Aw, man. J.D. Salinger died. No more new novels! Plus he left a party of five orphans behind.*
*I'm sorry.
Seriously, I wonder if we're in for a deluge of previously unpublished writings. After all, I hope he was doing something this whole time. I'm looking forward to all the articles and essays about Salinger's literary influence. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read any Salinger, which is funny because as Nick Hornby once pointed out you could go through his oeuvre in about a week. Sad, really. I'm working on Crowley's Little, Big right now, so maybe I'll try Nine Stories when I'm done.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Science!
Just received Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time, the 3rd volume in the Atomic Robo series. Verdict: Robo-tastic. Not as good as Vol. 1, which was Robo-riffic; but better than Vol. 2, which was merely Robo-licious.
For the uninitiated, Atomic Robo is a comic written by Brian Clevinger and drawn by Scott Wegener. And it's fun and awesome. Try it, kids. It's the story of Atomic Robo--get it?--a sapient robot built by Nikola Tesla in the '20s who punches dinosaurs, feuds with Stephen Hawking, and blows up Nazis.
Vol. 3 follows Robo in the 20's, 50's, 70's and 00's as he fights a nonlinear, non euclidean extradimensional cosmic horror that wants to eat the earth. Along the way, he gets help from Charles Fort, Carl Sagan and Robo's own Action Scientists. And, boy howdy, is it fun. Wegener's art makes a mouthless robot expressive using nothing but body language and eye-covers. Clevinger's writing is top notch, with a nice mix of slapstick, pulpy action, and dry wit. Highly recommended.
For the uninitiated, Atomic Robo is a comic written by Brian Clevinger and drawn by Scott Wegener. And it's fun and awesome. Try it, kids. It's the story of Atomic Robo--get it?--a sapient robot built by Nikola Tesla in the '20s who punches dinosaurs, feuds with Stephen Hawking, and blows up Nazis.
Vol. 3 follows Robo in the 20's, 50's, 70's and 00's as he fights a nonlinear, non euclidean extradimensional cosmic horror that wants to eat the earth. Along the way, he gets help from Charles Fort, Carl Sagan and Robo's own Action Scientists. And, boy howdy, is it fun. Wegener's art makes a mouthless robot expressive using nothing but body language and eye-covers. Clevinger's writing is top notch, with a nice mix of slapstick, pulpy action, and dry wit. Highly recommended.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Senator make poopie! Yay!
Sorry to start in on American politics. But after Senator Harry Reid's gaffe (basically using the word "Negro" about 4 decades after it lost acceptability) I think it's time U.S. Congresspeople should earn their jobs. They should have to take a test every election year and pass it to be eligible for reelection. Tests with questions like: How do you pronounce Kim Jong Il? This could have eliminated the late Jesse Helms (R-NC), who repeatedly pronounced the North Korean's name as "Kim Jong the Second". When staffers made cheat sheets that read "Kim Jong Ill" Helms started saying "Kim Jong the Third." Let's give him a break, after all, he was only the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
What the hell? How about Ted Stevens (R-AK) describing the internet as a "series of tubes." Stevens was the author of the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.
Tired of me picking on Republicans? How 'bout Democrat Joe Biden's repeated brushes* with plagiarism.
The point is, making these bozos take a competency test might either a) force them to learn something or b) force them out of office. I'm thinking about a test that covers current affairs, scientific literacy, societal norms, cultural literacy, etc. Think the SATs, but for the people who write the laws and policies for a major world power.
What the hell? How about Ted Stevens (R-AK) describing the internet as a "series of tubes." Stevens was the author of the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.
Tired of me picking on Republicans? How 'bout Democrat Joe Biden's repeated brushes* with plagiarism.
The point is, making these bozos take a competency test might either a) force them to learn something or b) force them out of office. I'm thinking about a test that covers current affairs, scientific literacy, societal norms, cultural literacy, etc. Think the SATs, but for the people who write the laws and policies for a major world power.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Holmes and Gardens
[Minor Sherlock Holmes spoilers ahead]
Okay, I saw Sherlock Holmes a couple weeks ago and for the most part I liked it. Now, I am a serious Holmes nerd and had correspondingly serious trepidations about this flick because the trailers showed such things as Watson punching Holmes innaface, Holmes chained to a bed naked, Holmes flinging a hammer at a mook, etc. This images really made me concerned about how true the movie would be to the stories.
I have to say it was more faithful than I anticipated with one major exception: Sherlock Holmes naked is just wrong. Sorry, ladies (and some guys).
My biggest beef, though, with the movie is the plot. It suffers from the 'Turn it up to eleven' syndrome; that is, the writers and director think the only way to make us care is to put ALL OF LONDON (AND MAYBE THE WORLD) in peril.
