For months now it’s been the same question over and over again in email. “When are you going to do a parody of Secret Invasion?”
Well, here you go.
25
Nov
For months now it’s been the same question over and over again in email. “When are you going to do a parody of Secret Invasion?”
Well, here you go.
25
Nov
Every year the same goddamned thing happens. It is late November. I have to go to the supermarket for some perfectly minor reason (this time around it was English muffins). I go to the supermarket, and what are they selling?
President’s Choice Candy Cane Chocolate Fudge Crackle Ice Cream.
So naturally I buy two tubs of it.
It is only available for the holiday season, and I am thankful for this because if it was available year-round I would weigh 400 pounds and have a bad case of approaching death-ness. PCCCCFCIC is quite possibly the most perfect and wonderful ice cream of all time – numerous sweet elements converging to form a delicious and perfect sweet-tasting whole that nevertheless does not overwhelm you with pure sweetness in the way that, say, a fair number of over-the-top cheesecakes can manage.
And I know it’s terrible for you. (I mean, the fudge crackle parts are actually made from freaking palm oil.) But every year, I buy it and eat it, an unstoppable hunger vortex as regards this ice cream. Every year I say “this is the holiday season where I do not have to diet and work out extra hard in January to overcome,” and every year the PCCCCFCIC makes me a horrible, horrible liar.
…now I want a bowl of it. FUCK.
24
Nov
IE, because my weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
24
Nov
Okay, I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the Schulz estate “selling out” and making a Snoopy video game, if only because Charles Schulz himself was entirely willing to stick Snoopy on tons and tons of merchandise for the purpose of making a lot of money. And in fairness, the idea of a Snoopy flying ace game is actually a pretty clever one, and the game looks like it could be fun. So that’s good.
However…
The idea of having Zee Germans in this game be Schulz kids is just freakish and weird and wrong on so many levels.
23
Nov
So you’ve been worried about GM’s financial outlook, eh? That GM bailout got you down?
Well, how about GE?
23
Nov
So I was going through a couple of drink-recipe websites and, on a whim, started looking to see if there were any superhero-themed cocktails. And yes, there are. However, the results are disappointing.
For example, the most common recipe for a Batman is grenadine and orange juice. Which, while cute (a nonalcholic cocktail for Batman, very “ginger ale pretending to be champagne”) fails the obvious test of getting drunk. Also, let’s be honest, Batman needs TWO drinks.
The Bruce Wayne: Should be a playboyish, manly cocktail, a la those drinks they keep making up for Bond films.
The Batman: Should be dark in colour and hit you like a freight train.
There are numerous drinks for “Superman,” most of which are shots and a few of which play off the red/blue colour scheme. This seems wrong. A Superman should be a down-homey old-school sort of mixed drink, like a screwdriver or Irish Coffee – something your granddad would drink when he wanted something mixed rather than just a beer or a tumbler of whiskey. But with a single exotic ingredient.
After that there are a paucity of drink options. There is nothing worth a damn called a “Spider-Man,” for example. No good “Iron Man.” (“Pick five bottles from the bar at random by pointing with your eyes closed. Pour half an ounce from each into a glass. Drink. Order six more.”) No “Hulk.” The only “Wolverine” sounds disgusting (two shots of Bacardi Limon dumped into a pint of lager).
There’s one “Green Lantern,” playing off the color with melon liquor, but it seems insufficient somehow. The only “Captain America” seems wrong (Southern Comfort, amaretto, cranberry juice and rum?). A “Wonder Woman” is… well, what you’d expect (a bunch of fruit juices and fruit liquors, seemingly selected at random). A “Joker” has a distinct lack of purple or green.
The only recipe for a Constantine has Zima in it, for fuck’s sake.
Occasionally you find one obviously not comic-inspired that works. A “Fire and Ice,” for example, is quite apropos (half and half of cinnamon schnapps and peppermint liqueur). The “Blue Devil” (Blue Caracao, obviously, with gin and lemon) works too. A “Black Widow” both looks and tastes appropriate (float Blavod black vodka on top of cranberry juice).
