Hello!

Well hello there!

If you have reached this site, it is likely because you saw it in the trailer credits for David Wong's new novel, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. And that's because I edited it together and chose fonts for it and whatnot!

Anyway, despite this blog looking as if it has been abandoned, I assure you that it has in fact not been abandoned; but I have a legitimate job now and so that has to take priority. I'm actually working on three posts: one about two bad advertisements, one about Superman: The Animated Series (those posts take a long time to do), and one about some background to making the Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits trailer that I think people will find enlightening. If you ever wanted to know how to make a trailer for a book, I am sure that it will prove very helpful!

Knowing that people are probably going to be looking at this site is really the (only) motivation I need, because I like it when people listen to me and the often silly things which I choose to talk about.

Anyway, while we wait for one of those posts to go up (it will probably be the behind-the-scenes one about the trailer first), which will probably be some time tomorrow, please take a look around. I recommend reading my ongoing series about the Bruce Timm Superman show, or this time I wrote about the history of the opera hat, or this time I wrote about Shakespeare. Oh, and there was that one time I interviewed John Cheese (aka the inspiration for the character John of John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It)!

Might be so bold as to suggest following this blog by email? Just go to the top of the right-hand column and enter your email address! I promise that I do not use this information for anything other than updates, and I actually don't think I even have access to it. It's something Blogger does automatically. Or it's supposed to, anyway. Sometimes their widgets are broken or whatever. So maybe you should check back soon, just in case.

You can also follow me on Twitter! Sometimes I tweet, and sometimes I do not.

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you stick around/come back soon!

A New Superman Post is Coming

Oh, hi. I didn't see you there.

I recently was reminded that I had a blog, and looking over some of the more recent posts, particularly the Superman stuff, I was inspired to jump back into it. I'm busy this coming week, so the post won't be happening then, but soon. Truth be told, I already had some of it written out, and screencapped, and whatnot. I just kind of ran out of steam.

But the steam is back.

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 3: The Last Son of Krypton, Part III (B)

Previous Installment  |  S:TAS Index  |  Introduction


If you're just now joining us, I'm currently examining every episode of the criminally under-discussed and under-appreciated Superman: The Animated Series, because I think it's the best moving-pictures version of the collective Superman mythos that has ever been done. Here is a link listing all of the posts so far.

Also, because I'm discussing certain animation touches in this post more than normal, I've added some .GIFs! There were some technical difficulties in doing this that delayed the post more than my being sick did. You'll notice that there are little black bars around the .gifs and that they look to be in a slightly squashed aspect ratio, which I promise bothers me more than it does you, but if I spent any more time trying to fix it I'd never get it done. Also, I set the .gifs to output at the frame rate of the source material so that they'd be as smooth and accurate as possible, and then I remembered that some browsers will slow .gifs down if they exceed a certain amount of frames per second, so they may look a little weird in, say, Internet Explorer.

So.

We left off with Superman flying away after saving a plane, and there's a nice transition involving a man recording Superman. We're shown the footage as his camcorder is displaying it, complete with blinking red "REC." Then the show zooms in on the footage until you can't see the "REC" anymore, we hear Perry saying "freeze it!", and the show pulls back out and we're at the Daily Planet, where Perry, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy are watching the video. And the "pause" effect is done really well--and, again, like many details in this show, was not, strictly speaking, "necessary," but it really helps sell it.

"What is that?" Perry asks, gesturing to the screen.

Progress Report

I know I said I'd have the next blog post sooner, but stuff came up, and also I took my time making sure I liked it. Also I've been considering a couple design changes to the blog. Anyway, the next blog post is done. It will be posted on Monday, guaranteed unless it's posted on Tuesday. Until then, here is this video of Tim Conway going off-script on The Carol Burnett Show, which he usually did during every second taping:

Still waiting for it to be on Netflix.

Sick Day: Enjoy This Thing

Still under the weather, and busy as well. There's no Superman post today, but there absolutely will be a nice one tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy this hilarious video of Groucho Marx on What's My Line?:

All the Superman: The Animated Series Posts (Index)

This post will be updated each time there is a new post related to S:TAS. I might add brief descriptions of the topics of conversation later.


