Just His 19th Nervous Breakdown

The Reanimated Corpse of Keith Richards has demanded an apology for a bad review of a recent Reanimated Corpses of the Rolling Stones concert in Sweden.

This explains a lot, and actually makes me feel a bit better about the Stones. Maybe they haven't sold out, after all. Maybe they're not just in it for the money. Is it possible that Keith, Mick and the boys actually think they're still a credible rock-n-roll band? That they think they're going out there and "sticking it to the man" every night? That they truly don't see what a bad joke they've become for basically the entire rock music world outside of their namesake magazine?

"Write the truth," Keith demands in his letter. "It was a good show." Oh, well, if Keith says it was a good show, it must have been a good show, right?

Look, Keith..."Beggars' Banquet," "Let it Bleed" and "Sticky Fingers" will remain undeniable classics, absolute essentials of any rock aficionado's collection for as long as there is rock music, whether on vinyl, 8-Track tape, CD or iPod. Nothing you can do today will change that or threaten the Stones' status as one of the best, most significant and important rock bands in history. Your cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was by far the best thing about that movie, and you were far cooler in a five-minute appearance than Mick was through the entirety of Freejack.

But Keith, you're both an old man and a millionaire many times over. It's pretty stupid for you to be griping about a bad review in Sweden. And don't kid yourself - there's just no way your fingers are as nimble on the ol' axe as once they were. Don't try to convince anyone that the Stones can put on a show in 2007 that's anywhere near what you did in 1967 - because, c'mon, you and I both know that just ain't so. You're the same age as my Dad, Keith, but you look like you're the same age as Bob Dole. Hard living catches up with you. My Dad, at your age, likes golf, fine wine, Sunday afternoon naps, vacations where he can do a little SCUBA diving and a lot of sitting by the pool. He does not, as a general rule, ever try to convince anyone that he's still 23 years old, or even capable of all the things he was at that age.

Hey, go ahead and keep playing. No one's saying you can't. Feel free to put yourself out there to be the butt of jokes on late night talk shows - and seriously, you're old enough that the jokes about how old you are are twenty years old themselves. Go ahead, keep playing, keep making albums of ever-diminishing quality, keep selling tickets to rich and nostalgic Baby Boomers at $200 a pop. But don't get your Depends in a wad when someone points out that maybe you're not what you used to be.

The Loud American

Every now and then as I write, I use a word that I'm pretty sure means what I want to say, but not entirely sure. At times like these, I pause, open my dictionary widget, and look up the word to make sure I'm using it right. Pretty standard practice, I suppose.

The other day, George W. Bush made a speech in which he compared Iraq to Vietnam. What didn't appear in the news stories and the, "Uh, really, George?" commentary was the bit where Bush's speech writers attempted to make him appear erudite and well-read by tossing in a reference to Graham Greene's The Quiet American. The problem with this, as Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher points out, is that neither Bush nor his speech writers appear to have read or at least understood The Quiet American.

And there you have, in a nutshell, what I loathe about this president and his administration. Their philosophy has always been that the appearance of intelligence, confidence and leadership is just as good as actual intelligence, confidence and leadership. A lie repeated often enough and stridently enough becomes just as good as truth. Pretend to know what you're talking about often and stridently, and it's just as good as actually knowing what you're talking about. They don't pause to look things up in the dictionary because it doesn't matter to them if they're truly using the right word in the right way as long as it appears that they are.

Art is Not a Contest

Ah, the internet. Where everyone is an expert on every subject and isn't afraid to share their expertise. Here, for example, we have a fellow who claims to be "an arts buff" and yet here clearly demonstrates that he knows nothing about art. Whining about the perceived "lack of skill" amongst modern artists, he makes a number of ludicrous claims.

"However," sez he, "I contend that the highest skill in painting is the ability to create a convincing human likeness without resorting to tracing a photograph or other mechanical tricks." This is a dubious enough claim to begin with. This "arts buff" seems like he's probably the kind of guy who goes to an art museum and spends the whole afternoon in the modern/contemporary wing snorting and saying, "Well, I could do that!" or even better, "Well, my four-year old could do that!" It's the sort of thing you hear all the time at art museums. I always say to myself, "There are probably ways to spend the day that you would enjoy more...the Natural History Museum is right across the street..."

People tend to think of "art" as a standard by which creative works are judged. Paintings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Monet are Art-with-a-capital-A. Pollack, Rothko, Matisse...well, I could do that. Art somehow has to involve a superior talent or ability that "average" people do not possess. An artist is something akin to a professional athlete. Tom Brady and LeBron James are, by objective standards, better in their chosen fields than an "average" person. An artist must, therefore, be better at art by objective standards than an average person, too.

But it just ain't so. Art is not a standard by which creative work is judged; art is the result of creative work. The world of art can perhaps be divided into "good" and "bad." It cannot be divided into "art" and "not art." The point is not that the artist does something that you cannot do, the point is that the artist does something that you do not do. Although some academics will claim otherwise, the fact is that art is ultimately democratic and open to all. Some academics use terms like "outsider art" and "underground art," but it's really all just art. Art is about provoking response, not engaging in a talent competition.

Our "arts buff" throws out an absolute gem in the midst of this: "Picasso was not top-notch when painting people, and this is one of the reasons I don't consider him a great artist: his greatest skill was in public relations."

