No. It’s a bunch of endless retreads of Loki gets everyone in trouble, and Asgard’s all worried again, and oh the snake is back and hey, the Wrecking Crew! There’s no single moment in Thor’s history where I go, “That’s who Thor is.”
Likewise, I also like Green Lantern, but let’s face it – aside from a brief flirtation with relevance in the 1970s when he went head-to-head with Green Arrow, Hal Jordan’s had a lot of adventures but no one single adventure that made him a superstar.
(Sadly, Hal does actually have one iconic moment…. But I refuse to acknowledge Dark Hal Goes Nuts. That didn’t happen.)
Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at several superheroes-who-wanna-be-movies and discuss their potential iconicness. And if they don’t have that iconic battle, it’s going to be hell to make the movie, because really, what’s all that cool about Wonder Woman’s personality?
(Feel free to suggest or discuss.)
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01:01 pm
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Tales From The House
In La Casa McJuddMetz, Gini is Scheduling. I'm Budget. That's because I can remember to pay the bills, and keep track of our general funding, but I am useless when it comes to remembering when anything is. Every night, I shout to my wife: "WHAT ARE WE DOING TONIGHT?" And she tells me.
As proof that I am terrible at scheduling, this year I vowed to remember Mother's Day. So I bought the card, sent the present, and called up my Mom yesterday to shout, "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!"
"That's nice," she said. "But it's not until next weekend."
"Oh."
"Sweet of you, though. This is kind of like the time you sent me flowers a month after my birthday."
"But I continued to send you flowers a month after your birthday for the next two years," I responded. "I almost made it a tradition, except then I got confused and sent them a month early."
"Which happened to be my actual birthday."
"Well, sometimes things work out," I said.
I thought that was embarrassing enough. But then I got the call from my daughter Erin: "Why the hell did you remind me to call Mom this Sunday? That wasn't Mother's Day!"
"Well," said I. "Funny story...."
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09:18 am
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Iron Man, Iron Man, Does Whatever An Iron Can (Very Mild Spoilers)
Scratch the surface of any popular superhero, and you’ll find what we want to be. Superman was the perfect hero for the 1940s; patriotic, all-powerful, and serenely confident in his own self-righteousness. Come the 1960s and the advent of inward reflection, and you get Spider-Man – a man bound by worries and a thousand niggling debts, but somehow able to surpass them (most of the time) to become something greater.
It’s been forty years since we’ve had a relevant superhero since then. Vietnam and Iraq II have drained America’s collective self-confidence, making us a little afraid to be proud, and the rise of the individual has left us without a collective center. When you have a thousand microtargeted magazines and cable shows, is there really one America any more? Or just a million Balkanized subsections?
But I think, thanks to the wise eye of director Jon Favreau (who also directed Swingers and Elf), we finally have a superhero for the new millennia. Someone who embodies what most of us want America to be.
For Tony Stark is America – arrogant, lavishly rich, hopelessly sexist, and blithely unconcerned in his morality because he has a long legacy of being right and he will always be right. He’s sold weapons like his father, making cutting-edge tech that cuts deep into the enemy.
Yet for all of that deep amorality he holds, Tony is strangely charming. You want to like him because he’s also insanely clever and quick with a quip. He seems reachable, even if he’s completely disinterested in people as anything but tools. But in the end, he’s just another gun for hire….
…until he winds up hostage in the hands of the enemy in Afghanistan. The terrorists, too, love Tony Stark’s guns, and they want him to build a missile for their own nefarious purposes. And in a distant cave, Tony Stark instead opts to build a weapon of his own.
There have been parallels drawn between Tony Stark and Batman for years – they’re both multimillionaire businessmen who are only superheroes because they’re smart and dedicated. But while Batman Begins handwaved all the hard work it took to create the Batmobile and Batman’s “wonderful toys,” Iron Man takes the souped-up Mythbusters route. Tony Stark is a Do-It-Yourselfer, a hacker who spends way too much time in the basement fine-tuning his suit. You are constantly reminded that the technology he works with comes from a long line of failed experiments, constant tweaking, and upgrading; the suit itself is a constantly moving nightmare of gears, cogs, and screws.
And when Tony Stark finally realizes exactly what his arrogance has cost him, he has the Jerry Macguire moment where he finally Gets It. He’s doing harm, and he can no longer write it off… And in that fine American tradition, he’s not paralyzed by guilt, but rather galvanized by it.
Tony Stark is going to fix this. And in an imaginary world, he can.
The glory of Iron Man is that Tony Stark single-handedly does what America is incapable of. Spider-Man, lovely though he is, rescues Americans in New York City. Superman makes some vague passes about helping the world, but really he mostly works between West American Coast and East American Coast.
Tony Stark, on the other hand? He’s America’s good instincts. Rather than saving Americans, who are doing fine, he flies to Afghanistan and saves the poor bastards who are being herded and shot down by terrorists. He’s not out to make his own world safe – he’s trying to help people he doesn’t even know.
It felt relevant. Up until now, I’d never realized how masturbatory all the other superhero films felt, saving us from the mostly-imaginary evils of muggers and bank robbers - who’s ever seen a bank robbed? They’re heavily guarded, they don’t need Spider-Man to protect them. And supervillains are completely imaginary.
But Iron Man is striking at the worst thing we can imagine these days. And he’s doing it not here, saving fattened old America from a bomb, but where he can help a few downtrodden folks out from under from the boot of an Afghani warlord.