S1 E1: The Last Son of Krypton, Part I (A)

S1 E1: The Last Son of Krypton, Part I (B)

S1 E2: The Last Son of Krypton, Part II (A)

S1 E2: The Last Son of Krypton, Part II (B)

S1 E3: The Last Son of Krypton, Part III (A)

S1 E3: The Last Son of Krypton, Part III (B)

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 3: The Last Son of Krypton, Part III (A)

Written by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini
Directed by Dan Riba, Bruce Timm

Prev. Installment  |  S:TAS Index  |  Introduction  |  Next Installment

The good news first: I have storyboards for the opening sequence!

Okay, now for the bad news: I have been feeling really sick recently and I think I'm coming down with something. I didn't want to go without an update for the next day, so I'm going to write up as much of this episode as I can before I need to start crawling into bed to try to head whatever-this-is off at the pass, and I'll schedule this post for publishing just in case I end up oversleeping.


Anyway, when last we left our hero, he had dodged a missile so successfully that it flew off in another direction and ended up hitting a plane's wing. Superman was... not thrilled about this turn of events.

The plane rescue sequence in Superman Returns was justly praised, and is one of the few universally-admired things in that movie. That being said, there's one aspect of the animated plane-rescue that I prefer. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I think it's that the plane is closer to the ground and so Superman has to worry not just about saving the plane and the people on board, but about keeping everyone in the city safe as well. Don't get me wrong, the plane scene in Superman Returns has a different goal in mind, and it's still probably one of the best "Superman rescues people" scenes in live-action. I just like that the animated plane sequence has that added dimension.

In case you're wondering what the best "Superman rescue" is in the comics, I actually wouldn't pick any sort of big action set-piece (though again I am far from the foremost expert on comic-Superman). I think this one is the clear choice to lay odds on (from All-Star Superman by Morrison and Quitely). I'm not going to lie to any of you: I tear up or cry every time I read that. It's even better in context.


Anyway, at this point in his life Superman, it becomes clear, has never really had to stop a plane before. We know this because he goes right for the tail and tries to hold the plane back by pulling on it, which, as anyone can tell you, is the classic mistake of a first-timer.

Of course, the tail of the plane breaks off instead.

Superman berates himself with a biting "Nice one, Clark." Then he heads to catch up with the plane.

It's just three words, but it accomplishes a lot and I love it so much. Tim Daly's delivery is spot-on (I'll be talking more about Daly's voice-acting soon--I've got a whole series to cover here, I don't want to say everything at the beginning), and it's just a great little character moment. It really humanizes the super-human. I don't think I'd ever heard Superman talk to himself in the middle of a rescue before (I certainly can't think of anywhere else).

In the storyboards for this sequence (done by Butch Lukic), the tail of the plane doesn't break off: it's going too fast for Superman's fingers to do anything but dig grooves into it.

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 2: The Last Son of Krypton, Part II (B)

Previous Installment  |  Index to All S:TAS Posts  |  Introduction  |  Next Installment

EDIT: Dana Delany retweeted my link to this blog post, which, uh... I didn't see coming. She has a lot more Twitter followers than I do, so I'd imagine there will be some people reading who are new to what I'm doing here. For those who are: this is actually a series of posts, and I try to do a new post about this show every day. Every two days at most. I hope you'll stick around! If you want, you can subscribe via email (top right column) or follow me on Twitter so that you don't miss any updates, because this won't be the last time I talk about Superman or Lois or Lex. Feel free to comment as well; I like to know people actually read what I wrote.


We cut to Metropolis. Appropriately, the very first thing we see in Metropolis is a Daily Planet delivery truck. On a nearby TV, there's a news story about the mysterious "angel" of Metropolis, and an interview with a little girl who fell from such a high story of a building that it makes me unsure of how great I feel about Metropolis's building codes. At any rate, according to the girl, she was saved by a blue angel with red wings.

We pull out from the television, now in the offices of The Daily Planet. Some of the staff are watching the news on a huge screen. "If it wasn't an angel that saved her, what was it?" the TV reporter asks, closing the piece.

A woman in a purple blazer and a skirt points at the TV with a ruler. "Friendly pigeons," she says.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet LOIS LANE.