Up above, at the top of this post, are two self-portraits. On the right is Picasso's famous 1907 self-portrait. On the left...well, that's by Picasso, too. If the "arts buff" had done, oh, two minutes of research, flipped through a basic book of 20th-century art history, done a single Google image search, he would have discovered that his claim that Picasso couldn't paint people is pure bullshit. Picasso was perfectly capable of painting a convincing human likeness. That simple Google image search would have turned up Picasso's famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, certainly a convincing human likeness, on the 11th hit.

Picasso didn't paint the way he did - or at least, the way he did most famously - because he was unable to paint "realistic" portraits. He painted the way he did because he chose to do so. He chose to explore bigger and deeper concepts than the simple creation of "realistic" human likenesses. He chose to attempt to convey a different way of seeing and to transcend the limitations of human binocular vision.

Apple used Picasso in their gramatically horrifying "Think Different" ad campaign several years back, which is just about right. It's not just that Picasso was able to think differently, but that he was able to see differently. And that, to me, is what great art really is - a medium to convey some small bit of the artist's mind or vision. Great art must have a point of view and something to say. Not that it should have an Aesopian moral - but that it should make the viewer think or feel. Convincing human likenesses are nice, but they rarely do that for me.

If you're out there truly making the claim that the man who created "Guernica" was not a great artist, I just can't lend a whole lot of credence to what you say.

All The Wrong Lessons

The BBC headline read, "Bush Warns of New Vietnam in Iraq." Curious and thinking that this was sort of like warning JFK not to go to Dallas in 1968, I clicked thru...

President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.

"The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens," he told war veterans in Missouri.

Ah, of course. I had forgotten that in Bushworld, Vietnam was a disaster only because the United States failed to "stay the course" and pulled out after only ten years and a measly 60,000 dead American soldiers and a paltry five million dead Vietnamese combatants and civilians. If we hadn't been quitters, if we'd had the balls to stick with it for another ten years, why then we would have won, dammit. If we quit at the first sign of hardship, like we did in Vietnam, we'll never win anything.

In Bushworld, it is reasonable to assume, then, that the main lesson of the study of history is that winners never quit and quitters never win.

In Bushworld, the main lesson of algebra class is that 2 plus 2 can equal 5 if you insist that is does long enough and loud enough.

In Bushworld, the main lesson of English class is that Winston Smith wasn't patriotic enough and couldn't see how much Big Brother loved him.

In Bushworld, the main lesson of science class is that when your hypothesis is disproven, you need to change to a new hypothesis and claim that it fit the facts all along.

In Bushworld, Aristotle was Belgian, the central message of Buddhism is "every man for himself" and the London Underground is a political movement.

No, That's Your 19th Century Anarchist Revolutionary Name

Is there any game in the history of dumb start-a-pointless-five-minute-conversation-at-a-party game than the "What's Your Porn Star Name?" game? Especially since people always get bogged down in the rules of which one is your Porn Star Name and which one is your Drag Queen Name and so on and so forth.*

(Click to embiggen to legible scale)

As it turns out, there is. Nice work, Cat and Girl (aka super-awesome webcomic that I have somehow only just discovered)!


* Or maybe it's an awesome game and I'm just bitter because my Porn Star/Drag Queen name is Jägen 42nd Avenue. Who can say for sure?**



** Actually, I can say for sure. That game is stupid and it sucks.

Busy Busy Busy

We've arrived home after a busy weekend in Cali. Because of the timing of the flight, we never really ate dinner. I spent the entire drive home from the airport literally salivating over the the idea of seaweed salad and sushi-stuffed tofu bags.

A ham sandwich on thoroughly squashed bread was satisfactory...but I was a little disappointed that our fridge didn't magically fill with Japanese food while we were away...

1000 Words

Jennifer de Guzman, E-i-C of SLG Publishing, has this to say in an entry in Blog@Newsarama's "I ♥ Comics" series:

Here’s a confession: Comics are not the storytelling medium I love best. That place in my heart belongs to prose. I have degrees in English literature and creative writing, and when I tell stories, prose is the medium that comes most naturally to me. I adore words, and even as a kid didn’t balk from reading books without pictures in them.

However, as much as I would like to believe that words can express everything, I know that sometimes they can’t, and that sometimes they need to step aside and let images do the talking.

Think of a funny story that you were a part of. Think of how many times you've told that story, grinning and trying to keep yourself from laughing, and you get to the part about how his pants were around his ankles and he was covered in pistachio pudding and that's when the fire department showed up...and then you look up and realize that you're surrounded by a sea of blank or quizzical looks. You know the feeling, right? What do you say at that moment? "Well, I guess you had to be there..." Some things, you just can't describe with words.

It is, of course, possible to write enormously funny prose. Possible, but difficult. The people who can write truly laugh-out-loud funny prose are few and far between, and generally don't get the credit they deserve. Neil Gaiman described part of his impetus for writing Anansi Boys as the desire to write something funny. It was generally assumed that the collaboration between himself and Terry Pratchett on Good Omens involved Gaiman plotting and Pratchett dancing around in the background tossing out jokes. Knowing that this was not the case and desiring to demonstrate his own ability to be funny, Gaiman set out to make Anansi Boys funny. And it is - but in a more dry, witty, PG Wodehouse kind of way, the way in which you read something, smile and say to yourself, "That's funny," not the way in which you actually laugh as you're reading. Gaiman is a terrifically talented writer, of course, but has a tough time making readers laugh. Even his friend and collaborator, the aforementioned Mr. Pratchett, widely acknowledged as one of the great living writers of humorous prose, can't do it all that often. Or try reading one of the rash of books released by stand-up comics about ten years ago - Jerry Seinfeld's Sein Language, or Tim Allen's Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, for example. Again, amusing, but not really funny.

