‘Conan’ painting by late Pa. artist goes for $1.5M.
When my mom and I first moved in with my dad, I was eight years old but already showing signs of the sf-fantasy geek I would develop into–he had a lot of posters up in his bachelor’s pad, and this was indeed one of them.
Some other examples of my dad’s wall deco below the fold–Frazetta and Vallejo dominated:
Toy Story, the original, came out when I was 10. I went to the theatre to watch it and was entranced, and I own (and still occasionally watch) it 15 years later. I loved the characters, I loved the secret suspicion and day-dreaming that the toys were alive shared with others and brought to reality on the big screen. As an adult, I love the themes and inside jokes a missed as a young child. My adult, cynical self suspects that this movie concept originally was green-lighted because it was easy to make toy tie-ins, but I really think the creators of this story wanted to create something long-lasting, not just a cheap marketing gimmick. They told a story with the reverence most children do show their toys. Also, this was the first time I had been introduced to Pixar’s “gag real” during the credits, and I laughed about as hard at those as I did during the movie.
Toy Story 2 came out a few years later, and by this time I was fully on my path to a cynical teenager, who had long ago learned that “sequel” normally meant “sucktastic”. Nevertheless, I went, and I took along my two kids sisters with me. I was so thrilled with the sequel- in a lot of ways it was even better than the original because it dealt with complex themes of loyalty, who you are, and the choices you have to make to decide where you want to be. It wasn’t a “sequel”- it was another story in the same universe. If you watched the movie by itself, it was still a good story. If you watched the first movie before it, it was an excellent continuation of who the characters were. It found, I think, the balance between establishing the characters for new viewers without boring the people who had come before.
When I heard that they were going to make a Toy Story 3 movie, I was excited and worried in equal measures. I was excited, because honestly Toy Story 2 did not seem like the end of the story. It left to many things open, too many things unresolved. It felt like part 2 in a trilogy. I was hopeful that this was going to continue the characters I really loved and felt, in a twisted sort of way, that I had grown up on. But I had been burned before. There was Cinderella 2, the straight-to-video nightmare that I try to forget*. There was Return of Jafar**. This summer alone I went and watched “Shrek Forever After”*** which made me even more worried that it was going to be drawn out crap.
I went in worried, was made more irritated by the fact that a matinée was $7.50, and then watched the Pixar short that was the most insulting thing ever (more on that later). But then, the movie started, and soon I was an entranced little 10-year old again. (Some light spoilers, but I’ll try and keep away from the biggest ones).
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I love Banned Books Week! Some of my favorite books of all time are banned books…I mean, check out this list of classics! Admittedly, a lot of the banning action took place decades ago, but lest anyone think we’ve relaxed our deathgrip on the minds of our children in this new millenium, here are a nice collection of more recent incidents to sneer at:
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sallinger: Removed by a Dorchester District 2 school board member in Summerville, SC (2001) because it “is a filthy, filthy book.”
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck*: Banned from the George County, Miss. schools (2002) because of profanity.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Challenged in Foley, Alabama (2000) because of the depictions of “orgies, self-flogging, suicide” and characters who show “contempt for religion, marriage, and the family.” The book was removed from the library, pending review.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Burned in Alamagordo, N. Mex. (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic.
If you’re interested in the most up-to-date reporting on the 2008 open season on communication of unapproved ideas, the American Library Association puts out a yearly list of the books that are challenged, restricted, removed or banned–see if your favorites are on there too!
Leaving you with the bittersweet taste of irony, from January of this year. Enjoy!
*I might sympathize with an attempt to ban it from required reading lists–yes, it was on mine in high school–based on the fact that it sucks ass and there are at least one hundred more interesting and compelling novels that could immediately and happily replace it…but no, I have to defend John Steinbeck’s biggest load of crap evar based on principle. A shame, but there you have it.
I went and saw Watchmen the night before last. It was OK. I will give them credit for this much up front: it did not feel like a near-three-hour movie. It was not physically painful in the way, say, Titanic was. So, kudos on that, at least.
And I won’t get more into the Antigone/Marcotte topics, other than to give my two cents here rather then have my shining wisdom buried in long threads, which I have not read to their completion so if I ignore something you commented on, you know, forgive me.
And I will spoil the living fuck out of this thing, because my main gripe is with the ending. For your convenience, after my list of non-spoiling complaints, I provide a cut.
1) Dear Zack Snyder: Could you put more schlong in your movies? There’s really no such thing as too gratuitous.