Let me make one thing very, very clear: I absolutely love Lois Lane, and it's mainly because of this show. I LOVE this show's Lois. She's essentially been dropped in from a Howard Hawks movie (specifically, this Howard Hawks movie, except Lois, unlike Hildy, would never want to quit being a reporter), and it's just fantastic. (When I looked up the Delany interview I mention in a moment, it turns out she thought the exact same thing, so it's good that her performance really managed to convey that.) It is by far the best take I have ever seen. She's got that tough, competitive element to her that I think a lot of the portrayals of Lois either forget about or don't get quite right, although I'll admit I don't really remember much about Lois in the Christopher Reeve movies.

The tough, competitive element is definitely in the original conception of Lois. In Superman #3 (in a story which was reprinted in Action Comics #6), she tricks Clark into following a false lead so that she can cover a story that her editor thinks is... well, you'll see:

Which only serves to immediately make Lois scheme out loud:

At the same time, the show's portrayal of Lois also has her feminine side, if you want to call it that, which we'll see in a moment.

"Whatsamatter, Lois? Don'tcha believe in angels?" one of the men asks.

"It's TV, boys," she says. "Just a trumped-up story to boost ratings."

"And maybe sell some papers?" asks a man whose eyes look like inverted commas, showing her the Daily Planet's front page.

Cut to: Perry White's office. Lois barges right the heck in.

Perry looks mildly startled, but not very surprised, which is excellent.

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 2: The Last Son of Krypton, Part II (A)

Written by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini
Directed by Scott Jeralds, Curt Geda

Previous Installment  |  Index to All S:TAS Posts  |  Introduction  |  Next Installment


This episode opens with a very brief recap of events from the previous episode, and then launches right into the next part of the Superman origin: being found by the Kents.

In this version of the story, the rocket leaves hyperspace or whatever at some point just outside our solar system, and heads straight for Earth, getting a bit of yellow sunlight on Kal-El's face. Meanwhile, on Earth, the Kents are driving along in a pick-up truck at night. The rocket flies overhead.

A nice touch here is that the rocket has little auto-boosters on it that guide it gently to the ground, and that it lands in the shallow part of a pond/lake. This explains why no one started wondering what was up with a huge, unexplainable crater, and it also makes sense that Jor-El wouldn't design a rocket that couldn't land on its own. His kid's inside there, after all.

Either boosters on the rocket heat up the water in the lake and create a ton of steam, or the rockets turning off create a lot of smoke (the latter idea is supported by Jonathan coughing when he's looking around), or some combination of both, which lends a nice sense of atmosphere to the proceedings. Jonathan gets out of the truck, flashlight in hand, and says, "Holy Christmas! What was that?"

Martha Kent spots something in the pond and makes her way towards it.

As she gets closer she discovers that it's a rocket, and then walks up to it, which seems a little foolish on her part, since this is the Cold War and everything, but we'll give her a pass on that one. Perhaps it was just her motherly instinct. (I would have preferred that the rocket popped open to reveal Kal-El earlier or that the cockpit was transparent and she could see him from the edge of the lake).

Interestingly, in the first issue of Superman her name is Mary, not Martha (she's also called "Mary" in 1948's Superman #53, in a story I've seen credited to the unfortunate Bill Finger). Jonathan isn't given a name at all, and the Kents are described as "an elderly couple."

Man, this Comixology edition looks a little washed-out. I'm going to scan the panels in myself for the next post.

She's not called anything in the newspaper comics because I don't think the Kents are mentioned there even a single time. It's some random guy on a road who finds Kal-El (well, it would be "Kal-L" in the newspaper strip) and turns him in to a nearby orphanage, and then suddenly a panel or two later Kal-El's being called Clark Kent. In the novel, the 1940s serials, and the black-and-white TV show, the Kents were called Eban and Sarah. "Jonathan and Martha" were, thankfully, established in Action Comics #158 (1951). Interestingly, Batman's mother is named Martha as well.

The cockpit window pops open automatically. Martha gently lifts Kal-El out of the rocket and brings him up to where Jonathan is standing. Jonathan says a couple things to the effect of "You don't know where that thing has been," and they wonder if this is part of a Soviet or NASA experiment. "Do you think NASA's missing a kid?" Jonathan asks. And that's funny and silly, but honestly, that's probably the only thing he could think of. I mean the baby looks human enough, so your mind is obviously going to try to work with as sane an explanation as possible. And if you ask me, it seems more speculative than it does 100% serious.