Switch mediums and you've got something else altogether. Get Jerry Seinfeld actually performing, and the material comes alive and is hilarious.

Which brings us to comics - the first strip pictured above is by the great MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones. It gives us a quick and humorous little story with no words at all. Not only does it not need any words, the joke only works visually. Try taking the same gag and making it funny as a prose piece or a joke you tell your friends at the bar.

Better still is the "9 Chickweed Lane" strip below it. The Aragones piece could work as some form of motion picture just as well as a comic strip. The "9 Chickweed Lane" strip works only as a comic strip. The gag depends on the interplay of words and pictures, but moreover, it depends also on the familiarity of the viewers with the conventions of the comic strip. It can't be translated to another medium, and it presents a bit of humor that no other medium could create.

This, I suppose, is part of the reason why humor strips dominate the newspaper comics page while adventure serials and soap operas have disappeared either to the dustbin of comics history books or "They still publish that?" obscurity. Although humor is possible in all media, it is something to which comics are uniquely suited.

Take that same story, the one with the pistachio pudding and the fire department, and turn it into a comic. Instead of your audience hearing events second-hand, you've suddenly turned them into...well, yourself. A first-hand observer of the events. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm of the opinion that you're going to get a lot more smiles, chuckles and outright belly laughs that way.

Might be there's something to that old saw about the value of a picture, after all...

Look Up

If you have any way to get out of the city this weekend, do it. If there's any chance you can take off work on Monday, take it. Slurp down a couple of double espressos Sunday night, throw a couple of blankets in the car and get as far away from the polluting lights of the city as you can.

Earth is in the midst of its intersection with the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The comet is far away, but the dust it leaves in its path is not. Sunday night marks the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, the biggest and most spectacular shower of the year. This year should be a memorable one, as the meteor shower's peak coincides with a new moon. The sky will be dark and the cosmos will put on a fireworks show better than the 4th of July.

As Earth passes through the dust cloud left behind by the comet, the dust will enter the upper atmosphere at fantastic speeds. The tiny bits of cosmic debris will ignite, leaving spectacular trails of light across the sky. At the absolute peak, before dawn on Monday morning, there could be a meteor a minute.

If you have the chance, drive way way out, as far from the city as you can reasonably get. Throw one blanket across the hood of the car, bundle up in the other as necessary, turn towards the east - the meteors will appear to originate from the constellation Perseus, in the eastern sky, just above red light of Mars - lay back on your blanket, look up, and watch the show.

You Suck, Barry

The cheating bastard on the right, you might recognize. He's all over the TV, the newspaper and the internets at the moment. Barry Bonds, major league baseball's new all-time Home Run King. The fellow on the left? The one who doesn't even appear to be the same species as Bonds? Yeah, that's Bonds, too. Okay, maybe he just started a new weight-training program a few years back. Or, more likely, he's a great big cheating bastard. Earlier this evening, the 'roided-up San Francisco Giants slugger hit his 756th career home run. It's an achievement of sorts, I guess. Bonds calling himself the Home Run King is sort of like someone riding the Cog Railway to the summit and then claiming to have climbed Pikes Peak.

I'm not a great fan of or participator in the Moral Outrage that is popular amongst sports columnists these days. The sportswriters have collectively turned in thousands upon thousands of column inches about how the antics of Randy Moss and Terrell Owens have besmirched the proud and upstanding traditions of American football. Me, I thought it was hilarious when T.O. pulled a Sharpie out of his sock to autograph the football with which he had just scored a touchdown, and absurd but essentially harmless when Moss pretended - pretended, mind you - to moon the fans at Lambeau Field. But here we have a bit of Moral Outrage I can get behind.

You suck, Barry.

Being a self-aggrandizing prick isn't exactly noble, but it is, in the end, fairly meaningless. Being crass and vulgar is no more admirable, but again, it's meaningless. Hell, Babe Ruth, the God of American Professional Athletes, was a crass, vulgar, self-aggrandizing prick. Cheating is something else entirely. I wouldn't care if Bonds, who has long been widely regarded as the biggest asshole baseball has to offer, had set the record if a reasonable case could be made that he had done so honestly. Fair and square, as they say.

Some apologists are making the argument that we are living through "the Steroid Era" of professional baseball, and Bonds' accomplishment is okay because everyone he's playing against is juiced up, too. This argument is total bullshit. That everyone is cheating doesn't make cheating okay. More importantly, Bonds has notably been competing against two people who weren't on the 'roids: Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.

I hate to be all "won't someone please think of the children?" here, but won't someone please think of the children? How are we supposed to teach kids about the value of sportsmanship and fair play when someone is making headlines and raking in the dough by cheating, disregarding everything we think is important about not just sports but life in general, and everyone sees it, acknowledges that it's going on, and just shrugs and says, "Well, whattaya gonna do?" The message here isn't "cheating is wrong," but rather, "cheating sucks, but there's no way to stop it." The lesson is that it isn't wrong if you don't get caught, especially if there's a buck to be made.

Everyone involved comes out better if nobody really acknowledges what's going on. Barry gets his record. Major League Baseball gets to sell tickets and merchandise (this could, of course, lead into a whole other post: "You Suck, Bud Selig."). The sports media gets an event to hype and to debate.