I don’t know how to feel about the films of Snyder’s that I have seen. On the one hand, it’s nice to see male bodies treated like we’re used to seeing female bodies treated. I saw Watchmen with two guys, one who had seen 300 and one who hadn’t, and the one who had said “Well, you kind of feel bad about yourself after watching all those perfect-looking men run around basically naked the whole movie.” “Welcome to the world of women,” I said. Because it’s true. And I generally like his sex scenes, because he directs some of the only sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie theatre that even come close to looking like people actually having sex. Good sex, not romantic comedy sex, but actual sex where both parties get to enjoy themselves. Sure, the people having sex are generally far more attractive than people are in real life, but I’m ok with that because if I ever want to see normal people having sex, well, I have the internet. For movie ticket prices, give me sexy. But not too sexy, because I have to believe it, ya’ know.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s ok for sexy things to hit the cutting room floor. Watching a Zack Snyder movies always leaves me with a creepy feeling that I know too much about Zack Snyder’s fantasy life. And Dr Manhattan’s giant blue god-dick was creepy in its inert ginormousness, like a stuffed blue gym sock taped to his nether regions. I mean, if you’re going to put cock out there where everyone can see it, make it move a little so it doesn’t seem like it’s just kind of floating in the air in front of Dr Manhattan, untroubled and unconnected to the motion of his body.
2) A little updating might not have killed the story line. When the movie first ended, I was quite critical, until my roommate, who had read the comic, explained to me that it was written in 1985, and exactly how closely they had kept to the source material. Knowing that made it a little better. But what seemed gut-wrenchingly scary to people in 1985 (namely, the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction and the fact that there was now enough firepower on the planet to vaporize everyone and everything multiple times) is background noise to people my age and younger, and I am way closer to 30 than I’d like to admit. For us, it’s always been that way, and so the sense of urgency and fright the beginning of the movie was trying to convey seems almost as quaint as those 1950′s videos of children being trained to hide under their desks in the event of nuclear explosion. Oh! For those innocent times when only two superpowers had access to nukes, which were large and obvious and prohibitively expensive! Before the internet, there were no instructions to make your own nuclear bomb on the internet.
I’m old enough to remember the falling of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war, and while I knew it was a big deal, I remember not being quite clear as to why. The fear of the Soviets and the complexities of the cold war did not make it down to elementary school children in a clear and convincing matter, which is probably part of the reason people who would never joke about the Nazis find Soviet kitsch to be hilarious. By the time we were old enough to understand, it was over, and it was recent enough in history to always be cut short by the end of the year – it was never treated with the same depth or repetition as say, the Civil War or WWII.
The result was I found a lot of that movie to be hokey until I really sat and thought about it. And I’m a thinking, reading person who loves Russian novels and has read quite a bit about Soviet history in the last year or two. Hell, I just returned a library book about fucking chess’ role in the Cold War, OK? I’m saying, I’ve done my independent study on this topic. If the point was lost on me until I had some context for when and why the story was written, imagine how little of it is getting to your average 18-35 year old movie goer? Yeah, that’s right. Your point just got lost in well-choreographed gore and gratuitous blue wang.
3) Could you have made Silk Spectre II look less like Xena? The whole time she was kicking ass I kept on thinking of that Simpson’s episode: “I didn’t know Xena could fly!” “I keep telling you, I’m Lucy Lawless!” She can keep the cute little wiggle dresses though. Those were awesome.
And finally, spoiler, and probably the only place Antigone might agree with me.
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Hooray! It’s time for another edition of… STRAINED ANALOGIES!
You’re driving a truck full of your own loved ones– children, significant others, your mom, pets, and whoever else is important in your life– over a treacherous mountain road. You’re determined, at any cost, to get to the scenic village at the peak. Too dangerous for a family outing, everybody said? HA! You’ll show them. No backing down now.
Every tight corner features a thousand foot drop with no railing. At first you overcompensate by veering away from the edge, hugging the inner rock wall. You reconsider this tactic upon passing a low row of white scrapes along the wall, and then an outcropping where a pair of tire tracks bounce away into the void. The children’s eyes are saucers, and your mom’s lips are moving wildly as she beseeches her God in silent prayer. Even the pets are shitting themselves.
Your significant other clutches your forearm and speaks in hushed tones. “Listen, hon, let’s just slow down and turn around. We can just stay at that motor inn we saw at the base of the mountain, right?”
Ashamed of your selfishness, you realize that maybe that this trip wasn’t such a good idea after all. Just what were you trying to prove, anyway? You are just about to apply the brakes, when…
…your heart jerks in your chest… there is a massive shape in the road dead ahead, only yards away… time slows to a crawl… is that what it looks like?… YES, IT IS…
You are milliseconds away from colliding head on into an ELEPHANT and a DONKEY. Just sitting there, in the middle of this narrow mountain road. Who knows why they are there. Perhaps someone is filming a clever political ad. Does it really matter? The fact is, there they are. A donkey, an elephant, and the likely death you and everyone you love.
