Justice League Detroit

One night a few weeks ago my roommate Jeff caught me watching a Babylon 5 DVD, and as a result, since then he and I have been going through the entire series from beginning to end. It's fun to have a fresh set of wide, awestruck eyes to re-experience the show with yet again, but he has this... annoying... little... habit (well, actually it's pretty funny, in fact the first time I was laughing so hard I had to press Pause, but STILL).

Every so often, when there's some tense moment of impossible circumstances as the future of life in the UNIVERSE ITSELF HANGS IN THE BALANCE, where I know what's going to happen since I've seen it before but it's still so awesome, he turns to me with this sick, smug little grin.

"Don't worry Bob," he sneers. "It's all part of GOD'S PLAN."

AUUUUUUUUUGH! godammit yah still bitter

(Further commentary from myself and nopictures for those I didn't point it out to before can be found here.)

Guy Ritchie's 2009 Christmas Present to the World! *_* Or at least to me.


Thanks for the link, tdj! Even though you're a little skeptical, I appreciate that you're not hatin', you're participatin'. ... To which I guess I could have said I was 'appreciatin'. BUT I DIGRESS.

Speaking of movies, me and Roommate Jeff watched my DVD of Outlander last night, for which the nice Wal-Mart lady looked high and low for me in the back room of her store until she found it. And it was AWESOME ...

I've been into the books of Steven Millhauser lately! Or that is to say I'm reading Martin Dressler and will subsequently delve into one of his short story collections once it gets here from Amazon, the progress through both I may or may not also subsequently refer to in later posts. Thank you Amazon! It's great that the economy isn't quite so bad yet that online retail can't still slowly but surely choke the gasping, gagging life out of mom and pop bookstores for the crime of not having exactly what I want. :D

From comics queen cissie_king, AICN has a fantastic interview with the legendary Mark Waid (and when I say "fantastic" I mean he names names):

The Man Who Broke the Internet (along with Mike Wieringo)

Among other interesting tidbits, this one jumped out at me:

"[Bill Jemas, former President of Consumer Products, Publishing, and New Media at Marvel Entertainment Group] hated what I was doing [on Fantastic Four] .... and he dictated to Tom [Brevoort, Executive Editor] a whole new concept for the FF -- which was to take the 'Fantastic' totally out of the series. First off, said Bill, the whole family had to move to the suburbs. Immediately. No explanation necessary. Reed was to be a wacky, scatterbrained inventor who kept coming up with cool stuff (like 'waterless fish tanks,' whatever those were) that had no commercial applicability, meaning the family was living check-to-check. Ben was working construction. Johnny was a fireman, and -- and this is the best one, please sit down for this -- Sue was a beleaguered secretary who would go invisible every time her boss was looking for her. No, no, no, not a super-spy; that would make too much sense. No, a secretary. Oh, and their 'super-villain arch-enemy' was the suspicious neighbor next door who thought there was something weird about these people. Gladys Kravitz. ... He wanted the MUNDANE FOUR because they'd be more 'relatable.'"

Oh, Bill. You were the Dan DiDio of your day, though with twice the crazy but half the evil. Oh, and speaking of Dynamite Dan:

"Dan Didio, who first championed the concept [of the weekly comic series 52], hated what we were doing. H-A-T-E-D 52. Would storm up and down the halls telling everyone how much he hated it. ... There's one issue of 52 near the end that was written almost totally by Dan and Keith Giffen because none of the writers could plot it to Dan's satisfaction. Which was and is his prerogative as [editor-in-chief], but man, there's little more demoralizing than taking the ball down to the one-yard line and then being benched by the guy who kept referring to COUNTDOWN as '52 done right.'" Bold-face mine.

Got my Howard the Duck Omnibus today! For significantly less than retail. As some of you may be aware, Howard ran for President in 1976, and I would have voted for him except that my petition to lower the voting age to 3 had no signatures, being that I had neither the desire nor the permission to go to someone else's house without a grown-up. Good times!

I think I have this straight - Livejournal was created in 1999 by some dude, who formed an operating company called Danga Interactive. In 2005, Danga Interactive was acquired by a company called SixApart, who later sold Livejournal in 2007 to a Russian company called SUP. SUP waited a year or so before cutting their American staff and moving Livejournal's design and development functions to Russia, whereupon Livejournal is somehow now the #1 blogging site in the Russian Federation.