I should point out that the Kents do a lot of moving in this simple scene. In cheaper shows, or anime, usually characters don't change positions or use as much body language as the characters in the DCAU shows, and this will be a level of detail kept throughout the series: characters move around when they don't, strictly speaking, need to, in the same way that flesh-and-blood people do. It's quite well-done. Each little movement is reflective of the things the characters are saying or talking about and the way they feel.

Anyway, Martha says that it's a child and it needs their help. Jonathan is slow to come around until she hands him the child. Jonathan comments on how strong the baby's grip is, and then we hear a sound like knuckles popping.

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 1: The Last Son of Krypton, Part I (B)

==*==

Previous Installment  |  All S:TAS Posts  |  Introduction & Disclaimer  |  Next Installment

So Jor-El blows up the door into the room.

 BOOM.

Notice how, even though Brainiac is now smaller, the room is still this great vertical chamber, making both Jor-El and the monitor look tiny. This is because they want at least some part of you to pay attention to the room itself. You'll see why.

 
"This is a breach of security, Jor-El," Brainiac intones. "A violation of statute..." and then he names the exact statute and subsection of the offense as Jor-El looks at the terminal inside to figure out what is going on, because of course he does. From a writing perspective, you need to give him something to do while is Jor-El is taking a few moments to figure it out, but you also don't want it to just be "you shouldn't be here" / "I know" repeated back and forth. And this is a good thing to give him.

Jor-El looks up from whatever he was examining. "You're downloading! You're transmitting your memory to a satellite!"

Remember how I told you it would be important to know that there were satellites orbiting Krypton? And you know how Jor-El mentioned the satellites when he was first talking to Brainiac, and how Eyepatch Council Member talked about Brainiac surveying the planet? Well, here's the payoff for that.

"You're saving yourself!" Jor-El continues.

"I must." Brainiac replies. "After all, am I not the repository of all Kryptonian knowledge? Should I not be saved above all?"

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 1 Ep. 1: The Last Son of Krypton, Part I (A)

Written by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini
Directed by Dan Riba

All S:TAS Posts  |  Introduction  |  Next Installment

We start off with a neat minute-long theme song (I'm sorry that whoever uploaded that otherwise nice-looking version of it was an idiot who stretched the frame out) that includes the most dramatic part of this episode right at the beginning. It's a little long, but if it's your first time watching in a while, you don't mind so much, especially if you didn't like Hans Zimmer's music in Man of Steel. I guess minute-long theme songs are a thing on kids' shows for some reason (the more I think about it, the more examples come to mind), and the music is good. Unlike the animated Batman, which used the Danny Elfman movie theme for its intro, Superman gets a new one, courtesy of the late, great Shirley Walker (who also worked on Batman), and while it's not John Williams, there's actually a lot I like about it and a few things I even prefer. The theme song also gives you tons of shots which say, "This is what Superman is about." It does get to you when watching these all in a row, though. At least if you're impatient like me. Also, I don't think they ever update the clips, so it's always shots from like, the first five episodes only.

A really nice touch in the theme song is that (like Batman: TAS) nowhere does it display the title "Superman." It lets the iconic S do all the talking. The last shot is Clark Kent pulling apart his shirt (what would a Superman theme song be without that?) to reveal the S--

--then the screen drops to black as the camera pulls in toward the S and eventually passes through it. Or maybe it's the S that's moving. Whichever it is, it looks neat.

Superman: The Animated Series, Introduction and Disclaimer

I was one of those people who really discovered Batman and Superman through TV. As far as Superman goes, first it was Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and then, wanting more, even if it came from (if I remember correctly) a kids' programming block, it was Superman: The Animated Series. I'm not counting Superfriends.

While I would rank Batman: The Animated Series higher if I was making a totemic list, I still have a lot of room in my heart for Superman. Also, Superman: TAS doesn't get talked about nearly as much. It's always in Batman's considerably dark shadow. So I think it would be a neat thing to really examine.