Moment of truth time. What is your reflexive response?
B. Swerve left and take your chances with scraping the rock wall like the car whose tire tracks you noticed before. Thing is, there’s another left turn just ahead, so if you don’t regain control fast, you’ll dive off the mountain anyway. But come on, at least there’s a CHANCE of survival.
C. Aim to kill the animals by barreling straight into them, hoping that the impact of their destruction will stop the truck before it goes over the edge of the road. After all, there’s not only a donkey, there’s a frigging ELEPHANT in your way. Choose this way, and regardless if anybody is still actually remaining on the road at the end of it all, the highway will definitely be running with blood.
D. Take your hands off the wheel and shake your fist at the sky, screaming, “Quin, this stupid little story of yours sucks ass. What am I supposed to be gaining from it?” Now, now. Let’s try to be constructive. You can be petulant if you want, but that’s not going to save you and everyone you ever loved from horrible grisly ends, will it?
The question is: how to love?
You don’t know a thing unless you are perceiving it. This isn’t an epistemological statement—you are not meant to take this and run round-and-round in the solipsist death spiral. “My perceptions are necessarily imperfect,” you are not supposed to say, “ergo I cannot know anything.”
This is a statement about all those things that you actually do know, and act on, and use to make your self. It is a fact about those things.
When someone asks, “do you love me?” and you do, you don’t say, “I believe so.” Love isn’t a thing you believe, so it’s never a thing whose existence you can assert or prove. Love is a verb. It is a thing we do. It is a thing we have to build every day, with our words and with our tongues. It is not an easy thing, and it is fragile. This fragility is not the opposite of strength; like all fragile things, love is unbelievably strong.
I have hurt everyone I loved, some way, some how. And I have been hurt by them. These are the best relationships, the absolute strongest ones I hold. The love there is palpable, perceived, known.
You will hurt people; you will be hurt. I have hurt people; I have been hurt; I have hurt myself. These are words to hold onto, because without exception they are true.
~
Pause for a moment. Enter this place: You’re sitting in a stranger’s living room. You don’t know anyone else there, and they’re talking, and you can’t understand their words. You were not invited here—perhaps you are a ghost. The question is: what do you do?
“Billy, can you come downstairs for a minute? Your father and I would like to talk to you.”
Billy popped the pause button on his controller and flicked a glance at the oversized digits hanging above his TV. “Gotta head over to Derrick’s in a few. Can it wait till later?” The tilt of his mother’s head suggested not so much.
Billy flopped back in the matching loveseat opposite his parents’ bloated suede couch. The furrowed brows facing him caused Billy to make the same face back at his parents. Billy sensed this was a harsher vibe than “we need you to be better about taking out the garbage.” He mentally thumbed through the notes he’d prepped in case Dad ever figured out how to search a browser history. Natural curiosity. Natural curiosity. Natural curiosity.
Dad cleared his throat. “Son, I have something for you. You’re not going to like it, but we really have no choice.” Fucking internet filters. Dad reached into a pastic bag and extracted a thick black metal square with a hollow middle. A small red light blinked on one of its corners.
“Put this on.”
“I can’t believe I’m really here.”
Janet spun slowly in the middle of the campus square, taking in the stately presence of her university surroundings. Backpacks, cell phones, and iPods swirled around her as she gaped at the ivy-covered brick buildings. Janet could practically feel the intellectual energy being sent and received on the other side of those walls, and the nape of her neck tingled at the prospect of participating in the exchange.
Her daydream came to a crashing halt when Janet was knocked to the ground with a thud.
“Oh, excuse me! I’m so sorry.”
Shaking off her surprise, she took the strong hand offered to her. “Hi, I’m Paul,” said the All-American square-jawed smile at the other end of the arm. Janet blushed and managed to fumble a response she hoped had included her name.
Paul was a sophmore in Kinesiology and a walk-on tight end for the football team. Janet mentioned her interest in biology and physiology. “I love to learn about the magic of God’s creations,” she beamed.
Paul winked in response and broadened his smile. “I think you’re gonna like it here, Jan.” Jan. How adult! She was feeling more grown up already. “Hey,” he continued, “we’ve got this little social club meeting tomorrow night, a mixer to introduce freshman to life on campus. I’d love to see you there.” Paul handed Janet a simple flyer for an event titled “College 101″ and strolled off with a half-salute wave back at Janet. Jan. She was Jan now.
