Wednesday, May 27, 2009

No Doubt

So Monday night was the Paramore/No Doubt concert. My brother and I were probably the oldest and largest guys there until No Doubt took the stage (when the rest of the 30-somethings showed up). The Paramore crowd were a few thousand 4-foot high, 15 year old girls and a couple of 4-1/2 foot guys. I began to wonder if Paramore somehow resonated with the horse jockey crowd.

Thus, we were feeling a tad out of place (I’ve never heard of Paramore until I knew I was going to the concert), though our little neighbors on the floor loved that we formed an impenetrable Great Wall of Easton. We skillfully repelled many an ale-swigging Mongolian trying to make their way to the front.

One of the funnier moments was a poor teenage guy who was there with his twin sister (they didn’t speak to each other the whole night, my guess, for fear of breaking his coolness). I knew this was his first concert, as the usual jostling in general admission clearly annoyed him. But he enthusiastically sang along to the Paramore lyrics
That’s what you get when you let your heart win. Whoa!
I drowned out all my sense with the sound of its beating
I wanted to tell him that real men don’t let their hearts win. EVER. But it was loud and he probably would have only heard "real men [muffled noises] clever.” I also wanted to add “if you can’t willingly silence the sound of your heart you will never amount to anything, let alone qualify for advanced training in the Ninjitsu Ryu (a long story, for another time). You have a lot to learn, buddy.”

But I started to listen to my conscience: “who am I to point out one’s shortcomings?” Just as quickly I shut it up so that I could sing along to that one Twilight song:
Do you see what we’ve done?
We’ve gone and made such fools
Of ourselves.
Man, that’s the soundtrack of my life. Anyhow, the moment No Doubt took the stage, they smashed any thoughts that they may have lost their edge. That was truly one of the great concerts I’ve seen over my 20-year money-wasting (well, this one was free) concert-going career. Great set list, amazing stage presence, high energy, and the sound was as perfect as one could expect.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Learn from Rooty-Toot Jasperson

So I've been a bike commuter for a while. I started riding while I was a college student in the early '90s because a parking pass cost way too much, I made way too little, and walking to classes often meant being late due to the vast distance between them. I remember the first time I rode to college was a vastly liberating experience. I just got a new Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo, and I was especially proud of the front shock (a shock on mountain bike was a luxury item for the time, rear shock was unheard of). I commuted to campus through stopped traffic (holy crap, I'm actually moving!) and then blazed in between classes with time to spare. Truly, a bike was superior to both car and legs, I reasoned.

That first Fisher bit the dust about 6 years later when I found myself caught in a pickup truck's wheel well and vaulted slo-mo into the air, coming down headfirst into an intersection during rush hour. While I was in midair I remember thinking so clearly "Dammit! This is going to ruin my ride, and probably my bike." My helmet sacrificed itself to the greater good but my right clavical (aka collarbone) was pissed. I crawled out of the intersection thinking I was going to get run over and learned that my right arm wasn't going to cooperate. Everybody was shouting for me to lay down. I was no longer feeling well, so I did.

My commute has varied between a 4-5 mile round trip all the way up to a 30 mile round trip. Currently I'm putting in an enjoyable 17 miles a day.

Since that fateful bike/truck collision I've learned a few more defensive tactics. Among my arsenal is lots of hand signals to let everyone know, I AM NOW TURNING. However, no matter how much eye contact, hand waving, lights, and signals, some folks still don't get the message.

Last week I attempted my usual left turn onto the home stretch (toward the office, not home, so I guess I should call it the "office stretch" but I thought that might confuse all of you, which of course is none of you since no one really reads this blog) at about 7:20 am. I had the right of way as there were no stop signs or signals on my road, and no oncoming traffic. A few cars were waiting the stop sign to turn left onto my road (and I was turning left, onto theirs). I began my turn after signalling as many times as I could prior to the turn. As I approached the front of the waiting cars, one of them began to accelerate right in beside me. Fortunately he stopped before I was T-boned. I too stopped before proceeding just to make sure he wasn't going to hit a moving target but a fixed one. Why not make it easier for him?