Not only that, an article in the Moscow Times reports that numerous prominent Russians now maintain Livejournal accounts, including PAC organizer Boris Nemtsov, Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, Kirov Regional Governor Nikita Belykh and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov. These were in fact joined two days ago by President Dmitry Medvedev, who can be found at blog_medvedev.

I just kind of woke up one day and discovered all this. Neat! Uh, I dunno, take that, um, rival-blogging-site.

On the subject of Russia, I saw the film 1612 this evening, at Roommate Jeff's suggestion, which has variously been suggested as being "silly", "political propaganda" and "anti-Polonist", though as to the last, a few Polish reviewers I read at Amazon said they appreciated the fact that someone finally made a movie where the Polish people were taken seriously enough to be the heavies as opposed to the squeaky-clean good guys or the hapless victims of history. My DVD had an error on it where two scenes were transposed. First time that's ever happened. I will say that some tighter editing might have helped the film significantly, as well as expanding the scene at the Battle of Devichye Field. Also, the unicorn. He's just wandering around. He's not symbolic of the emerging nationhood of the Motherland, he's just looking for oats. Or virgins. With oats.

Then we saw The Musketeer! Which I'd found at the bargain bin at Wal-Mart for $5, and it was fun on the bun! That's all for this post, I'm out of ideas.

At a recent social event involving brotherriparius and his sidekick ornithorhynque (though I'm fully prepared to acknowledge it may be the other way around), you know, stuff happened, but ultimately the important thing in all that fribbity-frab was that I received numerous compliments upon my wardrobe, both on the day of said event (the phrase "you clean up good" came up more than once, though they were probably being nice) as well as the rehearsal for said event the evening before when I wore my favorite T-shirt. Not in fact my 'Sumiyoshi-as-a-Cactaur' T-shirt that flamedragon gave me all those years ago, people have actually wanted photographs of that, but rather, the T-shirt I call 'Soviet Rocket Girl'. ... No, there's actually no joke or pun in the name, that's just what I call it. I bought it at a booth at Anime Weekend last year. So for the benefit of those playing at home, here's how you too can be the envy of your friends and neighbors as you turn the tragic and heroic life-and-death struggles of the 20th century into pop art you can wear! Check out Andrew Bawidamann, at bawidamann.com!

"Comrades! You have nothing to lose but room in your clothes closet!"

I bought this new computer, see, and re-discovered my love of PC games (particularly a wonderful gem called Marvel: Ultimate Alliance), and when that got old, I re-discovered my love of Guild Wars, so you know, the past few months from a computing perspective have been kind of a beautiful, inscrutable multi-colored blur. I will therefore attempt to encapsulate recent trends with hard-hitting bullet points. THUSLY:

1. After 23 years, Howard the Duck is finally on DVD. Yes, Howard the Duck is finally on DVD. I made sure to pick up mine before they were all gone, and of course before I told anyone else it was available. As many of you are no doubt aware, we are within two years of George Lucas' predicted date of the films' broad-based mainstream acceptance. The clock is ticking, fellow cinéastes.

I'm a huge fan of the Howard the Duck comic book franchise as well as the movie, surprisingly enough for different reasons. Also for the record I would like to note that I really enjoyed Lea Thompson's underrated performance as Beverly, which I think was very true to the original character, but most people won't see it since they haven't read the comic book.

2. MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 2 has a website! The game's story will apparently start with Secret War and will continue through Civil War, neither of which I intend to spoil for the uninformed. Suffice it to say that it's all either Nick Fury's fault or George W. Bush's, or both.

3. Myself, lezardvaleth, flamedragon and Captain justintime2k will be in full effect at this year's Project A-kon! Most likely doing things entirely unrelated to the event itself, at least until they give us our own panel talking about what it truly means to live the figurative pirate experience. Someday!

4. On Thursdays and Fridays I've been going to my friend Ed's house and we've been watching movies on his 63-inch DLP television, and to date the Bob & Ed Film Society has been burning through both our modest collections at a considerable pace. Roommate Jeff was formerly a welcome addition to our weekly screenings, he has however been since lost to civilization due to his commitments to Warhammer Online. I asked Jeff is this game made him happy. He sighed. "Well Bob," he says, "I'm happier than I'd be without it." I'm not sure if that's a ringing endorsement or a confession to a sadomasochistic relationship.

