Blog Update: There's Nothing But Setbacks

  Once again, as per usual, I have over extended myself at work.  I have taken more hours and beyond that I've taken on some freelance work more akin to what I went to school for and the career I left behind several months ago.  This is kind of what I do.  If this blog were my primary income source, well then you would really see what I can do.  All the effort I tend to put into my money making would be focused here and there would likely be content every day.  As it is I find myself with less and less effective free time and since the blog is for funsies that has to drop in priority as needed.

  To that end reviews are going to kind of be as I can do them basis.  I will be seeing Days of Future Past but not until Friday (the 30th).  This months Honored One-Hundred is going to be late.  I'm sorry.  At the most it will be a double post next month of the next two chapters.  It kills me to fail at putting a chapter out a month but you have to understand that I don't start even thinking of the chapter until the 1st and I go through 4 drafts by the 25th and with basically a full time job and a part time job that gets hard.  That's a hectic writing schedule and it probably shows but I'm actually pretty happy with HOH so far.  I still want to do 12 chapters in 12 months ending in December.

  So that's it, I hopefully have some time off in June and I plan to play catch up then.  Thanks to all of you who have found and read this blog.  I'm also on Facebook as Fancy Deadpool's Stupid Comic Tramp Shack, I continue to share things I find because that is easy and I can do it as I check my feed normally.  If you like what you read spread the word.  Thanks again.

Terry Gilliam Wrote an Alternate Ending to Watchmen

A little while ago I saw a story about Terry Gilliam's ending to the Watchmen movie and I posted the story over on Facebook and then just dismissed it.  But I ran across some other articles that I wanted to take a moment and just mention.  I also have the flu so I'm not really capable of great insight.  I know, not really all that different from my normal level of commentary.

I would read THIS first where Zack Snyder acts as cinematic Jesus and takes the burden of telling the story to save it from the bad ppeople.  I actually really like the Watchmen movie.  As I said on Facebook, I don't particularly enjoy the comic and I think it gets up its own ass at points at the expense of the audience.  That's my opinion and not for trying, I attempted to read that book 4 times before succeeding and then read it an additional 3 in an attempt to understand it.  I still don't like it.

But here's what started all this an interview with Joel Silver, HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER!  The interview itself is rather boring so I'm just going to steal the relevant parts.

I Don't "Get" Linkara...

Seen here espousing his genius.

    I hardly know where to begin.  I suppose at the beginning.  I learned about the Nostalgia Critic through his "rivalry" with the Angry Video Game Nerd.  I learned about the nerd by the time he released his Karate Kid review.  So I've been around a while is what I guess I'm saying and I learned about Linkara basically from jump street.  I was there for the first video and I read his blog entries which are just massive walls of text and nearly impossible to slog through.  I don't like his videos but his written stuff is interminable.  I hung around until about AT4W's Top 15 Worst Superhero's Becoming Villains, at that point my interest evaporated.  To add a little bit of extra insight into this, you see, Linkara and I live in the same town.  Or at least in the same general area, or at least used to live in the same general area because I don't see much of him anymore.  I used to go to the bookstore he worked at because that was the closest bookstore to me, I stopped going when I ran into him there.  I've run into him in Gamestop and the gas station.  Probably a half dozen times total.  There were a few months where it probably looked like I was stalking him but, really, we just happen to travel in the same very small circles.  I didn't always talk to him but the few times we exchanged pleasantries he wasn't a nice guy, he was kind of a dick.  Which, you know, I get, dudes getting gas or buying a video game what does he care about me?  You are out living your life, it's not anybodies fault that I know who you are and you don't know me but I feel I know you enough to try and talk to you and we keep running into each other.  I say that it's nobodies fault but it's kind of Linkara's fault.  I mean you are on the internet, some part of you should be prepared to talk to fans, where ever you may be, and not be a dick about it.  Also I was here first, it's not my fault you were born in my general geographical area.  Anyway that's my history with that fellow (I know his real name but it's not like we're friends so I'll refer to him by his internet name).

My Fan Entitlement Analogy

  Fan entitlement comes up a lot it seems.  Pretty much anytime you get a bunch of fans in the room, fans of anything, you have a few people who steer the conversation into a negative direction and the basis of that is typically some form of entitlement.  That you are owed something because of your fandom.  I've already touched on that (here) pretty extensively but I thought I would add this as sort of a defining analogy to bottom line it (with some yelling afterwards).