And with the recent Man of Steel being, well, what it is, I thought it was a good time to revisit a show that made such an impression on me with its representation of Superman, Metropolis, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor. I've revisited it before, but this time I'm really looking at it to try to figure out exactly why I think its concept of the character holds up even better than the Christopher Reeve movies (although Christopher Reeve's portrayal of Superman and Clark Kent casts a shadow of its own; he is not the problem with those movies) or Lois & Clark.

So this might take a while, but I think it will end up being pretty fun!

Also, if Superman: The Animated Series is not your thing, don't worry: this blog will not turn into All Superman, All the Time. There will also be Batman!

(And other things that are not about comic book heroes).



DISCLAIMER:

I am not in any way a... Superman historian, I guess you'd call it. I don't own any issues from the Silver Age, I don't know what happened in Action Comics #56 off the top of my head, nothing like that.

So what I'm trying to say is that I am in no way trying to say that I have some sort of deep, long-acquired insight that makes me the ultimate authority on what the "proper" representation of Superman is because I've read the comics. Because I haven't really read the comics. I just know what I like and what I think works.

Interview: John Cheese

Pretty much all the readers of this blog come from Pointless Waste of Time, the forums at Cracked.com, so no doubt John Cheese needs no introduction. However, since he insisted on drawing up a legal document before this interview began, I am now contractually obligated to write one.

Mack Leighty was born, like so many great men before him, in a log cabin that he built with his own hands. Then, like Jesus (and Shakespeare!), his childhood years are lost in a fog of mystery, until we finally catch up with him joining his best friend David Wong to write for Wong's website Pointless Waste of Time, writing articles as John Cheese (also like Shakespeare!). This incarnation of John Cheese was a little different than the John Cheese his newer readers might know and fear today. John then started the website Juvenile Comedy after an argument with Wong over whether or not to spend the ridiculous amount of money they'd accumulated on illegal mongooses or a nice set of Wedgwood china.

They had completely forgotten about the Xbox 360.

John Cheese later became a regular article writer, and then a columnist, at Cracked, while also gaining a permanent layout job behind the scenes and offering his services to the Editorial team as a contract killer.

 

He usually does all three jobs without pants. (Again, like Shakespeare. The parallels are downright spooky.)

I had the contractually-obligated pleasure of sitting down and talking with John a few days ago, and managed to get a fairly professional interview. We discussed his early work; his opinion on the old media vs. new media issue; his friendship with David Wong, the man who made the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Criminals list famous once he was added to it; John's upcoming marriage; giving him one good reason not to kill me where I stood; why he was holding a knife; me not being a hired assassin, really, John, I swear, I've never even heard of the League of Squancho; and which was the quickest way to get to the hospital.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

I arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early, eager to begin.

As I waited for John to show up, I looked over my notes once more, steeling myself for the most important and so far only interview for a blog that I need to pay more attention to.

He entered the restaurant and I tried to catch his eye, but the hostess had begun talking to him and so his attention was routed to her. Their exchange lasted an unusually long amount of time, and when it was over her eyes were different colors and he had somehow exchanged his necktie for a bow tie that closer inspection would prove to be made of construction paper.

He sat down, de-napkined his silverware, and spent a moment glaring at it. When he had finished, he looked up at me expectantly.

I started with the most important question.

"Did you manage to see where the restrooms are?"

He pointed me in a direction that was somewhat correct, and when I returned from my adventure, I discovered that John had already ordered for both of us, and that he'd already eaten the food he had ordered for me.

I sat back down at the table and cleared my throat. John settled himself into an attentive pose.

Suddenly I realized that somewhere on the way back to my chair I had become extremely tense. I clutched my legal pad like a life preserver and felt my panic-freeze sweat soften its edges. I looked up to this man. Not, like, in a Martin Luther King, Jr. way, where you idolize him for a world-changing achievement--

(his mustache)

--but more in the way where I thought he was cool and wanted him to think I'm cool, too.

I decided to launch into my first question before I could think about all the ways I might end up disappointing him.

Nimby: How do you think your writing style has changed over the years?

John Cheese: When I first started out on the net back in 1997, all of my writing was based on the surreal. I used to set up innocent sounding, fictional situations and then make them progressively more corrupt and bizarre as the article went along. Since it was all character based, I could take an article like that anywhere I wanted. There was no research. No facts. Just silliness.