5. Today is of course the comic book fan's equivalent of Sunday - namely, New Comics Day. In addition to all the great Marvel Comics that ship every Wednesday, we comic fans also celebrate the weekly arrival of new titles by the satisfaction we receive at all the DC Comics we're NOT buying, hopefully one day starving this moribund, palsied arm of the great Time-Warner empire that it might atrophy, fall off and shrivel into ash, so they can concentrate on using their superhero properties for movies like The Dark Knight.

I also want to thank the Academy for passing over The Dark Knight for Best Picture, thus propelling the film into the same dizzying heights of renown as authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon and others, who are in such a rarefied atmosphere of fame, accomplishment and literary gravitas that they are of the class of literary craftsmen who are said to deserve the Nobel Prize and never receive it, which is an even more exclusive clique than those writers who actually have.

That's all for now. Not going to overdo it the first day back!

Work's been so crazy that I come home and flop into bed, then wake up the next day and do it again. There is a sea of misconnected luggage just out the door stretching for about a quarter mile. It's like I work in a luggage factory. Yay holidays!

Anyway, lord_darkseid recently posted the best movie trailer of all time. I mean the BEST. LD's looking forward to this movie more than Watchmen and Star Trek combined, AND NOW SO AM I!



(PS. Be sure to lower the volume and keep the screen turned away from your boss if you're at work. And you work at like, a school.)

UPDATE: Black Dynamite has an official site: BlackDynamite.com! DIG IT

New computer, woohoo!! Thanks to CyberPowerPC.com. One of their freebies was a T-shirt, which I am currently wearing. Now I can read my Marvel Comics' DVDs! By the time I'm done, it'll probably be time for another new PC.

Also, me, flamedragon and justintime2k are going to Project A-kon! I think. Possibly with kitty_minako!

Okay, that's it. I'm busy playing with my new toy. As you were.

About a month or two ago, an insider at DC Comics leaked the news that the reason artist J. G. Jones was quitting DC's big crossover Final Crisis was in fact because DC Editor-in-Chief Dan "The Man" DiDio had been trying to bury him in work in order to carry on an extra-marital affair with Jones' wife Jann.

When I told him about it, my roommate Jeff declared that the editorially contrived death in Final Crisis of J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter, was not because he was the most expendable major character at the time, but rather to set the stage for an all-new DC superheroine:

"J'ann J'onnz, the Martian Man-Gobbler!" Jeff declared. "Mmmmm, that's some GREEN GOBBLIN'!"

... You know, 'cause the Martian Manhunter is/was green. Get it? ... Well, whatever. -I- just about died laughing.

Now that I have your attention! ( Anyone know a nursing home for computers? )

In non-Hittite news, ( my bro-ham's got an IMDB page! )

Lastly, the movie The Art of Travel is just plain fun on the bun! Picaresque travelogue with an entertaining story. Perfect for armchair expatriates like myself. Say for instance you've been reading enough Paul Bowles to swear off ever again leaving the United States. Here's the film to restore your faith in the rest of the world!

Many thanks to LJ's autosaving feature that allowed me to painstakingly post this update despite my computer's unfortunately short attention span. New PC's target ship date is December 16th! I believe I will spend that time reading Thunderbolts.

And because I just have to have video, this scene had my jumping out of my seat and cheering during a recent episode of Family Guy:

From the Robotech.com forums, poster Xenophon:

Yesterday [31 May 2008] Kevin Mckeever spoke at A-Kon in Dallas. I was there in the room and he stated that at this point, absolutely nothing has happened with the movie other than that [Warner Brothers] and Tobey Macguire's production company have acquired the rights. All that means is that they they now have the option of making the movie. To quote him "There is no script. There is no director. There are no actor. There is no budget" etc. There is no movie whatsoever as of this time. That does not mean that some guy in WB somewhere is not doing something to make these things happen, but I'd guess you'd have to get some sources over at WB to find that out. I asked him what rights they'd gotten and he basically said everything. They can make a film set in any time period about any subject whatsoever. He said "They can make a film about the Dana Barbie dolls if they want" by way of example. So this film we're talking about could be just about anything. Furthermore, it sounds like it's pretty flexible as to how WB "interprets" the canon.

McKeever also said that the next animated film is "on hiatus" because WB doesn't want what [Harmony Gold] is making to get in the way of the live-action. So the live-action has to come first before we see The Shadow Rising film. Suck. However, he did say production had started, but then he said how far it had gotten was classified. The movie definitely will happen (provided WB doesn't just keep stalling for 10 years or something)....

DAMMIT

YOU SUCK MAGUIRE

Tom DeFalco announces that the Amazing Spider-Girl comes to an end at Issue #30.

