Ephemera

A couple of notes, all of them oscillating wildly on my own personal relevance scale:

1. My buddy Greg just started a blog here, that I am both obliged and delighted to link to. It's good to have someone else to link to, to be honest. Though it might seem bizarre given that there are seemingly millions of blogs created every second, the blogosphere can be an awfully lonely place with little discursive reward unless you really whore yourself out like Perez Hilton or Drudge or whomever. Greg, by the way, played McCullough in "Dino & McCullough: The Legend Begins," if you haven't seen that yet. I have a big role in it as well, as an erratic homosexual police chief.

I think Mendy needs to get a blog, too, if only to expound on some of the more mystifying choices he made in his top ten list, like the Hold Steady, and explain why he puts Nick Cave so low on his list.

2. My predictions regarding Secret Invasion: strangely, not that far off, at least compared to the complete misfire that was my prediction for Civil War. If you recall, I claimed that the Skrulls would win the fight by detonating the Wasp using whatever growth formula the fake Hank Pym gave her, and would take out the rest of the group with the help of Norman Osborn. I was wrong in that respect: the Skrulls got their asses handed to them (and, judging from what I've read in the latest issue of New Avengers, Bendis still seems to have no moral qualms with annihilating the remainder of Earth's Skrull populace, with extreme prejudice), but Norman still got to look like the hero while Tony Stark ran off, and now he is running not S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. but a new organization called H.A.M.M.E.R., which I believe is an acronym yet to be determined. I was right that the Wasp died, but I was wrong in predicting that Jessica Jones would die trying to save her baby from Skrull-Jarvis: instead, Skrull-Jarvis just ran off with the baby, which I think is a pretty ballsy move on Bendis' part, to leave the possibility of infanticide as a dangling plot thread. Unfortunately, this still doesn't explain why Norman Osborn knew what was going on with Captain Marvel when he barged into Thunderbolts mountain, which is one of many inconsistencies and gaffes in this book. The Dark Avengers, as far as I can tell, won't be Skrulls but rather Norman Osborn's Thunderbolt's rejiggered as classic Avengers. From what I can guess, you got Moonstone as Ms. Marvel, Bullseye as Hawkeye, Venom as Spider-Man (how is he going to pull off not having the tongue thing?), and Osborn himself as the new "Iron Patriot," alongside Wolverine's son Daken, Marvel Boy, the Sentry, and Ares.

I'm actually pretty pumped for what might happen in "Dark Reign," particularly with Tony Stark now on the run from the government and Osborn having a government sanctioned band of grade-A psychos as his nu-new Avengers. However, I'm actually more interested right now in what has been going on with Final Crisis, which has managed to be blowing my mind further and further as Secret Invasion has gotten more and more formulaic. That comic is being written by Grant Morrison, one of my favorite comic writers, and after reading the entirety of his Seven Soldiers and seeing how it relates to what's going on now, I've realized that Morrison is basically recasting the entirety of the DC universe in his own crazy, narcotics-enhanced vision--this is entirely a good thing. In the future, I need to devote an entire post to the oeuvre of Morrison, which I find I can't get enough of these days.

3. My own top ten list is forthcoming. I'm in the midst of reading through all of Infinite Jest right now--my one goal for the break--and as expected, it's taking a while.

4. My father got two DVDs for Chanukah the other day, 24-Hour Party People and Joy Divison (not Control, the fictional Anton Corbijn movie, but the documentary that was released with it). I am extremely jealous, but I got a book of Tobias Wolff short stories, so I'm good for now.

5. Philip Roth project is going fine, I got 25+ pages with it and my sponsor seems happy with it. I had somewhat of a hurdle getting it past certain members of faculty who took umbrage with my lack of specificity, which is a problem with my writing I always have as well.

6. Just quickly, I want to gauge if there's any interest if I were to put some short stories of my own writing up here. Actually, more generally I want to see if I can gauge any response regarding anything at all.

7. Finally, R.I.P. Harold Pinter, one of those guys that really did deserve a Nobel Prize for literature. I remember buying a copy of The Room and The Birthday Party and enjoying them very much, and now (as I am wont to do whenever an author dies) I am inclined to read more.

A comics-related post

The last issue of Secret Invasion is upon us, and although the last few issues have been somewhat underwhelming, I'm still pumped to see what sort of twists might happen. A few days before Marvel's last big event, Civil War, I attempted to predict what would happen in the last issue. I figured that what was most likely to happen would be that Tony Stark would sacrifice himself battling off a crazed clone of Thor, which would simultaneously redeem himself in the eyes of the readers as well as call an end to the Superhuman Registration Act. As it turned out, I was dead wrong. Tony Stark lived (duh, a movie was going to come out), Captain America died, and the SRA is still in place, although it seems that Stark and co. are starting to care less and less about enforcing it as they realize that people like Spider-Man aren't even remotely a threat to anyone's safety.