  When I go to a restaurant, just a restaurant, not one that advertises or pivots on being "the best restaurant" or a "5 Star restaurant" but just an eating establishment, I am entitled to food.  That much is obvious.  I go there with the expressed intention of getting food and the establishment is designed around the concept that I exchange money for food.  So if I paid money and didn't get food, or got something entirely inedible (like a car engine) that's a whole different matter.  But I got food.  Now I'm not entitled to GOOD food, I gave them money to give me food.  The quality of the food is irrelevant because that was the extent of my transaction.  I give money, they give food.  Even if it wasn't what I ordered, I still got food.

  Now, if the food was good I go back.  If the food was bad then I don't and the economy will eventually work itself out and if the restaurant was truly bad it will go away.  But what I don't do is stand up on my chair and yell about how much eating has changed since I was a kid, eating used to be so much better when I started eating and things have really gone downhill in recent years, I can't believe all you sheeple can just blindly eat while I have a bad meal and do you know how much money I've put into the food industry over the years?  I've been eating my whole life, unlike some of these other people who don't deserve to eat, and I've put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the food industry and I demand a better meal, I deserve a better meal, a meal exactly the way I like it because I've been eating a really long time and have spent a lot of money eating.  I can't believe I wouldn't get a five star meal from Denny's, eating sucks now!  AND THIS CABERNET IS TOO DRY AND DOESN'T COMPLIMENT MY MOONS OVER MY HAMMY!

  Obviously things are slightly different if your doing a review of something, then you need to be somewhat critical and open to consuming bad stuff on purpose for the sake of reviewing.  But as a fan we paid our money for entertainment, regardless of what that entertainment was.  We buy a comic therefore we paid for 20-30 pages of sequential art designed to tell a story.  That's the extent of the transaction.  I can't stress this enough, WE.  ARE.  NOT.  OWED.  ANYTHING.  BEYOND.  THAT.  It doesn't have to be a good story, it doesn't have to be one we like, it doesn't have to have our favorite characters in it and it doesn't need to be tailored to our specific tastes.  The thing to consider is that other people might like it and you should let them.  Move on, find something else that makes YOU happy.  The great thing is you can DO that and STILL hold on this other awesome thing that makes you happy.  It's called growth.

  There used to be this guy at my local comic store when I was a kid and I'd go there on Tuesday's during the summer when there was no school.  But this guy, this adult, would show up in a suit, obviously on his lunch break and buy at least $100.00 of comics.  Every Tuesday.  So he was dropping around $400 a month on new comics.  They were reserved under his name so he just had to go up to the counter and they'd pull his stack and he'd stand there for probably 15 minutes and complain about how shitty comics were now days.  Openly and engage customers, he'd engage me to tell me how terrible my tastes in comics were and if I wanted to read REAL comics then I had to collect Silver Age or this or that.  MOTHER FUCKER, you are spending almost half a grand on comics a month, at least, and you HATE it!?!  What the hell!?!  Don't be that guy.  Buy what you like, keep what you like, if you buy something you don't like give it away to someone.  But don't stew in your entitlement, shaking your fist at the sky while you hand over money, angry and bitter the whole time.  You paid your money and you got your entertainment.  The End.

Batgirl: I heart Yvonne Craig

When I lived in my old place I was watching old episodes of Batman on the ME channel, I currently don't have cable, I can't afford it, so I haven't seen an episode in a while.  But I have to say my favorite episodes are the ones with Yvonne Craig as Batgirl.  Look at that picture to left.  Look at the fringe and the lace and those colors.  The episodes are terribly, terribly sexist.  One episode in particular is about a female activist, who is played as the villain, organizes the women of Gotham against the men.  Eventually the mayor gives into her demands, which include an all female police force and a female commissioner, because his wife hasn't cleaned his shirts for a week, and he's running low on laundry, his house is dirty and he hasn't eaten a decent meal in days.  Meanwhile the idea of a female doing anything beyond these cooking and cleaning duties is treated like some kind of preposterous joke.  Granted the men are shown be sort of hopeless and helpless but are also the ones in charge.  As the plot goes on the female police force allows a bank robbery to happen because the two bank guards are swapping recipes, one beat cop just painted her nails and another beat cop refuses to chase the criminal because she just got new shoes.  However that is not the crux of the evil scheme, the point of replacing all the police force was so that when the big bad released explosive mice the police would be too afraid to act and allow her to either destroy the city or hold it hostage.  That part is a bit vague.