And that's something I don't get - what's to debate? Why all the discussion on ESPN about "what do you think?" What can any reasonable person who loves baseball think? Bonds stole a coveted record with chemical enhancements. He cheated, plain and simple. How many opinions can anyone really have about cheating?

My fondest wish regarding Barry Bonds is that enough proof will come out over the next few years to nail him. Maybe he gets to keep his record, maybe not. But I have a lovely image in my head of Barry Bonds and Pete Rose appearing at baseball card shows together in fifteen years, both getting into the Hall of Fame only by paying admission, signing balls and desperately trying to gain the public's forgiveness and acceptance. Rose has, of late, been signing balls with the inscription, "Sorry I bet on baseball." Maybe they'll both be sitting there, side by side, at a table at the mall, signing balls, "Sorry for being scumbags." It'll never happen, of course. It's in everyone's interests to pretend the steroid problem doesn't exist, ignore it and it'll go away, so Bonds will be a sure-shot Hall-of-Famer, enshrined alongside the guys who did it the old-fashioned way. But it's a nice image, isn't it?

Bonds has officially put lie to the old chestnut, "Cheaters never prosper." He seems to be prospering just fine.

You suck, Barry. For your lofty achievements through cheating, you suck. You suck great, hairy, green, infected-pus-oozing, syphillitic donkey balls. You suck, you suck, you suck.

I really mean it. You suck, Barry.

Your List Sucks

Dwight Silverman, blogging for the Houston Chronicle, writes a list of "15 Geek Novels to Read Before You Die." It's a decent list with a few interesting choices (The Catcher in the Rye, Cat's Cradle) interspersed amongst the usual chestnuts of such lists (The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide). I'm not sure just why Holden Caulfield's disillusionment and alienation qualify as a "geek novel," but that's kind of the point of such lists. It's a fun and fairly easy thing for a blogger or columnist to throw together when he doesn't really have any other ideas about what to write (e.g. my own GBN Top Five lists). With luck, it'll inspire some discussion and fun conversation. There's even an off-chance that some geek out there who may have had a humiliatingly deprived childhood and never heard of A Wrinkle in Time before reading such a list will now seek it out. Meaningless fun, right?

The geek response on the internet has been as predictable as the sun rising in the East.

Here's a sampling:

"Oh, and what, no Pratchett? Fail."

You can't "fail" at this kind of list. Yeah, it's called "...to Read Before You Die," but that's the kind of hyperbole is the norm for such things. In reality, no one is claiming that this is The Definitive List of the Best and Most Important "Geek Novels" in History. It's a nerdy Baby Boomer offering an opinion.

I don't think Harry Potter will last. It certainly doesn't belong on the same list as Dune.

Ah, the ever-amazing ability of the average internet geek to unfailingly predict the future. And clearly, something I personally don't like can't possibly be considered on the same level as something I do.

Any list of geek books that can find a space for Harry Potter and doesn't acknowledge anything by H. P. Lovecraft is just fundamentally wrong.

And clearly, if it includes something contemporary and popular that I don't like but doesn't include something old and cultish that I do like, this list is "fundamentally wrong."

I'd drop House of Leaves for Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Come on... Mathmatics, symmetry and intelligence? Potential readers be warned: this is not the stuff of armchair geekery. You will need much more than an iPod and a Second Life account to appreciate this work.

Translated for those who don't speak geeksnob: Ha! This list is for amateurs! I don't read simplistic stuff like that, I read dense things like this! Tremble, worms, before my massive, massive intelligence!

No fantasy please (witchcraft is not geekiness). One of my favorites is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.

Only certain kinds of literature can qualify as geeky. Only science fiction. Fantasy sucks! Hard to believe, but there is snobbery and elitism amongst geeks, too.

I can't believe you left out The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.....

I can't believe you think there's five periods in an ellipsis. I also can't believe you think things can be "left out" on someone's personal and essentially arbitrary list.

---

Nerds have a hard time with disagreement. I've discussed this before. There's an assumption amongst a pretty large swath of the culture (not just nerds) that "my own opinions are objectively correct." Because of this, they look at any list like this as someone else putting out their objectively correct opinions. Then they get up in arms because two differing opinions can't both be objectively correct and they can't reconcile the two.

A list like this is supposed to inspire discussion. So, discuss. Say, "I disagree, I don't think 1984 belongs on the list," or "I would have included Ender's Game on that list." But don't say that the list is wrong, or that the writer has failed. When you argue that the writer has sacrificed his credibility by including or by failing to include a particular book...well, someone's credibility has indeed been sacrificed.

Guess whose?

I Am Compelled to Ask...

...did they find a series of tubes?

Perhaps a big truck?

Or that internet his staff sent him that he never got?

QED

Nerd-blogger John Rogers says what I said:

The Con's current scale hammers home the hackiness of the standard American media narrative. I noticed multiple news camera crews, and each time it was the same. 124,000 people at the Con, give or take. But if you turn on your news coverage you won't see the giggling, happy five year-olds with their parents, having the "together family time" we're always whinging on about. You won't see the young woman who wrote and drew a comic about her time as a soldier in Israel. You won't see the scrum of young Marines I spotted as they compared Magic the Gathering cards. You won't meet the junior high teachers who are using my comic in their predominantly Hispanic classrooms to spark discussion about racial representation in the media. You won't see the indie film-makers, the kid who shot this 25 minutes in a week and left every industry pro who stumbled across him slack-jawed.