Note that not every superhero name works as a cocktail name. A “Donna Troy” would just be a sad, sad joke. In fact pretty much every character who’s ever been a Titan would be a sad, sad joke. If the superhero has “man,” “woman,” “boy,” or “girl” in their name, they’d better be goddamned iconic or nobody will ever order that drink because they will sound like an idiot. (So no Frog-man, Beast Boy or Saturn Girl, for starters.) Cocktail names should be memorable.
But come on, there should be drinks for all of the following, as they would sound right being said in a bar:
Phantom Stranger (far and away number one on the “should be a drink” list)
Oracle
Cyclops
Doctor Strange
Black Bolt
Haunted Tank
Ghost Rider
Shining Knight
Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing
UPDATE: John, in comments, writes
the Dr. Strange should be just a dry martini (gin and not vodka, I think) with an unusual garnish (a la a Gibson).
This sounds almost exactly right to me, although there is an argument that the martini be a vodka one instead given that Strange, while urbane, is still American, and that’s always said “vodka” to me rather than “gin” (which has strong Brit connotations). Of course, taste should be the final definition, and if it is a vodka martini, the vodka should be really good vodka – I’d go with Chopin, but at a minimum Ketel One or Grey Goose, no Absolut or Stoli in a Dr. Strange, thank you very much.
As for the garnish? I’m going to say a thick slice of apple, which only gets used in appletinis (ugh). But I think it can complement a martini very nicely when there’s no sweet liqueur involved – a touch of sweetness and tartness to counterbalance the toughness and elegance of the martini is very Stephen Strange.
Also, calling vodka and Red Bull a “Deadpool” is brilliant. Keep it coming, folks.
UPDATE TWO: From email:
A Phantom Stranger needs to be a drink where one type of alcohol “ghosts” into the second – you know, seems to hang suspended within the first. But I don’t know how to do that.
Well, there’s two ways that I can think of to do that. The first way is to do the opposite of layering – for a layered shot or drink, you pour the heaviest component first, then the next heaviest, and so on. This prevents mixing. However, if you pour the lighter alcohol first and then pour in the heavier booze, it will plunge into the first. Ideally you want a second liquor only slightly heavier than your first, and a colored liquor being poured into a clear one.
The second way is to make a cloudy drink by taking something you don’t traditionally shake (such as a cream liqueur like Bailey’s or Amarula), making your recipe and shaking it. The cream liqueur will dissipate. However, this can just look gross rather than cool if you mix it wrong.
Both tricks require a reasonably experienced bartender, though. I can do the first, but not the second, so I am leaning towards the first method. Off to look at layering charts!
UPDATE THREE:
(suggested in email, and I’m pretty sure it works)
Phantom Stranger: Chilled cocktail glass. Pour 1 oz white Curacao into glass. Pour 1/2 oz white creme de cacao into the white Curacao, making sure not to smooth out the pour by bouncing it off the side of the glass or a demitasse spoon. Garnish with either an orange slice or a sliver of shaved chocolate. Serve immediately.
It appears my investment strategy of “be broke-ass” is finally paying off for me!
HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW, YOU PRUDENT INVESTMENT-HAVIN’ MOTHAFUCKAS? HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?
EDIT: Just to clarify as some people have complained: the financial crisis isn’t hitting me or my family directly in terms of investment, but capital availability issues have the potential to royally fuck me and many, many people I know over but hard. Rest assured that this post contains exactly zero schadenfreude.
20
Nov
With extra notes as I actually attended the taping this week, as you are well aware.
Allie and Miles: samba and Afro-jazz. (What happened to calling it “African jazz”? Is dance the last place where using “Afro-” as a prefix can still be acceptable?)