Anyway, I thought I'd attempt to do something similar with Secret Invasion, to see how wrong I can possibly be this time. Here's what I think will happen. Though it looked like the Skrulls were going to be defeated last issue, I believe they are here to stay for the long run. In fact, I think they will covertly take over with the help of Thunderbolts leader Norman Osborn, who will turn out to be a turncoat the whole time (this would explain why Osborn knew what Captain Marvel was in the first place when he just busted into Thunderbolts headquarters without warning). The Skrull-controlled media will make it seem as if Osborn beat the Skrulls, and he will be redeemed in the public eye for whatever wrongdoings he committed as the Green Goblin. He will probably replace Stark, who will be framed as a Skrull criminal and locked up, as head of S.H.I.E.L.D. (if it still exists, and if not, then as head of S.W.O.R.D.). During the final battle, I believe that the Wasp is probably going to die as the result of whatever growth serum she took, and the ensuing explosion will injure many and probably kill Jessica Jones, amongst a few others (some of the Young Avengers, maybe, or members of the Hood's party). The heroes will be defeated and unable to voice their concerns with a media already biased against them. As a result, all superheroes are completely banned from being active, save for a new group of Dark Avengers, who are actually Skrulls in disguise and have their reputation bolstered by claiming to have the resurrected Steve Rogers on their team, now known as the Iron Patriot. The new Captain America, Bucky Barnes, will find himself completely outcast again. The rest of the heroes are driven underground and forced to team up with the likes of Dr. Doom or go to other countries like Wakanda.

We'll see how right I am.

The Batman, emphasis on "The Man," also: Watchmen trailer

No thanks to you bozos, I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, and of course as a fan of what Christopher Nolan is doing with the character, generally, I found it to be yet another very powerful and effective superhero movie (does anybody besides me notice the ratio of good superhero movies to bad superhero movies these days? No wonder they're a sure bet at the box office these days--it seems every other summer movie can't resist being labeled a mixed bag at best). Heath Ledger was extremely good, I thought, and definitely the best Joker I've ever seen on screen (don't count me as a fan of Jack Nicholson's impression), even as his portrayal didn't exactly match the conception I had of him from the comics. It was also fun and somewhat novel to see a movie version that argued basically the inverse of what V For Vendetta was going for: that, as Thomas Hobbes suggested, life is nasty and filled with awful people, and only self-appointed guardians of order, legitimately elected or not, can keep us from tearing ourselves apart. Much has been written about how the Joker has been remade as a political terrorist a la Zarqawi or whoever, and it's sort of interesting to see the formerly anti-establishment Batman teaming up with the cops to restore capitalism and democracy, albeit not by playing by the books (then again, who ever did?). I was also happy to see the Joker providing a true-life example of "the prisoner's dilemma" for us to witness--as a screenplay device, it's kind of hoary, and the payoff is even worse, but the idea of the Joker as a amateur political scientist strikes me as gold.

Some things bugged me, but I don't know if they qualify as actual criticisms of the movie. The film brings up a lot of properly weighty themes that are discarded without a moment's notice--the Joker-Batman inverted psychoses theory first posited (as far as I know) by Alan Moore; the interesting notion that Batman is indirectly responsible for most of the supervillains who hang around Gotham City; that Two-Face follows this tragic arc and remains, unlike the rest of the characters, unredeemed. I never felt, for all the speechifying done by various characters (including countless moments where Joker says something to the effect of, "I'm just like you, Batman, I'm the yin to your yang, Batman, you are order and I am chaos, blah blah blah"), any of this was satisfactorily resolved. When Two-Face finally gets involved in the action, as fearsome as he looks, it seems that he is supposed to represent the new breed of evil in Gotham--and he doesn't seem that bad. The conversation he and Joker have doesn't make any sense. Additionally, I felt the film crossed the line with having Batman devise some sort of widespread sonar device that could determine the location of anyone with a cell phone, even if it's meant to be temporary. Has it come to the point where audiences can only trust Batman if he is the superhero embodiment of Big Brother, working with law enforcement to take down unabashed anarchists? I don't think this is an encouraging development (and what would Batman have done with V?). I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, because it seems that Nolan is trying to set up something not frequently explored in the comics, that of Batman operating completely outside of the law and, indeed, in opposition to it. It would be cool to see a movie where Batman fought police brutality or battled war profiteers by waging corporate warfare as Bruce Wayne (there was an excellent arc in Morrison's JLA where Batman "buys out" Lex Luthor in order to stop one of his schemes). Won't happen though. The way the movie ends, I like to think it would dovetail nicely into an arc involving Killer Croc or Solomon Grundy (Batman has to relocate in the sewers) or maybe Catwoman. Then, maybe in the future, we can get a Superman team-up?