I first came to articulate this syndrome after seeing the first Hellboy movie. I hadn't read much Hellboy, but my two favorite stories are the one in which HB has to bargain with the fair folk for the life of a baby and the one in which HB has to slay a nest of vampires at Christmas to save the soul of an old woman. And when I saw the movie, I compared these stories and I realized that damn near every superhero or video game movie does this: the makers have the plot be some variation on SAVING THE WORLD.
Boy, does it get dull.
The movies that do this make, I think, two opposing, yet complementary, mistakes:
1) The characters are altered to make them more relatable to the masses. And
2) The plots are engineered to appeal to fanboys.
What if you reversed that, if you make the characters as close as possible to the ones the fans love and place these characters in a situation that everyone can relate to? Then you get The Dark Knight or Iron Man or Spider-Man 2. If you go the other way you get Tomb Raider or Constantine.
Let's look at Hellboy. What if the first movie had been about HB journeying into Faerie to look for, say, a stolen baby? We could still have seen many of the same elements the actual film had. We could still have had Myers, the rookie agent assigned as HB's keeper. Maybe at some point he says "Why are we going to so much trouble to find this kid? Is he important, somehow?" And then HB turns to Myers, closes in, squints, and replies in Ron Perlman's rumble, "He is to his parents." Who wouldn't be in the big red guy's corner right then? Then, we follow as HB and co. go save a baby. We could even still get the giant clockwork deathtraps, the evil puppets, the fighty-fighty, Jeffrey Tambor, etc. It may not be perfect, but I think more people would have been behind this movie--and it was still pretty darn good.
Back to Sherlock Holmes. The most famous Holmes story is probably Hound of the Baskervilles and it's about Holmes and Watson protecting some schmuck. Sure, Holmes is frequently hired by Scotland Yard or the Crown, but just as often he's engaged by a puzzled or frightened private citizen who comes to him for help. And he does (usually). And I think that's what we need to see in a Sherlock Holmes movie: Holmes helping people.
Okay, I saw Sherlock Holmes a couple weeks ago and for the most part I liked it. Now, I am a serious Holmes nerd and had correspondingly serious trepidations about this flick because the trailers showed such things as Watson punching Holmes innaface, Holmes chained to a bed naked, Holmes flinging a hammer at a mook, etc. This images really made me concerned about how true the movie would be to the stories.
I have to say it was more faithful than I anticipated with one major exception: Sherlock Holmes naked is just wrong. Sorry, ladies (and some guys).
My biggest beef, though, with the movie is the plot. It suffers from the 'Turn it up to eleven' syndrome; that is, the writers and director think the only way to make us care is to put ALL OF LONDON (AND MAYBE THE WORLD) in peril.
I first came to articulate this syndrome after seeing the first Hellboy movie. I hadn't read much Hellboy, but my two favorite stories are the one in which HB has to bargain with the fair folk for the life of a baby and the one in which HB has to slay a nest of vampires at Christmas to save the soul of an old woman. And when I saw the movie, I compared these stories and I realized that damn near every superhero or video game movie does this: the makers have the plot be some variation on SAVING THE WORLD.
Boy, does it get dull.
The movies that do this make, I think, two opposing, yet complementary, mistakes:
1) The characters are altered to make them more relatable to the masses. And
2) The plots are engineered to appeal to fanboys.
What if you reversed that, if you make the characters as close as possible to the ones the fans love and place these characters in a situation that everyone can relate to? Then you get The Dark Knight or Iron Man or Spider-Man 2. If you go the other way you get Tomb Raider or Constantine.
Let's look at Hellboy. What if the first movie had been about HB journeying into Faerie to look for, say, a stolen baby? We could still have seen many of the same elements the actual film had. We could still have had Myers, the rookie agent assigned as HB's keeper. Maybe at some point he says "Why are we going to so much trouble to find this kid? Is he important, somehow?" And then HB turns to Myers, closes in, squints, and replies in Ron Perlman's rumble, "He is to his parents." Who wouldn't be in the big red guy's corner right then? Then, we follow as HB and co. go save a baby. We could even still get the giant clockwork deathtraps, the evil puppets, the fighty-fighty, Jeffrey Tambor, etc. It may not be perfect, but I think more people would have been behind this movie--and it was still pretty darn good.
Back to Sherlock Holmes. The most famous Holmes story is probably Hound of the Baskervilles and it's about Holmes and Watson protecting some schmuck. Sure, Holmes is frequently hired by Scotland Yard or the Crown, but just as often he's engaged by a puzzled or frightened private citizen who comes to him for help. And he does (usually). And I think that's what we need to see in a Sherlock Holmes movie: Holmes helping people.
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Hi, and welcome to Reason is a Verb. I can't count the number of times someone has said to me "Wow! You're really opinionated but articulate, you should have a blog." So, here you go, random strangers on the bus.
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