Anyway, the samba was both hot and good. The tricks were definitely on the “holy shit” level of difficulty, seeing as how the crowd repeatedly gasped out “holy shit” for several of them, and the dancing outside of the tricks was very solid (although they did give Allie a bit of help by having the samba be barefoot rather than in heels – not that she hasn’t danced ballroom in heels quite decently already, but this was a whole new level of difficulty). Allie and Miles have good chemistry, too, which doesn’t hurt. They only juuuuuust landed a couple of the tricks, but landed them they did and neither is a ballroom dancer, and those really were top-tier tricks, so I mark this one down as a huge success.
The A-jazz (hah! I will shorten the prefix even further!) was excellent. It was relaxed and joyful, and served as a welcome counterbalance to the intense routines that preceeded it, and the two of them danced it really, really well, with that combination of abandon and control you only get when the dancers are really in the groove. Excellent performance.
Arassay and Izaak: Lindy hop and smooth tango. Benji Schwimmer continues his one-man crusade to modernize ballroom dance by setting routines to whatever song he had on repeat on his iPod this week continues as he sets a Lindy hop to, of all things, “Welcome To The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance, tossing in a few pirouettes and so forth for variety’s sake. It actually more or less worked. Because it was Benji’s piece you knew in advance the tricks were going to be insane (and they were). Because Izaak was dancing you knew in advance the judges were going to, at best, dismiss him with faint praise (and they did).
The tango was the worst dance of the night, and it was only average at worst. Arassay was fantastic – Izaak was tolerable. Really, Izaak’s problem isn’t that he’s a bad dancer – he isn’t – but he’s far behind just about everybody else remaining (and for that matter, most of the last two weeks’ eliminees) in terms of skill. He’s trying to get by on raw talent and a young fanbase and can’t quite manage it when everybody else is raising the level for this show on an international level. Much like Daario, I get the feeling he came to this show too young and unseasoned.
Vincent and Natalli: krump and contemporary. Natalli is disgustingly lucky that she forgot the steps halfway through the krump routine, because krump, more than any other form of dance on this show, plays to Natalli’s strengths (passion and charismatic dance). If you weren’t watching carefully you would have missed the part where she just stood for half a second in panic before she started improvising herself back into the routine. (I speak from experience, because watching live I didn’t realize she’d fucked up until the judges mentioned it.) She covered brilliantly – but if it hadn’t been krump, where hitting hard is more important than hitting right, she’d be dead in the water. Vincent was fine, in his nonchalant good-at-everything way.
The contemporary was fantastic and there’s nothing more to say there.
Lisa and Nico: “jazz/funk” and hip-hop. The “jazz/funk” (what?) was just a polite excuse for Blake McGrath to do his dirtiest routine possible, and believe me when I say the audience was fine with it and the audio team must have gone overboard trying to de-intensify the girls screaming in the audience – I literally couldn’t hear myself think. (I could hear Colin Mochrie complaining about the screaming.) Anyway, the dance itself was excellent.
The hip-hop was a little more muted in terms of screaming, mostly because the routine itself was kind of bad – the bits with the suitcases were overwrought and clumsy and detracted from the flow of the thing. That having been said Nico and Lisa danced the actual dancing parts of it near-perfectly, as you would expect, and with an interesting kind of restraint given the form. I liked it despite the choreo, I guess. (And then, when they were done, oh my god the screaming.)
Should go home: Natalli and Izaak.
Will go home: Natalli and Izaak.
20
Nov
Hoo boy.
See, nowadays the kids, they make fun of Penance or Red Hulk when they want to make fun of stupid superhero character concepts. But back in the day? We had the Red Bee.
The Red Bee, a superhero whose power was that he had trained bees. Really. That was it. I know, I know, it sounds awfully dismissive to mock this guy with his bees; after all, the idea of training bees is by itself rather impressive, when you think about it. Somehow, the Red Bee can control whole swarms of bees! That is, in a low-key way, really rather impressive. I mean, Granny Weatherwax had to work her way up to doing that.
(Well, presumably he could control whole swarms of bees. The question of how he controlled the bees is as yet unresolved. Even Who’s Who seems willing to concede that it is possible and even likely that the Red Bee did not in fact have any bee-control powers per se, but instead was just a guy running around with a lot of bees.)