A thousand stories, tens of thousands of familes ... yet the newshacks couldn't wait to hustle up the dozen or so real freaks in costumes, the literally .001% that gave them what they wanted. Not even the kids in the Harry Potter outfits, or the Japanese anime kids, or even the clever unfolding Transformer rigs -- no, they found every empty-eyed overweight forty-five year old Flash or flab-rolled part-time stripper Catwoman and latched on tight for the creepy interview.

No Time For Love, Dr. Jones

Among yesterday's big pieces of news from Comic-Con was the announcement that Karen Allen is coming back as Marion Ravenwood in Indy IV. This is sweet news, and something I've been hoping to hear since they announced that they were actually finally making this movie. That's Shia LaBeouf, Stevie Spielberg, Ray Winstone, Karen Allen and...um...Harry something-or-other there. Not pictured are other big-name cast members Jim Broadbent and Cate Blanchett. No Sean Connery this time around - which is probably for the best - and no John Rhys-Davies either. I'm hoping there'll be a surprise cameo from Jonathan Ke Quan as Short Round...but it's only a faint hope.

I have nothing particular to say here. This photo just made me squeal with nerdish glee and I wanted to share.

Top Five: How 'Bout Those Rainbow Suspenders?

As I've mentioned, I can't work up a lot of interest in seeing The Simpsons Movie. Yeah, I'm one of those snarky internet people who do nothing but bitch about how much "The Simpsons" has gone downhill over the last several years. To quote the Kids in the Hall's 30 Helens, "Things were better before." The movie doesn't look like it's going to reverse this trend, sadly. But why remain mired in the gloom of the present when you can reminisce about the glory days, back when "The Simpsons" handily earned its title as the Funniest TV Show Ever? Sounds like another opportunity for a Great Big Nerd Top Five! Here, in my humble opinion, are the Top Five Simpsons Episodes.

Composing a list like this is difficult and fairly arbitrary - seasons 3 through 8 are an embarrassment of riches, nearly every episode absolutely top-notch. Seasons 9 and 10 are uneven but decent, and the hit-to-miss ratio just keeps dropping from there.

Honorable mentions - "Bart the Daredevil", from Season 2, is an early indicator of how good things would be; the disastrous consequences of Capt. Lance Murdock's attempt to jump a tank filled with sharks, piranhas, electric eels and "the king of beasts, one ferocious lion!" never fail to crack me up. ""In Marge We Trust" is worthy of inclusion if nothing else for the Mr. Sparkle B-plot. "Treehouse of Horror VI"," from the 7th season, is the best of the Halloween specials, thanks largely to the presence of the great "Homer³."

5. "Homerpalooza" (7th Season): Celebrity guest appearances on "The Simpsons" were once funny. Celebrities would appear as characters who worked within the context of a normal plot. One of the hallmarks of the Decline has been celebrities "appearing" as themselves and the lazy writing that goes with it. "Hey, look everybody, it's [insert name of celebrity guest who happens to fit in with this week's set of loosely-connected gags]!" Though "Homerpalooza" might be considered a starting point of that disheartening trend, it works even so. Like many a great "Simpsons" episode, this one is actually about something real and meaningful - the harsh realities of aging and no longer being "with it." The spot-on parody of disaffected youth culture is great - "Oh, it's the cannonball guy. He's cool." "Dude, are you being sarcastic?" "I don't even know anymore." The celebrity cameos are actually funny, too: Sonic Youth rummaging through Peter Frampton's cooler, Cypress Hill holding a rushed, whispered conversation about whether they had "ordered" the London Symphony Orchestra while high, Peter Frampton shopping at Pink Floyd's garage sale. There are great throw-away lines referring to some of the show's running gags, like Homer's unerringly awful taste in music ("Jefferson Airplane gave way to Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Electric Light Orchestra!") and what a miserable place Springfield is ("We've got a little rule back home: if it's brown, drink it down. If it's black, send it back."). And remember, for totally rockin' class rings, it's Jostens!

Best Line: The one that gave this post its title, Homer's impossibly lame conversation starter as he drives the carpool: "So...how 'bout those rainbow suspenders? Pretty cool way to keep your pants up!"

4. "Lisa's Rival" (6th Season): A brilliant examination of Lisa's over-achieving ways. "The Simpsons" got a lot of attention when they used Poe's "The Raven" in their first Halloween special. But here they use Poe to even better effect - Allison's "Telltale Heart" entry in the school diorama contest is a nice allusion underlining Lisa's increasingly crazy obsession with besting her rival. Lisa's trip to Allison's house is a classic moment ("Hmm...I have a ball here. Perhaps you'd like to bounce it."), as it the resolution of the diorama contest ("Star Wars action figures! In their original packaging!"). Again, this episode works largely because it plays on fears and insecurities that are easy to identify with. Lisa's character as the resident know-it-all has been well established, and the results when she meets her mirror image are highly entertaining. The B-plot, Homer's attempt to go into business selling "Farmer Homer's Sweet Sweet Sugar" is hilarious as well.

Best Line: This is also one of the classic Ralph Wiggum episodes, and his response when Lisa and Allison invite him to play anagrams with them is great: "My cat's breath smells like cat food."