As I passed him, he was yelling at me behind his rolled up window while he was talking on his cell phone. I too felt the need to express my reasoned position on the incident by making sure he knew that I was signaling and that driving while talking on a cell phone can certainly be a distraction, my good man. Feeling satisfied that he learned what he needed about bike safety, I rode on.

I have since discovered a gem of a cycling/LSD public service video made in the early '60s (actually, I hijacked it from one of my favorite sites). But there is one flaw. Sometimes, Rooty-Toot Jasperson, it doesn't matter how many times you signal, there will be drivers who are determined to remove you from the road.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

SNIKT!! X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Easton Movie Review

“My claws are adamantium, the strongest metal known man--capable of slicin' through vanadium steel like a hot knife through butter…”

In the ‘80s-era X-Men comics, either the narrator stated it every time you read SNIKT, the “sound” Wolverine’s claws make when they extend, or Wolverine was thinking it while he flew through the air on his way to some “slicin’ and dicin’, bub.” I always loved that in comic books the hero’s inner dialogue was three paragraphs long during a split-second event. Unfortunately, that’s detail that can’t be captured in a movie. And one would be remiss in expecting that from Hollywood. One would be remiss in expecting much at all from Hollywood.

So yesterday, a friend of mine and I went and saw the Wolverine movie. As a mature human being, I didn’t go into the movie, thinking (to be said in a pinched and nasally voice) “I hope they get this movie right and stay true to the comic.” I think all us geeks were shaken out of any remaining naiveté that Hollywood would be interested in staying true to our childhood heroes when we saw the new Star Wars movies.

It was very cool to see this movie with the dude I did, because he’s about 12 years younger than me (he’s our neighbors son), and is pretty much me, just younger. Since I stopped mentally maturing about 15 years ago, it works great. He's already my intellectual elder. He collected X-Men during the ‘90s and so he caught me up on all the characters I missed, that make up most of the characters in the movie (i.e. Gambit and Deadpool).

So how was the movie? Not bad considering it’s an action movie not made in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so you can’t hold it too high (but I do anyway).

First, the good:

The opening scenes with Wolverine (Jimmy/Logan) as a kid were great, and played by an excellent young actor to whom you immediately relate. Sabertooth (Victor, his brother and nemesis) is also cast well, and you can see that they could easily be brothers. The scenes of Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting together during every war since the Civil War is very cool and is a great way to show his history in a very short amount of time, though I wished they would have shown us more of each time period. But that’s just me being a history nerd.

The relationship between Logan and Victor is fun to watch unfold, and seeing Victor turn more and more ruthless is a bit unnerving, but understandable considering what he’s required to do under Stryker’s command (a secret paramilitary leader who uses mutants to do his double-secret eeevil bidding).

Ryan Reynolds needs to be in more action flicks. His delivery of humor and sarcasm and his ability to look like an action hero was excellent, and brought more personality to the movie, not that personality was lacking, but really, can you have too much? Verily I say unto you, nay.

Besides the casting, I can’t think of any other good things to say, except that the first hour is just fine. I have almost no problems with it, almost. It’s not amazing, it doesn’t blow me away, but it’s fine and entertaining and all that.

Here are some things I’m getting tired of seeing in the movies, which were on display a-plenty in Wolverine:

People just the right distance from explosions that it actually propels them through the air fairly unscathed;

The slo-mo scene where characters walk calmly and coolly away from explosions as if to say “I just blew all this stuff up, and it will totally ruin my swagger if I act natural” – it’s just so affected and tired;

The good guy and the bad guy seeing each other from some distance, exchanging sarcastic remarks and then running at each other full speed to the EPIC clash – I think I counted this three times during the movie. Besides, don’t they know that sarcastic exchange is supposed to happen during the EPIC battle?!

Shaky camera during the fight scenes to make it look more EXTREME. The best fight scenes are those that are clearly shown, and that actually slow things down. Fast doesn’t mean suspenseful or intense.

“Wire-Fu:” Ditch with wires! Watch any Bruce Lee movie or earlier Jackie Chan and marvel how cool it is. No wires.