The core value of America is “We want to help.” Problem is, we’re remarkably bad at gauging what needs fixing these days. But in superhero land, Tony Stark is everything America wants to be – powerful enough to get the job done, wise enough to choose the right targets, and moral enough to try to make up for his past failings. He’s going to save the world, because unlike the collapse of the Bush administration, he knows precisely how to enact a plan.
(This works, incidentally, because the terrorists are dumb as dirt, too brain-dead to recognize that the various pieces of a walking suit of armor look nothing like a missile casing. I’m really hoping they reenvision The Mandarin, Iron Man’s classic old villain, as a warlord with brains and Tony’s vision.)
Like America, Tony’s not perfect. He’s still too quick to go off on his own, a rebel who doesn’t work well with others (and sometimes pays for it). He’s supremely disinterested in the larger picture. And he’s bad at sensing the motivations of his enemies.
In the comics, Tony Stark has become everything that’s bad about America – our arrogance, our willingness to oppress with technology, our terror of terror. But thankfully, Robert Downey and Jon Favreau flipped that to make Iron Man the movie into a statement of hope and joy. We can win…. If we acknowledge our mistakes.
Because in the end, the story of Iron Man is the story of a very talented jerk who’s trying very hard to become something better. And maybe it’s just me, but I can empathize.
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12:14 pm
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Snakes On A Disappointment
So we finally saw "Snakes on a Plane" last night, complete with a room full of rowdy strangers and a drinking game. And I gotta say:
Wow. What a terrible movie. And I mean that in a not the "so bad it's good" sense, but rather the "It's just bad" sense.
I was one of the earliest SoaP proponents. I loved the idea, I loved Samuel L. Jackson fighting motherfuckin' snakes on a motherfuckin' plane, I loved the poster. And when it bombed in the theaters (I didn't see it because I was in Germany when it premiered in the United States, and why would you not see this movie on opening night?), it was cited as proof that the Internet crazes couldn't make you money.
No. Honestly, the fact that Snakes on a Plane earned as much as it did is a testament to the power of the Internet. Because it's not even a B-movie. In a just world, it would have earned $10 million total and quietly packed off.
You know what I wanted? Deep Blue Sea. Deep Blue Sea is a cheesy film that actually has moments of tension, genuine laughter, and the single best monologue by Samuel L. Jackson ever. It's not a great movie, but it's a great "B" movie that manages to punch all the buttons you'd expect from a movie about genetically-enhanced killer sharks.
Snakes on a Plane, however, botches every roll. The characters are shallow and trite, but the death scenes? Well, there's two awesome ones, both in bathrooms.... But then the snakes descend in one massive glump, kill an entire plane that seems to be about the size of three football fields and as tall as a skyscraper - I kept wondering when John McClane would show up for "Snakes on a McClane" - and everyone dies so quickly there's none of the enjoyment of watching killer snakes pick off people one by one.
Then, as the stock characters die, they do it in such a way that it doesn't manage to feel like a comeuppance. The truth is that every good horror movie is, at its heart, a morality tale. The people die because they deserve to - they're too venal, or too shallow, or (in regrettable early 1980s movies) because they're sluts and the virgin should live. A good slaughter-a-lot-of-people flick involves having everyone die in ways that ironically reflect the nature of their personality - if they'd been someone different, someone more worthy, they would have lived.
Snakes on a Plane is so busy, there are too many motherfuckin' snakes. There's too much chaos, too much danger around, and nowhere for people to hide. For safety, they need to hole up and not wander off. And it would take a much better screenwriter to set up a situation where The Dickish British Guy or The Sexually Harassing Pilot or the Spoiled Paris Hilton Clone get their comeuppance in a way that's not the endless repetition of, "HEY, A SNAKE FELL ON YOU!"
Even what should be the greatest line in the history of cinema falls flat because Samuel L. Jackson is never driven into a corner. His character simply fights snakes a lot - he's never seriously threatened, never runs out of options, never gets angry beyond the default Samuel L. Jackson irritation. He yells, "I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on my motherfuckin' plane!" near the climax of the movie, when the snakes are almost handled, as opposed to the beginning, when it would have been a killer line.
Alas, in the end Snakes on a Plane is simply snakes, on a plane, trying to take itself far too seriously in a movie that generates neither tension nor heat. I was glad to watch it with my friends, and you will get hammered by playing the drinking game (pounding down one whenever the Snake-O-Vision Cam is displayed will demolish you by itself), but the fun? It's other people. You could pick any bad movie at random and have the same level of fun.
Snakes on a Plane is only good because people are, thanks to the magic of the Internet, predisposed to mock it. Which is a great way of setting up people to razz, which is the true fun. But me?
Come over to my house for a showing of Glen or Glenda. Bring your best snark. I'll show you snakes in a dress.
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10:08 pm
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The Truth
Some might think that I am posting this link because of the titillation factor. In truth, I don't find it particularly exciting at all.
Honestly? I'm posting this because now I want to wrestle someone in a gigantic vat of chocolate syrup. It actually seems like it'd be kinda fun, assuming I could get a shower afterwards. (I really like chocolate syrup.)
But I bet it wouldn't look good. You never wanna mix lard with syrup, and my body is distinctly not bikini-worthy. Hence, the photos would probably be akin to staring up at the sun for sixty seconds at a time. But I wonder how it would be.
(If you need me to tell you a page devoted to chocolate syrup bikini-wrestling is NSFW, you're NFTBE. Page courtesy of, as all good things are, StumbleUpon.)
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