Not long before I came to Cracked, there was a transitional phase where I mixed reality with surreality. For instance, I'd write about finding a new girlfriend, but during the course of the article, I'd have it break down into a ninja type of fight, complete with back flips and ridiculousness.

Now, I've stripped out the fiction completely. There is no character. And it turns out that the reality-based articles that have a personal touch pull an absolutely insane amount of traffic. People want to read something they can relate to--and though my old fiction pieces had value on a comedy level, they never had the support and following like my Cracked pieces.

John Cheese Interview: Watch This Space!

Later today, I'll be publishing my interview with Cracked.com's John Cheese. I'm just tidying up the layout.

An Excerpt from James Cameron's Spider-Man Script Treatment

(Note: These are all real.)

An arm, wearing red spandex and a red glove, drops down from the roof of the newsstand. The news-guy whirls as the arm slaps two bucks on the counter and grabs a Newsweek. The owner rushes out the door... looks on top of his kiosk. There's nothing there. He looks up, all around... nothing. He grins and holds his fist in the air. 

OWNER

ALRIIIIIGHT!

CUT TO THE FIGURE, atop the WTC. Still hanging. He pulls the Newsweek out of his belt and stares at the cover in the moonlight.

SPIDERMAN (V.O.)

How can I expect them to get it.

I don't even get it.

I do wish they'd at least get my

name right.  It's Spider Man...

not The Spider Man. Jeez. Boneheads.

I need a better publicist.

He rips the magazine easily in half, then in quarters, then in eights... somewhere in here we realize that this takes more strength in the hands than you or I have. He releases the stamp-sized shreds. Camera drifts with them as they flutter down over the city like confetti.

SPIDERMAN

Wouldn't they have kittens if they

knew Spiderman wasn't even a man.

Just a kid named...

yeah they would have kittens, that would be groovy and the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas

PETER!

CLOSE UP on an elderly lady yelling. "Peter... you're going to be late!" It's morning and she's calling up the stairs to...

PETER PARKER. Age 17. Peter is in the bathroom, popping a zit in the mirror. He puts on his glasses and checks his look in the mirror. Still the same. Nerdy. He doesn't care. Screw 'em.

James, where's the real Peter Parker? Is this like a movie about the Clone Saga or something?

He grabs a big stack of books and heads downstairs. Over breakfast we meet his aunt MAY and Uncle BENJAMIN. Nice people but way too old to be the kind of role-model parents a kid needs. Still, he loves them even if he forgets to actually mention it 99% of the time like any kid. Aunt May is thin and fusses over Peter too much. He indulges her. When he has time, which he doesn't this morning.

I agree, James, I've read a couple of the comics and in no way are Uncle Ben and Aunt May ever good role models because they are just too OLD to understand KIDS. Well, except you, you seem to be doing a great job.

Peter's parents were killed in a plane crash when he was six. He woke up one day without a family. Somehow he always felt guilty that they went away. As if he had done something wrong. His 17 year old mind tells him it was just fate, just a random accident... but deep in his subconscious that scared 6 year old still cries, begging for them to come home... he won't cause trouble anymore... he'll go to bed when they tell him.

ugh.

[...]

Peter is a bright kid. He doesn't have many friends. He is ostracized for his interest in science. Our MTV culture frowns on people who think too much. Intellectual curiosity is decidedly un-hip. Who cares about where the universe came from or how the Greeks hammered Troy? Did you hear the new Pearl Jam album?

Peter is defiant. He thinks they are the real losers. They'll be flipping burgers while he's discovering the cure to cancer.
We'll see who wins in the long run.

He wears his isolation like a badge... with an air of superiority.

James, I want this Peter Parker to get punched in the face. Is that what you're doing here, like a... parody or something? Something that's bad?

[...]

He has the 17 year-old's sense that he knows everything about the world, and can see so clearly all the things that are wrong with it. In fact he is very insulated and knows almost nothing about human nature in all its complexity. He doesn't even understand himself very well. Because his life of the mind is his badge of superiority, he frowns on the pursuits of the body.