CGI: Special effects are no longer special. We are so inundated by them in action movies that we are numb. Aldous Huxley’s “Feelies” in the book Brave New World is ever more prophetic.

Darkness does not equate with coolness. Nerds everywhere will say “That movie was so cool, it was so dark.” Nerds, c’mon. Hollywood seems to be listening and now everything has a dark, bleak tone, and it’s getting old.

And one thing these superhero movies have forgotten is how cool it is to see a superhero hunt down some random thug, and watching the thug get his due. Instead, superhero movies always focus on EPIC battles between other superheroes. When did Jimmy (Wolverine) change his name to Logan (not that the change is unwelcome, or anything)? Either I blinked and missed that part, but all of a sudden everyone is calling him Logan, or I don’t recall where he got the name, or why he decided to adopt it. And he was being called Logan before he lost his memory. Nonsense!

I always thought he lost his memory due to the adamantium infusion process not due to two adamantium bullets to the skull. How convenient it was that two bullets to the skull wouldn’t kill or cause any other brain damage other than memory loss. That is soap opera logic, and this nerd is not buying it! You’re better than that, Hollywood! No? You’re not? Oh.

Now, suspending some reality is fine, but more nonsense ensues when Stryker said “erase his memory” while he’s in the adamantium tank. That’s what caused him to freak out and kill a few rubber-suited techies? So just getting your skeleton laced with a metal that can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter isn't intrusive enough to cause mental instability? And how was Stryker going to just erase memory? I know, I know, I’m getting all worked up about that and not about how preposterous it is to get adamantium injections to his bones, but they had all this shiny equipment, wires, tubes, needles, buttons, lights, teams of doctors, and rubber suits around which makes me believe anything. Where was the shiny equipment that was going to erase his memory? Nada. At the very least, show some menacing probe moving close to the tank or into the water, or something.

So in essence nerd logic can be summed by this equation: shiny equipment with lots of wires and tubes = believable, sound medical science. No shiny equipment = bullpucky.

One thing that has always bugged me about the X-Movies is Cyclops’ red eye blasts. It’s constantly blasting through steel, concrete, trees, seatbelts, you name it. But when it hits a person, it just pushes them back, and they are able to continue the epic battle. One doesn’t have to see it do its damage, but it should certainly live up to the hype and off those perpetrators!

Deadpool came long after I stopped collecting comic books, so I had no background on the character. Apparently he is loved because he’s got such a witty, sarcastic dialogue. It was too bad that Stryker sealed his mouth shut. I guess it was done for creepy effect and to darken the movie even more, but that’s unfortunate. He was almost the only comic relief in the movie (Wolverine cracked a couple of amusing lines). The idea that Stryker can take mutants powers and combine them into the perfect fighting machine was lazily borrowed from every video game since the early '80s. How many times have we seen the good guy have to fight through all these lesser bad guys only to face the “boss mob” (as gamers call them) at the end? Another stale effect. And how in the world can Deadpool bend his arms when he’s got 3 foot retractable swords implanted in them? It’s beyond the acceptable norms of preposterous movie-making!

Finally, applying the nerd equation for sound believable medical science, there were very few shiny machines, tubes, and wires to tell us that mutant power extraction and implantation is possible. All we had was Stryker saying “release Mutant XI!” and a doctor standing next to a couple of wall-sized machines, and a holding a syringe saying “it’s too early, it hasn’t had time to take effect!” or some such nonsense. Frankenstein-like, Deadpool arises, looking like something from a horror movie (dark!) with all of the cool powers. But instead of it being cool, it was so far from the Nerd Preposterosity Threshold that the viewer is left wondering if any laws of reality apply. So the final 30 minutes were pretty messy.

Two Stars. Why did I spend $7.50 on this? Because it's Wolverine, watching claws come out of fists (I draw the line on 3-foot swords - hey you gotta have standards), and ceaseless mutant mayhem is worth $7.50. Feelies, yay!

Uncanny!

So I saw the Wolverine movie last night with a great friend of mine. The movie was alright, as far as movies go. Actually the first hour was pretty good. It was the last 45 minutes or so that it lost me. More of that in the next post, but first, a little flash back, comic book style (but with a lot less super powers).