  But I share that as an example, albeit an extreme example, of the kind of thing regularly happening in Batman '66.  This is the kind of madness they spew at you on a per episode basis.  But then there's Yvonne Craig as Batgirl and the way she handles everything.  In the above episode she's always there as the strong counterpoint.  She doesn't soapbox about women's right but dismisses the men as being ridiculous with how she converses with them or the looks she gives them.  More importantly she demonstrates, by example, why the men are being stupid.  She jumps in there and is just as competent and capable as Batman, sometimes even more competent and capable than Batman.  She is the frequently the bastion of sanity in this crazy ass universe that they've built and often it's simply through body language.  Rarely is it a verbal throwdown that makes her seem like a bad person, they don't portray her as "bitchy" or "preachy" but she comes off as THE ONE person who has a good head on their shoulders while the rest of the world is drenched in hammy, pastel lunacy.  That character, for its time, is actually a really well written female character.  You never hear her carrying on about boys or needing a man.  She lives on her own, she supports herself with a job as a librarian and fights crime without anybody's help.  She is a totally separate, strong entity that is also a woman and who acts as a counterpoint to the male chauvinism that occurs.  The only other strong female characters from that era that come to mind are probably from The Dick Van Dyke Show.  In that show you had Rose Marie and Mary Tyler Moore playing good female characters but Rose Marie is probably close to Batgirl in her level of independence (although I do remember Rose Marie being kind of man crazy and Mary Tyler Moore was kind of defined by her role as wife, but Mel Cooley was fucking hilarious).  Also probably Uhura, but I never like classic Star Trek so I know nothing about that role.  That's really all I wanted to say because I found that picture on a blog and it made me think of that and reminded my that I love Yvonne Craig for being Batgirl.

Casting Choices or Michael B. Jordan for Human Torch and Donald Glover for Spider-Man (a swear filled rant)

I came across this:

Michael B. Jordan definitely wants to be the Human Torch
and I felt the need to say something.  I guess more accurately go on a rant because saying something suggests a coherent beginning, middle and end.  Also a point and I'm not sure I have one.  This is what spurred that on (granted any one of these quotes could be sarcastic and I wouldn't know it):

Get Knocked Down and Get up Again

So as you precious few readers have probably noticed, I haven't updated in a while.  I realize that if this blog has a following it's a rather small one but I appreciate anyone who stumbles across my little geek corner in the vast mansion of the internet and I, myself, hate when even the small sites I follow (be it review or blog or vlog) take a long hiatus with no explanation so I feel I owe at least that.

The blog isn't dead but I once again have to take a hiatus, just like all the other hiatus' I've had to take.  It seems that whenever I get some traction and start to build up a safe cushion of content, when I start thinking of adding features or start working on some bigger project (damn my journalistic desires) life seems to stick it's foot out and I take a tumble.  Seems to happen about once a year if I'm to be honest.  But this year I left a job I hated, one that was literally killing me for what I thought would be a dream job, which has turned out to be incredibly unstable.  So instead of waiting for the inevitable firing I decided to leave for greener pastures.  Those pastures being out of state, so I'm looking at a massive move at the end of the month to a different state.  That's what's been going on so as I become unsteady here and the prospect of being unsteady where I go I haven't had much time for critical enjoyment.  Most of what I've been consuming is either stuff I've reviewed, because I can't get enough of Marvel Phase 1, or for pure enjoyment in an attempt to escape and relax a little bit.

So that's it.  I thank any of you have found this place and have stuck with it for the ups and downs and many hiatai.  I hope by January I will be settled down enough to start posting again.  I have a few rough reviews that I might polish up and post and I will try to get up a review of Thor 2 because I already know where I'll be seeing that after I move so I might as well make a review about it.  I doubt this blog will ever die entirely, unless I go through some major life change, since it's where I can vent my writing but it will probably ebb and flow like this until I accidentally get my shit together (MC 900 ft Jesus).

Fan Entitlement

  This subject seems to come in waves.  I notice a lot of it and then I either stop paying attention to it or it dies down and then it comes back but it always seems to be there, right under the surface, like a zit or a parasitic space worm.  With the recent big convention and all the announcements that come with I noticed in the forums, which are, granted, dens of negativity, all this entitlement come to the surface.  I did comment on this pervasive attitude in one of the forums and was told that I was, in fact, wrong.  That fans are owed a good experience and that the companies are beholden to fans and should play to them exclusively.

  I am here to tell all of you who feel this way that you are all stupid, stupid children.

This is you.

Dark Flow

I read this:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327246.000-13-more-things-dark-flow.html#.Udii4vnrx8k

and think of this:

I Like Liking Things (in defense of my ratings)

  I know I've mentioned this before but I'm not here to hate on stuff.  When given an option I prefer to like things.  I try to enter any situation with an open mind ready to have fun.  Of course this mostly applies to comic/superhero related stuff.  When it comes to other social situations I mostly just feel total anxiety and sheer terror.

That's me, Mr. Thumbs up.