3. "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" (8th Season): This episode parodies a trait of long-running series to which "The Simpsons" itself has fallen victim, in its own way, in recent years. No, they haven't added a Rockin' Dog to their cast, nor has Roy come back to live with the Simpsons again. But in their desperation as they've completely run out of material, the writers have started focusing more and more on the odd fringe characters - the ones who are and ought to be nothing more than catch-phrases and throw-away gags. They've done entire episodes centering around Comic Book Guy, for fuck's sake. Not exactly a new character added to improve slumping ratings, but still...On the other hand, I don't want to come off like the people who are the other side of this episode's coin, the (speaking of Comic Book Guy) "Worst. Episode. Ever." types.

And this is far from the worst, of course - it's just kind of sadly prophetic. One of the things that's great about it is that it manages to skewer both sides equally - the interfering executives and lazy creators get both barrels, but so do the obsessive fans. Flanders telling Homer, "I can honestly say that's the best Impy and Chimpy episode I've ever seen" cracks me up, and is close to being the episode's best line, save for...

Best Line: ...the runner of the focus group trying to clarify just what it is he's learned: "So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show...that's totally off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?"

2. "Homer at the Bat" (3rd Season): Another of the rare instances of celebrities-playing-themselves that works. The story of Homer's home-made bat sets things up nicely, and the classic trope of the hero saving the big game is hilariously subverted twice. First, when a Roger Clemens fastball torches Homer's "Wonder Bat," and then at the episode's end when Homer is plunked by a pitch, accidentally driving in the winning run. Top-to-bottom it's a great parody of the conventions of sports movies - it wasn't the first time "The Simpsons" have done it (that would be "Dancin' Homer" from season 2), nor would it be the last (e.g. "Lisa on Ice," "Bart Star"), but it's almost certainly the best of the bunch. The comical fates of Mr. Burns's ringers are terrific, not to mention the fact that Burns originally wants to bring in Honus Wagner and Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown to play on the team. Early on, the umpire goes over the rules of softball with Homer and Chief Wiggum. It's funny enough that every rule involves the consumption of beer, but the capper is Wiggum's response: "Hey, we know how to play softball!"

Best Line: When the always over-eager Springfield police pull over second baseman Steve Sax (who was then playing for the Yankees) and begin harassing him about a non-descript unsolved murder in New York City, Sax replies that there are probably hundreds of unsolved murders in New York. After a beat, in perfect cop-show style, Eddie responds: "You just don't know when to quit, do you, Saxie?"

1. "You Only Move Twice" (8th Season): Homer goes to work for a James Bond villain. The James Bond villain (Hank Scorpio) is friendly and easygoing and offers his employees great benefits and insists that they call him Hank. Homer confesses his lifelong dream (one of many) to own the Dallas Cowboys. In an effort to motivate the people working under him, Homer discusses with Scorpio the best place to acquire "business hammocks" ("In fact, they're all in the same complex, down on 3rd." "Oh, the hammock district."). Homer gets a bonus when he tackles James Bond after he's escaped from Scorpio's death-trap. Bart gets put into a remedial class at his new school, along with a boy who explains that "I moved here from Canada, and they think I'm slow, eh?" A bored Marge begins drinking a half-glass of fortified wine every afternoon, accompanied by melodramatic music. The family convinces Homer to quit his job. As he leaves, Scorpio says, "If you could kill someone on the way out, it would really help me a lot." As the credits roll after the single funniest closing of a "Simpsons" episode ever (see below), we get a Shirley Bassey-style theme song, proclaiming that Scorpio's "twisted twin obsessions are his plot to rule the world and his employees' health." There's not much in the way of depth or significance here, but it's just wall-to-wall laughs. Brilliant.

Best Line: Best Dialogue, actually...After returning to Springfield, Homer gets a telegram from Scorpio and a thank-you gift for helping out with Project Arcturus - "it may get you a little closer to that dream of yours." Homer looks up from the telegram and...

Homer: Aw, the Denver Broncos!
Marge: I think owning the Denver Broncos is pretty good.
Homer: Yeah, yeah.
Marge: Well explain to me why it isn't!
Homer: You just don't understand football, Marge...


I know, I know...some of the episodes I've included suck, right? And I'm totally blind, as I skipped right over what is clearly the best episode ever, right? So what's your favorite?

A Public Service Reminder

It's NerdProm weekend, folks. This weekend is the Somethingth Annual San Diego Comic-Con. This means that the weekend and the early part of next week, you're going to see the stories on teevee and in the paper about the NerdProm.

Yes, Comic-Con is an increasingly huge event, and increasingly important to Hollywood's marketing strategies in the era of super-hero blockbuster films and TV shows like Lost and Heroes. Yes, the word-of-mouth that helped turn Star Wars into a global phenomenon started at Comic-Con way back in the day. And yes, there will be costumes, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous (I'll let you determine for yourself into which category the Blue Beetle here falls, but I will note that there's a reason the people behind the X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman films have avoided spandex like the plague).

But here's the annual reminder for my not-as-geeky readers: Don't believe the hype. Yeah, the newspaper editors and the segment producers at CNN love to fill the space with freaks-on-parade photos. But it's just not representative of your average nerd, or your average comics fan. Look at all those people behind the Blue Beetle in the photo - a sea of jeans, t-shirts and ballcaps.