In the early 80s, I entered Junior High School, or Middle School as it was more appropriately called in my case. Middle School meant serious maturity. It was time to put away those childish Elementary School things and grow up. No more Spiderman, Captain Marvel, and Isis. My superheroes (the thought of no superheroes wasn’t even on the radar) had to reflect a newfound maturity. Of course the only place to adequately feed after-school imagination was that hotbed of creativity: the Save-A-Step convenient store on the corner of Moser and Shelbyville Road in Louisville, Kentucky.

As frequently as our meager resources would allow, my friends and I would take a pilgrimage to the ‘Save-A-Step’ (it’s long gone now). I recall the store sign was a huge orange footprint with Save-A-Step written inside. It was your typical convenience store with lots of candy, magazine racks, and the all-important comic book rack. On a fateful day in Fall1985, I picked my first copy of The Uncanny X-Men.

It was a revelation. To my 12-year-old-mind, this was a very intellectual comic book. It almost didn’t deserve to be called a “comic” but unfortunately that was its pedigree. And it would be a few years until the term “graphic novel” was adopted to describe an extra long, extra special comic book (I think it was adopted because adult collectors wanted to be taken seriously - and don't worry guys, we take you seriously. No really). The word “uncanny” wasn’t a usual entry in my personal glossary so I read in my mom’s dictionary: “having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary.” After I looked up “supernatural,” and “inexplicable,” I began to read the book itself. That dictionary would be a companion to X-Men until I had caught up to the vocabulary about 10 issues later.

Number 200 was the first issue I bought. It was a double-size special issue, and Magneto (I wasn’t sure who he was, but he seemed like a good guy) was on trial for crimes against humanity (again, I had to catch up to what these were, having not had much exposure to World War II history). Apparently he’d reformed his evil ways, gave up his helmet, and turned himself in to a tribunal. And ironically, he was on trial for the very thing the Nazis that he hated were.

At first, I wasn’t a fan of Wolverine or of any superhero in particular. I was just trying to figure out the storyline. Soon all the characters were increasingly interesting, especially their backgrounds. Also, all of the main characters had totally diverse backgrounds which added immense color to the story lines. Rogue was a southern gal, Wolverine was Canadian with a very hazy past, Colossus was raised on a Soviet farm commune, Storm was Kenyan (I think) and was personally detached, Nightcrawler was German. Each character had their accents written into the text, and frequently reverted to their native languages, and used native terms of endearment for each other. Also, as frequently, stories took place in their homelands, which exposed the reader (however best a comic book could) to these regions of the world.

One character that deserved everyone's admiration was Cyclops/Scott Summers. He was the leader of the X-Men, due to his talent at distilling murky situations down to right and wrong, which allowed the team to act unanimously. He was never an ambiguous moral figure as was Wolverine, but more often than not, his actions led the team to doing the right thing. That is rare in real life.

The comic constantly explored civil rights between mutants and humans. I’ll never forget a short episode where a couple of X-Men saved a man from a brutal beating from two thugs. It turns out the man they saved was spray painting “Mutants Die!” on an alley wall when he got jumped. He was horrified at his rescuers and fled.

Wolverine easily became my favorite, but he certainly wasn’t an object of attraction (as portrayed in the movies). In the comic, he was much shorter than a normal man, and was quite hairy. He had a foul mouth, smoked cigars (since they didn’t affect his health at all), flirted with every female member of the team, and had other unsavory habits. But he was the one with the most personality, not to mention he had claws that came out of his hands. Just think what a 12-year-old could accomplish with those. Although, in the X-Men of the ‘80s, Wolverine rarely used his claws against either mutants or humans. You almost never saw blood, but there were always other uses for them, plus plenty of mechanical bad guys needed slicing and dicing.

By my sophomore year in High School, comic books were deep-sixed, and it was time to concentrate on the next big thing: girls and music. I think there was a distinct down-turn in my grades from that point until my senior year as a result.

While I think my wife is smarter than me in probably every aspect of life, she sometimes asks me where I learned certain vocabulary, or even geography that she missed. I have to laugh, but she missed it because she wasn’t reading X-Men.