The creation of former Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, May "Mayday" Parker, the daughter of Spider-Man, began life in What If? Vol. 2 #105 in 1998, in which it was posited that Peter and Mary Jane had their daughter returned to them at the end of the Clone Saga. Good sales resulted in an ongoing series entitled "Spider-Girl", though the numbers began to decline when the novelty wore off for some. However, the series attracted loyal devotees who would soon become the most active fanbase in comics, saving the series from cancellation no less than SIX times with petitions, email campaigns and assertive board posting. Current Marvel EIC, Joe Quesada, has stated many times that he's a fan of the book (during the "One More Day" fracas, Joe Q suggested to readers that if they wanted to see the continuing saga of Peter and Mary Jane's married life, that they should pick up a copy of ASG). Other titles soon spun off from Spider-Girl, all taking place in the shared "MC2" universe, most written by DeFalco with art by pencillers such as Ron Frenz and Todd Nauck. In 2005, Marvel announced the series' "cancellation" after issue #100, only to be reborn with Amazing Spider-Girl #1.

Only now, I guess the ten-year battle may finally be drawing to a close. Something about this latest announcement to me has the vaguest twinge of melancholic finality. However, I rather liked the response of the poster known as VENOM on the Spider-Girl Message Board:

"This book won't go down without a fight.

'Nuff Said.

-VENOM"

'Nuff said, brah! Guess it's time to dust off my red and black war-paint! ... Or at least crack my knuckles and write some emails.

Anime Weekend Atlanta! It was fun, and I had a great time seeing the gang, including the 320 Pirates in full effect! We were essentially the same group from last year, minus my cousin and plus amelia_seyroon and hinatawakaba, MU*ing friends of lezardvaleth (though I discovered that Hinata-san was an old pal from PhoenixMuck back at the turn of the century)! These two were fantastic additions to the membership and I would sail again with them again any day of the week! Or year, as it were. Amelia and Hinata know the good doctor from Multiverse Crisis, a place the doc had strongly suggested I take a character as well. I also have been looking for a semi-regular situation since Milfeulle got idle-@toaded at Gate (due to my lingering infection of Tales of Legendia-itis), and after some discussion with my newfound cohorts, one of whom is a profound Slayers enthusiast, we believe the situation might best be remedied by ( the return of an old friend... )

lezardvaleth, once again, was a man on a mission. In evangelical fury he wished to expose as much of us as possible to two of his favorite films: Christophe Gans' excellent Silent Hill film adaptation, which we watched here at Funland amid sakuramboo's unfortunate piles of refuse on Wednesday night prior to setting sail, and Snakes on a Plane, which we saw at the hotel on ... Saturday? Sunday? I forget. In any event, the good Doctor has been trying for years to get us sick and tired of those motherfucking snakes on that motherfucking plane, and this year, he made it so. Returning the favor, I exposed the members to another Gans masterpiece, Brotherhood of the Wolf, to much acclaim.

There were actually two panels I wanted to get to: the Cartoon Network dealy-bob about upcoming shows for the new season, and the panel about Message from Space, a film I'd watched on the USA Network Sci-Fri movie when I was a kid, clips of which were featured at Anime Hell on Friday night. But, I overslept. thog and samurai_x2 went, and Master Thog informed me that the tape being played had vintage 1980s commercial breaks and USA Network eye-catches; quite possibly they had taped the very same broadcast I'd seen, back as a wide-eyed young swab. Oh, well! As far as the dealer's room, there was really only one item I wanted to buy: a statue of Natalia Lanvaldear from Tales of the Abyss, which I did. So Mission Accomplished!

So many people came this year that next year, I didn't have enough car space for them all, and the poor Bebop isn't really in fighting trim to begin with. In fact, my battery died Thursday evening, but lucky for me, Triple-A was there for the save. I'm thinking next year I'll just rent a van and make everyone throw in. I believe I will dub it the 'USS Odango Atama' ...

Meanwhile: OMG there's a third Parasite Eve game coming out for PSP!!! Well, Sony, you finally figured out what my price was for buying a PSP, and you named it.

Recently I've been indulging in my long-standing weakness for the Tales Of series of RPGs from Namco with Tales of Legendia! The Tales series stands out from other RPGs in small ways, like the 2D sideways battle system, and large ways, like tons and tons of charm up the wazoo! Legendia in particular has lots of singing, and lots and lots of charm.