——— CH. 2
Jan made her way down the narrow corridor towards room 308, her place of residence for the next year. As she got closer, a repulsive, vaguely familiar smell invaded her nostrils. She reached the open door of room 308 and was deeply disappointed to discover that the stink was emanating from her new home. Splayed out on one of the beds was a girl who seemed to have lept out of a Woodstock documentary — she was greasy and unkempt with hair in all the wrong places for a female.
The girl was deeply immersed in a book entitled “The Best of Female Erotica,” and Jan felt a cold shiver as she stared at the sinful lips dominating its cover. Jan set down her bag and caught the attention of her roommate, who introduced herself in a growly voice as Martha. She asked Jan if she wanted a smoke.
“I don’t think we should do that in here, do you?” Jan warned. Martha rolled her eyes and took out some kind of homemade cigarette. As she lit it, a new kind of odor invaded Jan’s nostrils. As the old one became overpowered, Jan realized where she’d smelled it before: from the homeless people begging on street corners near the highways of her home town. She got queasy at the thought, and the new stench wasn’t helping.
“It’ll be fine,” Martha assured her. “Anyway, this is the kindest of the kind. You want some?” Jan shook her head. “Come on. Everybody in college does it. It’s like a rite of passage.” Jan felt uncertain. She squeezed the cross under her shirt for guidance.
“I don’t like putting unnatural chemicals in my body, thanks,” Jan said. Martha giggled, “It’s totally natural, silly. God’s own creation put right here on this Earth for our enjoyment. C’mon. One puff.” Martha leaned over and extended the tip of the cigarette to Jan. Jan looked at it and hesitated. Well, I squeezed my cross, Jan thought, and right then she mentioned God. Plus, she said it was kind. Maybe this is a good idea.
Jan stuck her head forward, put her lips against the sticky end of the cigarette, and inhaled. She shot backwards with a sharp cough, and suddenly she realized she had just smoked marijuana. She shook her head vigorously, trying to clear the fog rolling in, but darkness overcame her. Jan passed out at the foot of Martha’s bed.
Once upon a time, there lived a timid, scatterbrained propagandist named Screech. All day Screech scrawled on the walls of his Creamy Palace, eating paste and complaining of his life as a “hausfrau,” which is pixie-speak for “intellectual failure.”
One day, a big, bad wolf from Southpaw came to Screech’s Palace dressed as a teacher from the Arid Zone.
“Hello, Screech! I’m a friendly teacher,” said the wolf in teacher’s clothing. “Won’t you let me in to draw on your walls with you and your happy ejaculates?”
Screech thought long and hard, for it was difficult for him to make much sense. Of anything. Eventually, though, he let the teacher in to play amongst his wriggily minions and doodle on the Creamy Palace.
Big mistake.
Once inside, the wolf exposed herself and began howling menacingly at Screech. The wolf then licked its lips at the sight of Screech’s favorite sperm, the one on which he sprinkled stork droppings to make a full-fledged child. The wolf’s growls at the child were particularly scary, and Screech decided it was best to bust a nut and call the Cashew Kids, Pecan People, and Flying Macademias to his side.
Just as Screech cracked open the alarm’s shell, the wolf took another nasty swipe at him. She then apologized to draw Screech closer before making another attack. This string of clever, vicious maneuvers was working until the Army of Nuts arrived to provide reinforcements.
They rounded up all the colored chalk they could find and began scribbling powerful magical runes on the sidewalks around the Creamy Palace to cow her into submission. Before long, the wolf was defeated, reduced to a jibbering, jobless fool.
The nuts weren’t satisfied, though. Their oils bubbling over with battlelust, they turned their attention to everyone like the wolf. No, they didn’t go after other wolves; there weren’t enough of them to sate their cravings. Instead, the nuts talked themselves into believing that every creature in the town of Southpaw was responsible for this attack.
“Why haven’t other Southpaws spoken out against this wolf?” cried Yanker Fednut. He cared nothing for their inability to read every drawing on the Creamy Palace. Yanker Fednut was disgusted by their lack of vigilance.
“Yeah,” sneered Der Commienut. “I know lots of ‘paws who’ve smeared Screech before. None of them did anything like this, and here’s the painstakingly-assembled evidence to prove it. If you think about it, this means they all did it!”
Even the other nuts were confused by this logic, but once a nut hoists itself up in a moment of passion, its violent discharge pays reason no heed. Angry Shivernut spoke for the lot of them by arguing that the massacre of Southpaws was an inevitability. “So let’s get to it!” he cried.