  Just one look at my tags and the numbers associated with them shows that there are 43 reviews ranked 3 and up to the 15 ranked 2 or below.  Sometimes when I'm reviewing something I wonder if I should be more harsh on it.  This is especially true for the movies I see in theaters because, let's face it, going to a theater pretty much guarantees a positive review (3 or above), so far.  Now you can say that the recent releases are especially good but you also have to take into account that I paid $20 for the experience so you're damn sure I'm going to enjoy myself.  If I'm going to go to a theater and pay that much money I'm going in with an open mind WANTING to have fun.  I've paid for my ticket both literally and figuratively and I'm ready to enjoy the ride.

The Biggest Crime...

  Since I posted the Dr. Strange review I thought I would take a moment to address why I hated that movie so much and why movies like it bother me to a point of anger.  I think the worst thing a piece of entertainment can be is boring.  If something is boring then it means it has utterly failed in it's objective of being entertaining.  Even is something is "bad" where the acting is terrible, the budget is low, the story is poorly written or the cinematography is total crap if it at least is entertaining, if can at least hold your attention with how bad it is, then it has succeeded.  That is a successful piece of entertainment, that is something worth praising.  It's worth praising because there are so many unsuccessful attempts at entertainment.

  The biggest crime a movie/video game/comic book can commit, the most unforgivable sin is for it to be boring and boring makes me so fucking angry.  Nothing makes me angry like being bored, I don't like being bored, I like having fun and I can find fun in a lot of different places.  I can find fun in a game like Ghost Rider, Blade II or even Superman Returns (review to come) in all their broken glory because they succeed at SOMETHING.  They do SOMETHING right, even if I have to cheat to negate all the broken flaws there is some level of entertainment achieved.  But something like Dr. Strange, the Daredevil game or the Catwoman game (review to come) I just become angry because even when something is happening nothing is happening.  It becomes a task that I have to endure rather than something I can enjoy doing.  That's why something like Blade Trinity, a movie that has major, obvious, scar like flaws can receive a high score from me and something competently done, like Dr. Strange, becomes something I absolutely loathe.  So what I'm saying is being entertaining makes me forgive an awful lot while being boring instantly fills my rage meter.  Whenever possible, creators of the world, shoot for entertaining because even if you hit "incompetent" you might at least end up with something redeemable.

Update.

So I've been transferred to a different branch of Department H.  This means fewer hours and less responsibility and a more normal schedule.  What does all that mean?  Well hopefully it will lead to more normal updates.  My goal today is upload a couple of toy openings, I've been sitting on the Super Helicarrier, the Indiana Jones SDCC "Lost Wave" and the most recent which is the Iron Man 2 Undercover Assault 3 pack.  All of which I actually opened and played with so they have no more value.  Which if you know how much those sets cost you'll realize all the money I flushed.  But they were worth it.  Plus I'm going back through Marvel Phase 1 since I got the super special box set and that will be the next set of reviews.  But I have also been watching other stuff including Son of the Mask and the Birds of Prey TV series.  Hopefully I can make this new schedule work and that will result in more time and effort spent here.

It's always something... (part 2)

Alright, so Department H is once again needs more of my time.  So on top of the 50 hours I'm putting in there I need to put in non-work time for a "special project".  I've pretty much exhausted everything I reviewed when I was off at the beginning of January.  That stuff was meant to get me through dry spots but it ended up being primary content.  The last couple of weeks I haven't watched anything and I've only been playing two games.  I web sling in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and I play the fight challenges in Batman: Arkham City because those two things put me in a weird zen place of relaxation.  But I'm struggling to keep up with Arrow and that's only an hour a week so forget sitting down to a movie and doing a review.  Anyway, it looks like it's another hiatus.  I'll post stuff as I have time or feel inclined but mostly it's work for me.

It's always something...

  Well, my laptop a'sploded last week.  My laptop is pretty much my only access to the innertubes so I couldn't post anything last week that wasn't already scheduled.  I just got a new laptop so I'm hoping to be ready to go by Sunday and then after that it should be more regular.

The Gritty Reboot

  It had to happen at some point.  The gritty reboot where I turn in my helmet in exchange for a medallion and a huge knife.  But this is my return.  Well actually next week will be official.  This week I changed the look of the blog and I'll be consuming stuff for the coming weeks.  Watching movies, finishing some reviews, doing some commentary pieces, putting together the Catwoman week that I was about to do before my hiatus.

