keep on with the force don't stop

so.

Michael Jackson is dead.

sort of weird typing it. not that i thought that he was immortal (throw in joke about being made up of lot of nonliving material, then throw it away for being a little too crass), but it definitely was unexpected.


(i won't make a "plastic" joke if you won't!)

my earliest Michael Jackson memories are as follows:

1. his hair catching on fire. this was big big playground news.
2. the Wiz.
3. thriller. more specifically, playing thriller on the playground in kindergarten. somehow assuming - this was also around the time of the Jackson's victory tour -that the other Jackson brothers (and, for some reason, their father Joe). yes, if there's anything to prove that i was a weird little kid, it was that. i knew the whole Vincent Price "rap" by heart. mostly because it was sort of cool to pretend i was a zombie crawling out of the ground. I'm pretty sure i didn't do the "dance" (i tried to learn it a couple of years ago... hard!)

yeah, he was always a bit odd. bubbles? his friendship with Emmanuel Lewis? a love song to a rat?


(oops, that's not Michael Jackson... ::shudders::)


(much better!)

but he was cool. the songs were good. the videos were maybe a little self indulgent, but to some degree that was the only way MTV was going to play a black artist in the early 80's. and really, i always wanted a sidewalk that lit up when i stepped on it...

even when he did the Simpsons - right at the start of the going "off the wall" (hey, nice play on his album title) he was cool (and very self effacing, which you didn't really see much from him afterwards). yeah, the Bartman was actually a pretty awful song. "Bad" wasn't anywhere near as good a record as "Thriller" but certainly tops "Dangerous." (this was also the start of his odd obsession with filling his videos with odd celebrity cameos - the Liberian Girl video had everyone from Paula Abdul to George freaking Jefferson and Theo Huxtable).

and then the downward spiral began... the plastic surgery (sorry, barring some horrible wasting disease, nobody's nose shrinks like that), the "allegations" (which, unfortunately, probably rang a little true...). the absolutely crappy videos from Dangerous (I'm not even going to post remember the time.... ugh... really?? the man who did Thriller and Beat It made that atrocity???)

favorite weirdness after his fall from grace?

1. wanting to play peter pan in Spielberg's "Hook" (the movie which sort of began the hallmark-ization of Robin Williams, but that's another post)
2. the giant statues
3. "Jesus juice"
4. claiming that "Invincible" didn't do as well as he thought it should have, not because it was a really sub par record full of tired, dated production values, but because the head of
Sony (who at the time had darker skin than him) was a racist... yes somehow Michael Jackson was suddenly a spokesman for African American equality...

all this said, it feels a little like my generation has lost it's Elvis. though MJ's fall from grace is a lot different from the latter years of Elvis' life (as far as we know, Jackson wasn't a drug addled mess at the end, but Presley was far less of a punchline at his death). in terms of impact... this is pretty huge. while certainly there is more going on in the world than this - should the death of a man who has become all but washed up really overshadow the crisis in Iran? - this will dominate the news cycle for a few days, with tributes, pictures of people mourning, tabloid magazines talking to "friends close to Jackson," and the inevitable quickie biography or two. which is what we do when celebrities die.

was Jackson still culturally relevant? ask Timberlake. ask the black eyed peas. ask anyone who has mined his style of R&B or aped his dance moves. had he gotten a chance to do his comeback tour, it could have been like Elvis's comeback special, reinvigorating his career. but now we'll never know...

an open letter to Tom Hanks

Dear Mr Hanks,

first of all, congratulations on your new-sh movie. i hope it is a success (though it seems it's fallen quite short). (say hi to opie for me).

but mr hanks, i am concerned that this movie is just another in a long line of "serious" roles that further distance you from your goofy/nice guy past.

i still remember your first attempt at serious, with bonfire of the vanities. i would have thought that the terrible reception it got, that you got in it, would have shied you away from any attempt to become a "real" actor again.

this is not to dismiss "Philadelphia" which was... well... amazing, honestly. and it's not to say that your oscar winning performances haven't been... well... oscar worthy. and it's not like you became the walking hallmark card that is robin william's carreer (though he did make attempts at recovery, those have largely been incredibly awkward).

but now a new generation of loveable schlubs have stolen your thunder. seth rogen, jason lee, steve carrell... yeah, the humor is cruder (though i remember bachelor party, sir) but in a lot of ways, they play the nice goofball that you used to do so well...

do i have a point here? i don't know. i'm not saying remake the burbs, or the man with one red show (though, wow, please do!) just bring back the tom hanks we all know and love!