Sports? Forget it. Bunch of jock boneheads crashing into each other. Like stag elk in rut. Senseless violence. Girls? Good in theory, but how do you talk to them? Dancing? No way. He tried it once. Not a pretty sight.

Peter is a virgin. And apt to remain that way for a while. He's your basic sexually pent-up adolescent.

Thank you for clearing that up James, it really helps me understand the character better.

Later in the treatment:

At the same time, in some neighborhoods, he is a local legend. Crime is down, and the friendly neighborhood Spider Man is a welcome sight. And everybody wants to claim him.

Black kids think he's black. White kids white. Hispanic etc.

"Spidey man ain't no white dude. He too down. What I'm sayin. You see his moves? He definitely a brother."
"No way, home. My brother knows a guy that talked to him once, man."
Italians say he's Italian.
Gays think he's gay.

This is Not a News Story

(but it's the BEST JOURNALISM EVER!)

Every. Single. Time. some tragedy happens, members of the "New Media"--or "Old Media" outlets with web content--release, and promote, the same article (both the same as before and the same as everyone else's). It is quite possibly the most template-y, "insert X here" type of article imaginable. Therefore, it is the best. It's ingenious. Journalism is supposed to be easy, after all--easy to do, easy to write, easy to read. As a reporter, you just repeat stuff that other people repeat! How much thinking could you possibly need for that? Again, it shouldn't be hard--if it is, you're doing it wrong!

When you hear about a tragic event or major news story, your first thought, save perhaps concern, prayer, or both, is to ask for more information.

And The Huffington Post, among others, ingeniously answers a question you didn't even ask.

How to Get People (Especially Women) to Take Comics Seriously

Yeah.

Notice how V-Shield-Girl's breasts manage to stay perky inside her armor! And Lightning Cleavage's breasts manage to stay perky in spandex!

Displaying this in a bookstore will definitely attract women to comics! Look, she's saving some pathetic clod who's just wearing tacky boxers and is a loser yet somehow also muscular! See? It's not sexist at all!

Art Deco (Images)

I know, I know, this is not what was supposed to be coming next, but the interview is proving surprisingly hard to put into a post.

Anyway, this post goes out to the lady behind GOD! GIRLS! GUNS! PIE!

Roland Emmerich's anti-Shakespeare movie "Anonymous" Completely Ignores the REAL Truth

So I read this article a while back. It's about Anonymous, Roland Emmerich's film about how Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare and was instead a dude named Edward de Vere. An excerpt:

Orloff [the writer of the movie --N.] brushes off such criticism of his movie as a knee-jerk response to an “academic subversion of normality.” “When you learn it’s not fact, it’s a bit unsettling,” the screenwriter said. “Why not question everything you’ve been taught?”

Well, yes, in that situation I can see how that would happen, although as far as I know Orloff hasn't begun questioning the moon landing or the traditional dates of Ancient Egypt's Second Intermediate Period.

The studio plans to concurrently release Last Will. & Testament, a documentary about the authorship debate, through First Folio Pictures (a production shingle whose president is none other than Roland Emmerich) and has been providing materials to educators that encourage teachers to “make this thought-provoking new film part of your class plan.”

And this worries me. I think teaching class materials based on Anonymous is a bad strategy: it's giving kids an inaccurate and incomplete picture... because Anonymous didn't go far enough. It's true that conventional views of Shakespeare are completely false. But not in the way most people think. Let me elaborate.

*  *  *

When I heard about Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, I was excited. Finally, a movie that wasn't afraid to take on conventional scholarship and challenge long-held beliefs about Shakespeare. But then I saw a photo of Shakespeare from the movie:

Apparently the film thinks so little of Shakespeare that he doesn't even know which direction to bow in

I'm sure you see the problem here.

You see, Anti-Stradfordians (people who don't believe Shakespeare wrote the plays) often say that we don't have any evidence that Shakespeare ever read a book, and that we don't have anything that shows he wrote the plays besides copies of works that were allegedly by him and had his name attached to them on the cover somehow, and some obviously mistaken contemporary accounts.

But that brings us to an urgent, basic issue that needs to be sorted out before we can begin questioning identities:

Okay I Accidentally Lied

I've been busy. There will probably be something here Friday, though.

EDIT: Or Saturday.