And with that, the nuts charged towards Southpaw.
Contrary to what you’ve been told, it isn’t easy for a nice guy to get the right girl.
If you were writing a romantic comedy, I’d be the leading man, a real catch played by a big star like Matthew Perry or Billy Crystal. Check the stats:
*I’m smart, and I’ve got the MIS degree to prove it.
*I’m handsome and stay in shape via my church’s Ultimate Frisbee league.
*I have a huge TV and watch everything from Two and a Half Men to CSI: Miami.
*I’ve got good moral values.
*I’m giving, caring, loyal, and ready to make the right woman my bride.
So what happened with Miss Right?
I stood outside the clinic as she approached our picket line, a blonde stunner with a rack as big as advertised; even her bulky sweatshirt couldn’t hide those bazoombas. Her thighs had a few too many tree rings, but nobody’s perfect, and anyway, the grueling pilates class at my church could churn any woman from butter to stone. This doll screamed bargain fixer-upper, and I was just the right carpenter for the job — well, along with the Carpenter, if you know what I mean.
Unfortunately, my nymph possessed one other imperfection: she was with child and ready to toss it in the garbage can (along with her eternal soul for committing such a sin). See, I’m part of Grooms for Life, a new program designed to connect pro-life men of character with single women kamikaze-diving towards an abortion due to a lack of male support.
On Tuesday, the Crisis Pregnancy Center across the street snapped this woman’s picture and posted it on our bulletin board. The minute I saw it I knew she was the One. All she needed was a knight in black-and-white armor, complete with the bowtie he tied himself. My swift intervention would rescue more than my princess, though. Her unborn jewel would be saved in time to grow into the Hope Diamond.
As she approached, my buddy Darrin have her a good whack on the noggin with his giant aborted fetus picture. Cue my heroic entrance. Right as she turned to face Darrin, I butted between them.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
“That asshole hit me!”
I turned to Darrin with a wink and grabbed him by the Old Navy polo. “You have five seconds to apologize to the lady.”
He faked a much better harrumph than last time. “Yeah? Or what?”
“Or you’re going to get beaten to an even worse pulp than the child in that photo.”
He hung his head and apologized as I scooped up her arm and ushered her away from our small protest crowd. “What’s your name?”
“Allison,” she replied reluctantly. A few strokes to her hand caused her entire body to tense up. I could tell she was nervous about her impending infanticide.
“I’m Ethan. It’s really nice to meet you, Alli. Can I can you Alli?” I asked because I’ve found it’s better to get on familiar terms with a prospective wife as soon as possible.
“Uh, no, you can’t. You can let go of my arm, though,” she snapped. What could I do? I gave her a big hug to soothe her anxiety. The powerful masculine arms of a real man must’ve felt especially good to her because she wriggled against me furiously, rubbing every part of me against every part of her. God’s love was in the air.
Eventually she pushed me back to get a better look at the cut of my heroic jib. Her words betrayed the cracks in her soul caused by her abandonment. “Are you looking for a lawsuit, here, pal? Because I didn’t get that JD for nothing.” I crossed my fingers that JD wasn’t some new veneral disease and continued to pursue my destiny. Oh, and I hand-signaled for my crowd to circle behind us and block the clinic entrance so we could have some more time to talk.
I grabbed her wrist firmly, to show my manliness, and interlocked our fingers. “Alli,” I said, “your life just changed forever. I’m here today because I know what you’re going to do, and I believe the power of love, which is to say the Power of God, has brought us together to save you and your unborn child from eternal damnation.” Her jaw literally hung agape in ecstatic shock. I seized the moment and leaned in close, locking our eyes. “Alli, the only thing standing between you and a happy family is the right head of the household. I know you’ve been abandoned by another damaged soul, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We can bring you back to the bosom of the Lord and give you the lifelong joy of motherhood all at once. And we can do it together. Because I’m here today to ask you to marry me, Alli. Will you marry me?”
I barely got that last part out before she threw a terribly unchristian right cross to my temple. I landed solidly on my elbow and uttered an unspeakable. My fingers shot out for her ankle, but my Alli was on her way into Satan’s arms and away from mine. She burst through my gaggle of friends and entered the clinic. As the door swung shut, I could feel the door to my heart closing as well. What was I to do without my soulmate?
It was then that I felt a tap on my shoulder. God? No, it was Richard from the CPC. He jabbed a polaroid at me, and I recoiled with a wrinkled nose until I saw the leggy brunette in the picture. No tree trunks on this one.
“She went for an abortion consultation yesterday. I think you two would be perfect together.”
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
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