I’ve been reading Lovecraft lately (well, mostly Alan Moore and reminders what happened in the original stories on Wiki, which are fabulous sleep aids), so while waiting for HBO’s Scientology documentary to be seeded, I opted for this, the finale in Carpenter’s “apocalypse” trilogy. The Thing is a fucking masterpiece, and I loved that dream sequence in Prince of Darkness, but I couldn’t find anything redeeming here, not even a lewd screenshot to accompany this post. For horror to overcome rational man surely it has to be indescribably overwhelming, like the global scale of an alien threat or those nightmares I’d get with a fever, not the nonsensical frustration of a spook who keeps coming back.
Let’s settle for this groovy title instead, because Gabrielle Drake again would’ve been gratuitous. Seeing the you-foes behind you like that, now that’s scary.
I really ought to have bookended each binged season of the universally lauded series with an episode of Police Squad!, because then I might have made it through the last. Because the best way to get past the reality that human beings suck, and the world is run by the worst of us, is by laughing it off.
I wonder, was Peter Lupus’ Norberg character one of the first to be African-Americanized—Colbert’s definition of “blackwashing” probably doesn’t describe the same practice—for newer audiences, like the 2015 Johnny Storm, movie Ford Prefect, Iris West on the Flash and Will Smith as James West (and soon, Deadshot). If early cancellation also must befall Constantine, then I hope it follows the same course with a successful film trilogy. There are already Blacks in the cast, too.
Of the two I do remember from my recent week off in Boston, or rather, wrote to my ever-shrinking or corrupted RAM, the first was likely fueled by my paranoia about us all leaving the house and the usual kind where I’d stare out the window into the night to spot intruders. These I’d almost always debunk as dreams, and this time because my view of the backyard shifted to overhead and my assailants converged into a huge old school shooting videogame boss. Gun still in hand, I saw a younger version of my son appear at the top of a wide flight of stairs in white robes, mouth agape but silent, and certain it was only a ghost (last year it was The Raid, and now Chris kept insisting we watch The Conjuring), I pulled the trigger, but that, too, was a fake.
The other involved Ben’s father Evan, who apparently had a duplicate of himself or the ability to create one, and I wondered how both could hold separate conversations. Would his perspective switch back and forth like changing TV channels? We had to somehow defeat this genius, and my plan was to let him know that we knew, but be subtle about it, by inserting the message only in the background of one of his fields of view, like on a small sign in a crowd.
The other night I watched a child interview Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—truly the worst possible title for a film due on the 75th anniversary of the first issue of World’s Finest—director Zack Snyder and he was surprisingly generous with the information he revealed: a look at a new character who at first resembled Green Arrow, but a bug was visible on the side of his mask, and the narrator screamed, “The Zipper!” embarrassing me for not making the connection.
Then some looks at the designs for Aquaman, more merman than human with a sea creature’s legs or fin and a torso resembling a vagina. Slung over his shoulder was a suit he wore to hide all that, including legs and a good-sized penis.
Twentieth anniversary of the eponymous publication, but actually it’s been more than thirty years since I saw it carelessly sold on the shelves at Kroger. In a way, I pity the youth of today, whose introduction to pornography all pretty much comes via the Internet, depriving them of memories and psyche-shaping experiences such as these, the lengths we had to take to see breasts, like braving the undeveloped tracts past Douglas Avenue for a legendary shack, trying to pinpoint the exact position between the rockers on the cable box which would supposedly unlock the Playboy Channel—and accompanying Mom to buy groceries.
Apart from its Justice Lord-ish story told in two hours of cut scenes, the game itself had only as much time in the PS3 as the last Street Fighter before being sent to 남재’s welcoming arms, but the prequel series has easily laid claim to a life of its own. And next year, John Constantine joins the fray, turning this humble videogame supplement into Alan-fucking-Moore’s Twilight of the Superheroes.
Tonight on yet another over-the-air retro network (seriously, they expect me to pay for dross like reality TV when I can watch this), I was reunited with that episode of the Six Million Dollar Man where Steve and a posse pursue a family of aliens with special abilities, the patriarch of which I had remembered fast-forwarding time to flee, but turns out he was only creating an illusion of themselves headed in another direction. Mystery of almost four decades solved.
A year or so later I’d be smitten with the proto-Robotech Micronauts toy line, but as ultimately unrewarding as it may be to eBay another magnetic Force Commander, it’s the Michael Golden art in the Marvel comics that still astounds me. And thanks to speedy seeders out there, I can bask in their beauty again.
The Flash is set to be the new Spider-man, as I’ve always felt he deserved. I would’ve gone nuts for this as a wee lad—and consistency being my thing nowadays, my favorite incarnation of the wall-crawler really is the 70’s TV series—as cool as I thought even the laughable effects were at the time:
A being who can move so fast as to put everyone else in slow-mo, essentially freezing them from his perspective of time, then speed back up at will, is basically a god, isn’t he? I don’t think I really could appreciate this in 3rd or 4th grade as I drew up plans for my own career as a superhero, relying on running (I must’ve won a race or two in PE against my African-American classmates to inspire such confidence, which is more than I can say about my recent performance at the Mother’s Day picnic) with “magnesium flares” in my shoes.
Night before this long-awaited reveal I dreamed I saw the 2016 movie, was underwhelmed by the moment, and life went on as usual afterward. Batman and Superman were lovers, and had just gotten out of bed together and left it unmade. In behind-the-scenes footage, a stuntman dressed as Spider-man did a backflip off a second-story platform, but he was much taller than it looked.
GW2’s vertical trend has alienated me, Arrow’s on hiatus and well, there hasn’t been much of anything else to keep me occupied lately (a slew of 2013 releases on the flight back from Boston, comped because of the delay, and I still watched Man of Steel again), so I took a chance on my first new アニメ since, what, FLCL, with this popular hit whose Fantastic Planet-like premise is undeniably intriguing. And as wonderfully creative the Spiderman gear that’s used to combat the eponymous titans is as well, I’m just not sure it’s capable of a satisfying resolution—see The Walking Dead—and may only be fit to tell the story of much the same characters. Hell of a setting for a videogame, too.
The other day I figured out why I like this show so much, other than it going nuts with the DC universe (which can be good and bad; case in point, Smallville’s Mxyzptlk), and on the eve of the introduction of Barry Allen: it reminds me of Mortal Kombat: Conquest. I only hope that the same low-budget formula doesn’t hinder my vision for the Flash, which could use special effects like these and make Speed Force running a truly psychedelic experience.
Apart from its 
Night before this long-awaited reveal I dreamed I saw the 2016 movie, was underwhelmed by the moment, and life went on as usual afterward. Batman and Superman were lovers, and had just gotten out of bed together and left it unmade. In behind-the-scenes footage, a stuntman dressed as Spider-man did a backflip off a second-story platform, but he was much taller than it looked.