(ps. no more stupid haircuts!)

random thursday morning thought...

what? a blog post??

it's been a while, though the number of half done entries sitting in my drafts folder might suggest i had ideas, just never finished them out.

so i'm flipping through channels and i come across the sci fi network, where i see amber tamblyn. now, i know she's been in a few sci fi type movies, so i think little of it, until i see her talking to mary steenburgen.... then the wheels turn and it clicks....

joan of arcadia? on the same network that brought us mansquito??

≠

yes, the show has "fantasy" elements, which probably earns it placement on scifi. and this was the channel which kept showing reruns of quantum leap, another "fantasy" show which really wasn't. but... i guess it just bothers me....


and that's my thought of the morning...

why on earth would you remake bonnie and clyde...

with hilary duff, no less?

sigh.

fuck you hollywood. fuck.you.

Amazing Obamaman

so today was the release of the much touted Amazing Spider-Man featuring Obama.

now, for one, the "Obama cover" was just an incentive cover - a 1 in 100, meaning retailers had to order 100 copies to get this:

otherwise, they got what i got:


now, this obviously will be a problem for some "collectors" and by that i mean obamabilia collectors, rather than comic book collectors. 1, because since it's not a special issue so much as a B story tacked onto the end of a "swinging peter parker - yes, this is what brand new day means" story. and 2, because explaining things like "variant cover" to non comic book people is like expianing string theory to a cow... Marvel kind of bungled it apparently, deciding rather late in the game that this was a) happening at all and b) to tell the the retailers, meaning many had already placed their orders when this happened (way to create demand... seriously, stunts like this are what cause the comic book bubble and collapse in the 90's)...

so tons of confused people, wanting an obama comic (where were they when this
came out? yeah, it didn't have the buzz, and was a straight biography, similar to the awesome Pope comic Marvel did in the early 80's,
but it was an Obama comic book) ended up with a pretty standard Spiderman comic, something i'm sure Obama - who apparently collects Spiderman comic books - would appreciate, but the typical memorabilia hunter wouldn't.


now, the story:

well, the main story is bit of a throwaway. Betty Brant recounting how much a good friend Peter is even though he finds a way to always disappoint her. he's supposed to be planning a birthday party for her, she's trying to hook him up with a girlfriend (gee, had they only kept him married this wouldn't be a problem, would it?). the birthday comes, and no party. betty gets mad and peter, the good friend he is, explains to her that everyone he was trying to invite was mad at her, so he did what he did - rented a movie - to protect her. so... yeah.

the obama story is equally short and sweet. peter parker's at the inauguration taking photos, sees an obama double, and steps in to thwart him (spoiler: it turns out it's the chameleon, wanting to be president... when's the last time we saw HIM?). there's some nice interraction between spidey and obama:

the Biden joke is a nice, cute touch. as is Obama's line "Honestly, I'm more upset by the Chameleon's shockinglu deficient understaning of the electoral process." so all in all, a good story. and a good spiderman comic. just.... not something the obamaphiles are going to really want to spend the soon the be inflated prices for (though they will) - my retailer had it going for $10, as it was a 1 in 100 incentive, and they base their prices for them that way i guess- but a good spiderman story nonetheless.

a better approach might have been having it more like "The Kid who Collects Spiderman" though without the terminal illness part of it. i think Obama telling spiderman he's a huge fan, and then Spiderman revealing his identity (i mean, Obama is the president) would have actually been brilliant...

new year, new geek (wtf! new post?!)

so it's the new year and while i'm not a fan of new years resolutions per se (i never keep them for more than a few weeks, often falling completely flat by february), i have resolved to blog more...

of course, not this entry. this is just to say, yes, the blog is still alive. and once i think of some good topics... so... yeah...

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opie says so!