The next game in the series, Tales of the Abyss, is actually being made into an anime. So I should probably hurry up and play that one too so I'll appreciate the show better!

Meanwhile, speaking of RPG musical numbers, the grandmama of Nippon Ichi RPGs is back! Rhapsody for the DS! And if I didn't still have the PSX version, I'd go out and get a DS. For the five or six of you who've been curious about where the NIS America Store gets its name from, your time is coming.

So I asked Riparius about a movie I'd recently picked up in one of the stores at work, a film called "Southland Tales". His reply was something to the extent that it was a profoundly spectacular failure, complete, incoherent, near-orgasmic, glorious mess that is a fantastic cinematic experience for the sheer scale of its absurdity, best watched with a group of friends and at least two beers. Riparius' sidekick Lisa chimed in that it was as if the director wanted to make a smugly pretentious arthouse film and his actors wouldn't let him. When I mentioned that the first three parts of the story were actually a series of graphic novels, they said not to read them, since the film is better without context of any kind.

So I watched it with Roommate Jeff on Sunday night, unfortunately beerless since a trip to the grocery was more effort than we were willing to commit to that enterprise. Contrary to the Riparian perspective, Jeff opined that it was a brilliant, stunning film, not ahead of its time, but rather, sideways, more properly belonging to a Pynchon-esque alternate universe and working on so many levels both symbolic and otherwise that to attempt to deconstruct it academically would be a sublime but ultimately futile exercise, said exegesis being as grossly esoteric, even arcane, phantasmagorical and absurd (but fun to look at) as most people seem to believe the film itself is. I'm paraphrasing slightly! He also said I should get the graphic novels as soon as possible.

Therefore, considering the curious role reversal the film has inspired, to wit, Riparius giving the average schmoe review and Jeff giving the film critic review, I've somewhat arbitrarily decided that they're both right (which, in a similarly arbitrary and technical sense, makes Southland Tales the Ultimate Supiluliumas Movie - plus it stars The Rock). Watching it also made me want to redouble my efforts to finish Against the Day (thematic, aesthetic and even structural similarities abound, plus their respective literary and film critics have had similar reactions to each). Only about 150 pages left! My friend Ed at work also lent me Donnie Darko (the theatrical cut, as apparently the director's cut makes the grievous error of "explaining everything"), the Southland filmmaker's previous effort. Probably should watch that.

It also gives weight to my theory that Southern California would be AWESOME as a military dictatorship. Now here's Justin Timberlake!

lord_darkseid pointed me toward the WATCHMEN trailer.

And then I watched it.


...

HOLY %$&$#%

For those I haven't IM'd:

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!

Directed by Joss Whedon!

Starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion, and Felicia from the Cheetohs commercials.

Watch them now! Apparently they're only free until July 20th.

Big ups to resume (and this post in scans_daily) for the link!

I really, really enjoyed the Max Payne series.

Needless to say I was quite excited about the trailer for the MAX PAYNE MOVIE!


Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne and Mila Kunis as Mona Sax!!!!!

October 17th. NICE

Hellboy 2! Saw it! Had a great time. Now I want to watch my Hellboy Animated DVDs again and The Amazing Screw-On Head. The end. =D

A cute story: Dutch House Cat Adopts Rejected Red Panda. "A zookeeper's house cat has adopted a baby red panda abandoned by its mother and is nursing the cub along with her own kittens, the Artis zoo said Wednesday." -- From Yahoo!

Red pandas, Ailurus fulgens, have almost nothing in common with that other species of panda except the name. Red pandas are not, in fact, bears - they have no currently surviving relatives that aren't fossilized, though fellow members of the Musteloidea superfamily include the raccoon, skunk and weasel. One other thing they do have in common with the black and white variety is that while technically the both of them are carnivores (order carnivora), with teeth and digestive apparatus for eating meat, their diet in the wild almost entirely consists of bamboo, from which, being carnivores, they derive almost no nutritional value whatsoever, and as a result must spend most of their lives eating and sleeping. They will eat meat, eggs, small birds and berries when they can find them, it's just that bamboo's easier to get, I guess.

The Red Panda is endangered because of human encroachment and Chinese newlyweds using them to make good-luck hats. It is the state animal of Sikkim! Neat! The second part anyway.

From Japanese television - Supaa Cute Red Panda Attack!


Full video can be found here.

( Bonus video! Japanese red pandas Fuuta and Fuuta Junior! )

Persona 4!!

Neat!