Don't get me wrong - Comic-Con never fails to bring out the best in nerds who are into costumey kind of stuff. There's always some really amazing, fun, cool and impressive stuff interspersed amongst the old fat guys in cardboard Optimus Prime costumes. I love the spirit of it all, that there's a place where, for one weekend a year, a nerd can feel perfectly secure walking around in public all day long in a fucking Blue Beetle costume. I love that there are people out there so full to the brim with fan-love that they want to dress up as Blue Beetle or Hello Kitty Darth Vader or the crew of the Enterprise-D (I, uh, don't think the cargo shorts are Starfleet regulation there, Albino Worf) or Burger King Jedi vs. Jack in the Box Sith. Hell, I even feel a certain affection for the old fat guys in cardboard Optimus Prime costumes.

The point isn't that the costumes aren't cool or funny or interesting. The point is that the media can't find much else to talk about, so they make it look like everybody at Comic-Con has spent the last year and every dime they had on elaborate costumes, that every single person at Comic-Con who isn't dressed as their favorite Avenger or X-Man or Justice Leaguer is wearing a Stormtrooper uniform. And it just ain't so.

So there's your reminder. Remember: costumes = good, most nerds ≠ costume-wearers, most nerds are actually fairly well-rounded and intelligent people with diverse interests and many of us have even kissed a real, live girl in our lives. Comic-Con is a wonderful opportunity for nerds to let the proverbial freak flag fly...but it's only a fairly small set that has such a large freak flag.

In short, enjoy the photos, y'all, but remember to see both the forest and the trees.

Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart?

I think that The Simpsons Movie looks no better or funnier than the average "Simpsons" episode of the last five or six years. Couldn't be less interested in seeing it.

Still, I think the "turning 7-11 into Kwik-e-Mart" promotion is pretty clever. One of the converted SebbinLebbins is here in the Mile High City. Check it out...

The Eagle Has Landed

38 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. If you don't think that this is the coolest thing anyone has ever done and the most monumental achievement in the history of mankind, you're probably reading the wrong blog.

My Favorite Comic Book Ever

It was the summer of 1988. We had been living in Greeley for several months - long enough for me to complete the fifth grade and to discover that I was no cooler in Greeley than I had been in Englewood. I had accompanied my Mom to the grocery store one afternoon, as usual. And, as usual, I made a beeline for the comics rack. In those days, there wasn't a convenient comic book store in town, but in those days, grocery, convenience and drug stores still carried comics alongside the magazines. Fortunately, my tastes weren't terribly esoteric, so I could get what I wanted by combing the racks at Safeway, 7-11 and Long's Drugs.

I don't know why, for sure, but this cover caught my eye in the Safeway that afternoon. It was a #1, which was always intriguing, to be sure. I liked the sound of the title: Speedball - The Masked Marvel. I flipped through it and I liked the art - though I had no idea that it was by Steve Ditko, or even why that was interesting or important. I probably picked out another book or two, though I couldn't tell you what they might have been, and went to find my Mom.

When we got home, I devoured Speedball #1 like a junkie getting a fix. I read it again and again over the next few weeks, and haunted the newsstands in search of Speedball #2. I liked Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, and I was beginning to be intrigued by the X-Men...but Speedball, of all characters, just sang to me.

It was the right book at the right time, I suppose. Robbie Baldwin was a high school student, not all that much older than me. He felt lonely and isolated because of his uncontrollable powers. It was a perfect little slice of melodramatic adolescent angst. Back in the '60s, Marvel invented super-heroic melodramatic adolescent angst with Spider-Man, but by the time I was reading comics, Spidey was already an adult and married to a super-model. Spidey was fun, the Thing and the Human Torch were cool, but Speedball was the first super-hero I could really identify with. This wasn't on any conscious level, of course - but somewhere in the back of my head, I could see a bit of myself in Speedball. There was angst, yes, but it was still a ton of fun, too.

Every year shortly after Thanksgiving my Grandmother - Mom's Mom - sent letters to both my brother and me, asking us what we wanted for Christmas. In 1988, I knew exactly what I wanted. I tore a subscription form from the back of a Marvel comic, filled it out with my name and address and the box for Speedball checked, and sent it to Grandma, along with a note explaining what to do with it.

Shortly after Christmas, Speedball #7 arrived in the mail. I was delighted - my favorite comic book, delivered right to my door. It was a little thrill around the same time each month, walking home from the school bus stop and wondering if my new comic would be waiting for me in the mailbox. That lasted for three months. Along with Speedball #10 was a letter from Marvel, telling me that my favorite comic book in the world was being cancelled.

In his introduction to DC's The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told, Roy Thomas tells a great story about the end of his personal "Golden Age of Comics." He relates the story of his subscription to All-Star Comics, home of his beloved Justice Society of America. He tells of how he cried when it became All-Star Western with the second issue of his subscription. I felt the same when that letter from Marvel came, telling me I would have to pick another title to fill out the remainder of the subscription period. I don't think I cried, but I was certainly crushed.

I picked another title - The New Mutants, which I liked a lot and which was filled with even more melodramatic adolescent angst. Still, I read those subscription issues somewhat grudgingly, always knowing as I read them that I wasn't getting what I really wanted.

A year or so later, Speedball was brought back in a new melodramatic adolescent angst team book, The New Warriors. I picked up that #1 - by this time, I was getting my comics from a comic book store that had opened up across the strip mall from the Safeway - solely because of Speedball, but I quickly became a fan, and that one was my favorite book for several years running.

And now the real point of all this...