But let's not get into that. Let's talk about this Watchmen trailer.



I, like many millions of Americans, am a big fan of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Many people like to say that it is the greatest comic book story of all time, and while I am trying to slowly wean myself from making grand pronouncements like that, I think it is absolutely essential reading for just about anyone. Certainly, if I were to ever teach a class on postmodern fiction, I would include that as required reading, no question. As a statement on industrial imperialism, compounded by the world's first US superpower employing people with literal superpowers, and the resulting fecundity of cold war resentment, it is without peer, and I honestly believe that, even with all the superheroes running around. The layers of detail and exposition warrant many repeated readings, and the ending is appropriately (given the times) morally ambiguous: I've had long arguments with people concerning whether or not we felt Rorschach's actions at the end were justified.

I feel as if Watchmen fans are now divided in two halves: those who can't wait for Zack Snyder's movie adaptation and those who are uneasy with the notion of Watchmen being made into a film, particularly by Zack"300" Snyder. You can count me among those who felt that 300 was an absolutely loathsome movie, which, if not an outright gesture of support for the continuing War on Terror was sufficiently xenophobic, homophobic, and full of enough macho self-posturing to make me want to gag. Additionally, the fact that Alan Moore explicitly stated that a movie cannot and should not be made of Watchmen was enough to give me additional pause.

Funny fact: I was delighted to find that Moore and I have similar feelings about 300, per an interview he did recently with Entertainment Weekly:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Don't you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
ALAN MOORE: I would rather not know.

He's supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he's also the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that's not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but...I wasn't impressed with that.... I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the '80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ''Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, 'I wouldn't.''' And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't.

He makes good points, and he admits he may be making generalizations.

Anyway, I saw the trailer, and I couldn't help but be taken aback by how strikingly similar to the comic it is, at least in terms of angles: in fact, I was downright moved by the proceedings. I'm not convinced yet this is a good idea, but who knows? It was a good choice to have them play the Smashing Pumpkins song "The End is the Beginning is the End," as it fits the heavily stylized industrial atmosphere, as well as give it an updated 80's flavor (although, it should be pointed out, that song was written by Billy Corgan not for any album but for the soundtrack for Batman & Robin--a bad omen if you think about it). The Owlship, I was pleased to see, looks very cool. Nite Owl now looks kind of like a doughy Batman ripoff, and it's kind of silly to see him dropkicking some prisoners, but whatever. Silk Spectre now wears less clothes, no surprise there. Dr. Manhattan looks very cool, and very similar to the comics, as does the Comedian. Ozymandius unfortunately looks pretty underwhelming, but maybe that's part of the point. My beloved Rorschach (who, incidentally, shares Mendelson's birthday), looks spiffy as well, although I'm dubious about how Snyder is going to try translating the constantly shifting patterns on his mask--having them change on screen gives it a slightly different effect than having them change from panel to panel.

Anyway, it's an addictive trailer. I will probably see it when it comes out, but consider me, like Moore, to be skeptical. Hurm.

Quotes, for the sake of wasting time

"These seances are intercut with concert footage, during which the band typically sings the lyrics through once and then gets mired in endless loops of instrumental repetition that seem positioned somewhere between mantras and autism. The music is shapeless, graceless, and built from rhythm, not melody; it is amusing, given the undisciplined sound, to eavesdrop later as they argue in a van about whether they all were following the same arrangement."
-Roger Ebert, on the music of Neil Young & Crazy Horse

"I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't...Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life as a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."
-Spike Lee, offering the most ridiculous generalization masquerading as criticism I've heard in a while, and I'm not even that big of a Coen brothers fan.

"astenou6 you's da faygot spiderman is teh greatest marvel superhero character ever not because of his powers but, because of what he represents your to much of a noob to get taht!"
-Youtube user Ace48071, spreading the Spider-Man gospel in ways I could only hope to emulate.

"So here is the problem. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for 100,000 years, but apparently for more than 95,000 of these years he accomplished virtually nothing. No real art, no writing, no inventions, no culture, no civilization. How is this possible? Were our ancestors, otherwise mentally and physically undistinguishable [sic] from us, such blithering idiots that they couldn't figure out anything other than the arts of primitive warfare?"
-Dinesh D'Souza, undeservedly proud of his new counter-theory against "the atheists" claiming that it makes no sense that God would only choose to intervene in human affairs sporadically over the last 5,000 years (I generally have little regard for anything anyone says over the internet, and I include myself, but I was heartened to see people on D'Souza's site ripping apart this argument fairly readily).