  When I started this the intention was to adopt a total persona and that everything would be filtered through this bombastic, offensive persona.  That got exhausting pretty quickly and it became harder to maintain the kayfabe.  It happened a lot faster than I thought, so most of these posts are not written in the "persona" but sort of a mix of persona and my actual personality, the commentaries are written entirely out of persona, which depending on where you fall may be unfortunate.  But the tone of the last few months is the tone I'm going to maintain and a part of me wants to eliminate all those kayfabed elements but another part of me wants to keep them for posterity.  So time will tell on that one.  Also the banner is going to be plain text until I do another one.  I liked the title of Superheroes Having Sex because it's a reference to the Kevin Smith movie Mallrats when Stan Lee is talking to TS about Brodie (paraphrased, my title is easier to say than Superhero Sex Organs).  I'm pretty sure it's TS, I haven't seen the movie in a while.  Although I'm sure I'll lose all those people looking for porn I guess they'll be happier that when they're looking for porn they won't mistakenly end up here and lose their boners.  By the way I can see where my traffic comes from so I'm probably eliminating 90% of my page views there.  It's a good thing I don't make money off this.

  It's not a huge reboot, I tried some more dramatic templates but I couldn't get anything I liked as much as the original template so I ended up just playing with that a little bit.  Anyway, hopefully we can get through the next year without having to abandon this place again.

Random Thoughts: the Deadpool reboot, Thunderbolts #1 and more Arrow thoughts

  I just felt like talking about some of the things I've been consuming lately.  First off is the Deadpool reboot.  My original idea was to get a paper subscription and review the first year of the reboot issue by issue.  I've already missed a couple of issues so it seems pointless now, but I've been getting them thanks to Marvels wonderful Digital Subscription Service.  Having an iPhone really makes being a comic book fan easy, especially with the Marvel app.

I don't know how to feel about Max Landis...

This guy? Noooooo....

...but my first instinct is to call him a douche bag.

  That's a harsh open isn't it?  The situation is more complicated than that.  It's complicated because I'm making it complicated.  I want to like Max Landis.  I really, really do.  His stuff on YouTube (which I've linked to here) is awesome.  It's something I like to watch it over and over again.  I recently watched Chronicle, which he wrote, and that was pretty awesome as well.  So having created all this great work, as a fan, I want to like Max Landis.  Because I'm THAT kind of fan, I'm that kind of horrible fan.  I'm just sort of hopeless in that respect.  I want to like the creators of the things I like.  I want to like their work and like them as people.  We don't have to be best friends, I never even need to meet them or have contact with them.  I just want to see/hear them in interviews, read news about them and know that they're good people.  That I'm supporting, in my incredibly small way, good people making good things.

Yet another delay in my return...

  With my return of health my real life, grown up adult job has suddenly demanded an extra 10 hours a week of my time on top of the 40 they already get.  Since this whole thing is "fun" for me this is the first thing that has to go.  All this means, for the few people who come here, is that this place will go on indefinite hiatus.  I may or may not still post Catwoman week but I don't know.  My hope is to come back in the new year, assuming the world doesn't suddenly end in December.  But I'll post things here and there, easy stuff, random stuff, whatever I have time for if I have time for it.  Then by the time the new year rolls around I might actually get to the revamp of the site.  I like doing stuff with this blog, keeping my own little corner of the internet, but, well, work pays me and that's way more important.

  Well, that's it.  I'll be back occasionally and hopefully in the new year.

Blog update

  So, I'll be be back in October.  With demands at work along with some personal health issues, which are getting better, I decided to take September off as well.  I'm however at least generating some new content for my return.  Monday October 8th will be the first day of regular updates.  Between then and now if something comes out in theaters I'll go see it and do a non-spoiler review (I think Judge Dredd comes out between now and then, maybe something else too).  I might throw up something easy and lazy between now and then as well but October 8th and we come back with Catwoman/Feminism In Comics week.  I may drop the feminism part though, however I don't know if you can really talk about Catwoman, the Halle Berry Catwoman movie in particular, with out saying something on the subject.  We'll see how it goes.  But that week will introduce a new monthly feature and possibly a new author as well.

  I know, looking at my hits, that no one will probably read this or care but on the off chance someone does care here's the explanation.  2 months is a long time to be gone with no explanation.

Vacation Time

  Well, I'm taking the rest of August off.  Last week was a disaster, I was unable to hit any of my deadlines so clearly week to week doesn't work for updating the blog.  So I'm going to take some time to build up content and rethink some things.  I'd like to change up how everything looks as well so we'll see what happens.  I'll still be doing cosplay Wednesdays because that's super easy, I have the content and it seems to be the only thing people actually read on a weekly basis.  Also I might do a review of the Super Helicarrier that I managed to snag.  But everything else is on hold until the first week of September.  However that first week we'll come back with a vengeance.  I've got some new features in mind and a possible new author to join.  So, the two of you who actually visit the site look forward to that.