Over the years, Marvel has made its comics steadily less and less fun. Everything that happens in the Marvel Universe (and in the DC Universe, for that matter) these days is taken very very seriously, and it's all tortured and self-important. As part of this drive for...whatever it is they think they're accomplishing, Marvel recently killed off most of the New Warriors and put Speedball through a transformation during the hoopla of their idiotic Civil War event.

He's not Speedball anymore - he's PENANCE (Ooo, scary!)! He feels guilty over the deaths he believes he caused at the beginning of Civil War, and for some reason he needs to be in pain to use his new-and-improved powers, so he wears an idiotic-looking costume with a bunch of interior spikes that poke him all the time so he can use his powers.

This idiocy is just indicative of why I've given up on nearly all super-hero comics. They're not interested in escapism, or in stories that are fun to read. It's gotta be all gloom-and-doom, all the time. Yeah, the original Speedball series was melodramatic adolescent angst - but it was fun ultimately pretty light and breezy. Robbie Baldwin felt isolated and alone, but he also enjoyed being a super-hero.

Writer Paul Jenkins, who is at least partially responsible for this inanity, told Newsarama, "Penance is much more interesting to me as a character than Speedball. As Speedball, and I don’t mean to disparage him as he was, but all stories, as they say, are about sex and violence, which translates to passion and conflict. There’s very little conflict in the happy-go-lucky guys. It’s difficult to show him conflicted, if he lets things ride. So Penance surely, to me, has far more potential. I think we’ve given him a good start, so we’ll see where he goes from here."

Right. 'Cause mopey Gloomcookie Emo boys are so much more interesting characters than those who are positive and funny. If your hero is essentially a happy-go-lucky guy who has some problems to deal with, that's boring and uninteresting. But if he's tortured and tormented and into self-flagellation, it's dramatic and important and, like, good writing and stuff. Dude's so far up his own ass that I think he's coming back out of his mouth. Wanker.

That's the bottom line - I started reading super-hero comics because they were escapist fun. I'm not saying that's what super-heroes have to be all the time, but it is, to me, a pretty big part of their appeal. And I still like the super-hero stuff that has some of that sense of fun - Jeff Smith's Shazam! and Robert Kirkman's Invincible are two that spring to mind.

If the boys at Marvel ever pull their collective head out and bring back a tiny shred of the silliness and whimsy that made Speedball entertaining in the first place, I'll be the first in line to see it. But as long as Emo Speedball (to borrow a phrase) is Marvel's idea of an "interesting" character, count me out.

Could Be

Yesterday, Christopher Butcher made a snarky post about the annual farce of the comics world that is the Wizard Advertiser Fan Awards, which Graeme McMillan at Newsarama then linked.

Ben Morse, Sean T. Collins and Kiel Phegley from Wizard responded to these two posts in typical juvenile Wizard fashion, with a resounding, "Nuh-uh! I know you are but what am I?" They insist that their awards are legitimized because the nominations come from "the fans," which is true in its own way, I suppose. I don't know that we really need awards to know that the average Wizard reader thought Infinte Crisis and Marvel Zombies were great and likes Brian Michael Bendis, Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. If the Eisners are the Oscars and the Harveys are the Golden Globes, then the Wizard Fan Awards are the People's Choice Awards - baffling, absurd and entirely useless.

The best part is this gem from Ben Morse: "I know there are no shortage of people on this here Internet that are going to call Wizard evil and stick to their guns regardless of if we cure cancer."

I didn't realize Wizard was such a leader in the field of cancer research, first of all. Rest easy, American Cancer Society and Sloan-Kettering, there's a sophomoric comics magazine on the job!

That but of ludicrous hyperbole aside, it's the defensiveness that really amuses me. "There's people out there who are just going to hate us, no matter what, aren't we put upon?" Give me a break. Yeah, there's a pretty vocal segment of comics fans on the internet who despise Wizard. Wonder why.

Could it be because with a straight face they referred to Lost Girls as "Alan Moore's steamy new sex comic," perhaps?

Could it be because the cover image that Christopher Butcher used in his post promises to tell us about "30 of the summer's sexiest superbabes," maybe?

Could it be because the folks at Wizard seem to think it's their job to kiss Joe Quesada's ass and to tell Dan DiDio that his shit doesn't stink?

Could it be because the closest Wizard gets to insightful commentary or criticism is something along the lines of "The only thing that RAWKED more than DC's Infinite Crisis was Marvel's Civil War!"?

Could it be because Wizard drinks the Kool-Aid, buying without hesitation into the idea currently popular at Marvel and DC that comics exist primarily to create licensable material to turn into movies and TV shows and toys rather than a viable and independent medium?

Could it be because every issue of Wizard gives the impression that the magazine's staff probably believes that Aaron Welsh is the true hero of "The Rack," put upon and unfairly belittled by his snobby co-workers at Yavin IV?

Could it be because when a couple of bloggers have something negative to say about Wizard, rather than acting like adults and professionals, ignoring it and going about their business, three staffers react like eight-year-olds?

Could be.

Could be that people hate Wizard not randomly or senselessly, but because it's truly loathsome. What else do you expect from people with a modicum of intelligence and taste when you so gleefully and willingly carry the banner for the Lowest Common Denominator?

Wilhelm

Because Blogger kind of (well, okay, TOTALLY AND FUCKING COMPLETELY) sucks when it comes to embedding YouTube video, the video is a separate post. Grr. I really hate Blogger sometimes.