The Black Dossier: brilliant or terrible?

I was lucky enough to borrow a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier from the library, despite the fact that it just came out a bit more than a month ago. I finished it today and I was looking at some reviews of it online, which seem to range from the usual Moore superlatives to just general confusion. It's difficult to imagine that even the most hardcore Anglophile wouldn't have at least some trouble reading this, and I suspect many people picking up this book expecting to see another admittedly eccentric but mostly linear action adventure will be very shocked: this comic book contains probably more prose than pictures, and what's more, the prose is absolutely, incredibly dense, I mean we are talking throwaway allusions to Gravity's Rainbow and Louis Feuillade films here, meaning that you will probably spend around six times as much time reading portions of the titular "Black Dossier" than you would reading the actual narrative. That is probably the ratio of how much time I spent, although I don't know if casual comic fans, who are known for their disdain of books without pictures, are even going to take the time to read Moore's uniformly brilliant riffs on some of the greatest writers and thinkers in human history.

I thought it was great. It's probably the best comic to come out all year, and it's certainly the most ambitious (it might even give that dense-masterpiece-to-end-all-dense-masterpieces Watchmen a run for its money in that regard). I scoff at those that say that it is too high-minded or too gimmicky. Yes, it does come with 3-D glasses, but they are essential to the last part of the narrative. Yes, a lot of it verges on straight-up pornography, but if you're trying to appropriate the style of erotic novelist John Cleland, what else are you going to call it? Also, the art is great, and I must give props to Kevin O'Neill for having the perfect art style to capture all this incredible detail.

There are so many great things about this book. Among them: the postcards showing the origin of Orlando (of Virginia Woolf fame); having Harry Lime pop up as the new M; making James Bond into the 1950s equivalent of a bro, complete with date-rape tendencies; the excerpt from "Sal Paradyse's" novel The Crazy Wide Forever, which is completely worthless and unintelligible just as I imagined Paradise's writing would be; Les Hommes Mysterieux and Zweilicht-Helden, the League's respective French and German equivalents, of whose members I won't give away; the fact that the German fascist dictator during World War II was Adenoid Hynkel; and the Pynchon nod, among other things. I still have mixed feelings about the ending in 3-D, which basically ends with a soliloquy by some guy who looks a lot like Moore talking about how these characters are so majestic and brilliant and will live much longer and have more of a pervasive influence than any of us will ever have. In fact, the final section sort of reminded me of a more highbrow version of the South Park episodes that took place in "Imagination Land."

Still though, this is a great comic. Pick it up if you're interested in a completely new take on the form. I understand that there will be more adventures of the League in the future. I don't know how Moore is going to top this, but I'm sure he can.

Back in Ames

I'm back in Ames finally, and I'm not really happy or sad about that given that I was here but a month ago. Nothing has changed since then. Still, it's a very nice place to be, my room is as cozy and hot as ever, and I get lambchops for dinner. My parents always give me a good dinner on the first day back home. I didn't go back home yesterday because I decided to hang out with remaining friends instead, and I ended up having some really intense conversations about Russia/Stalinism/Leninism/Marxism/Christianity/American voter efficacy/secularism/North Korea. It was interesting, especially given that I was having these arguments with Duncan, Vitaly, and Hainstock, all of whom have different areas of expertise. That's always good when that happens. As the English major, I was basically pulling for Trotsky, obviously.

My plan for this break is to read, obviously first of all. I have The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan and some short stories from John Updike, as well as Alan Moore's new comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, which I've noticed has been getting middling to downright poor reviews.

Also on my agenda is to continue writing down everything I do everyday for the entirety of winter break. This is a tradition I started back in freshman year, mainly because I felt that my adult self (except I am an adult--adulter self?) would be interested to know about my musings, philosophies, and lifestyle habits as a college student, especially during that two weeks of debauchery known as winter break. Looking back at what I had written, there was definitely some interesting things going on. I don't want to get too specific, it is my own damn business, but I would say freshman year was all about a lot of self-loathing and pity, while sophomore year was about boredom. What will this break be about? Hopefully something preferable to either of those.

Aaron just gave me his Chanukah present, the newest issue of the British mag Mojo. I think he chose it because it has the reunited Led Zeppelin on the cover. It occurs to me that I haven't commented on this Led Zeppelin reunion, partially because I'm not a millionaire and couldn't get tickets but also because reunion shows tend to be suspicious stuff. I have looked at some grainy cell phone video clips of the show on Youtube, and from what I can tell, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page play as good as they ever did, Plant sings probably better than he did before, and Jason Bonham does not even come fucking close. You can definitely tell the difference. It's a shame on the one hand, but that's what he deserves for making a career out of flogging his dad's corpse.