However, the problem is that while controlling swarms of bees might make you a great behavioral scientist or perhaps an up-and-coming honey magnate, as superhero powers go it is not the most impressive trick one can get, is it? If you are the Red Bee, twenty feet away from some gangster when he pulls out a gun, and you pull out your swarm of bees, the gangster can just shoot you and then the bees will presumably go find something more interesting to do with their time than sting the gangster to death. Because they are bees. They will establish a hive somewhere and then begin pollinating flowers. Because that is what bees do.
(And again, we do not know that he controlled the bees as such. But come to think, even if he controls the bees, where does he keep the bees? A swarm of bees is not exactly compact unless you cram them all into a little box and crush/smother them to death. And in the few Red Bee appearances I have read, he kept multiple swarms of bees on his person. Then again, maybe he just throws clumps of dead bees at people and hopes that they panic and scream “OH MY GOD BEES” and don’t notice that the bees are dead.)
Now, in fairness, the Red Bee always gave a good accounting of himself, right up until he got killed. Like, in All-Star Squadron, he joined Uncle Sam’s reformed Freedom Fighters and journeyed to Earth-X (the fabled Alternate Earth Full Of Nazis), where he fought Nazis with bees! Until some Nazis shot him. Of course, that was pre-Crisis. Post-Crisis, we don’t know what happened to the Red Bee, although in a James Robinson Starman story the ghost of the Red Bee revealed that he got his ass kicked and presumably killed by gangsters, possibly after he fought them with bees. James Robinson also wrote The Golden Age, wherein the Red Bee gets killed in one panel by the bad guy. (No idea if he fought that bad guy with bees.) This makes James Robinson notable for managing to kill the Red Bee twice. Even Roy Thomas never did that, and Roy Thomas was Geoff Johns before Geoff Johns was Geoff Johns.
(Hey, I just noticed that the Red Bee is a district attorney in “Superior City.” Man, in the DC Universe, what the hell kind of city calls itself “Superior City?” You’ve just got to believe that it’s, like, the DCU equivalent of Newark or Toledo or something, a smallish-to-middle city with Big Hopes And Big Plans For The Future. You want to go to the home of the state’s second-largest bottling plant? Superior City! Where do you think half the nation gets their shoelaces from? Superior City! It’s a good place for families and for people on the go! Superior City: Better Than Ever, Every Single Day!)
I dunno. On the one hand, the Red Bee definitely deserves a low rating; I mean, the costume alone (horizontally-striped tights? Pirate-shirt sleeves? Pink and black and red?) should merit close to a zero. And then there’s the whole “bee” thing. But on the other hand, he’s just so completely and utterly insane that it’s almost admirable. This is a guy who decided to fight crime with bees. The “new” Red Bee that they introduced last year is just your typical mutated insect/human crossbreed, boring as sin. That’s not a Red Bee anybody wants to read about; people want to read about the classic Red Bee, just because – fuck, if a writer can come up with a reason that makes sense for the Red Bee’s existence, that would be like pulling Excalibur from the stone, you know?
Grant Morrison can revamp Batman all he likes, but he’s not going anywhere near the Red Bee. And that deserves a little something extra.
Incidentally, in that James Robinson story, the ghost of the Red Bee was all depressed because he was a loser and a lousy superhero, so the other dead ghost heroes all said “no, you tried your best and we think you’re great for that.” You just know they were snickering into their gloves when they said that.
19
Nov
Thanks to being a member of the Internet Media Conspiracy, I was invited to attend this week’s tapings of So You Think You Can Dance Canada, and I wrote an article about it, with which I am quite happy and which requires little to no interest in the show to read and enjoy, so go do that.
Not included in article: the bit where I nearly trampled Benji Schwimmer by accident. (It wasn’t my fault, because I’m taller and heavier than he is and physics more or less demands that I trample him should I get the opportunity.)
19
Nov
FLAPJACKS: I downloaded the Star Trek trailer! Let’s watch it!
ME: But I already saw it.
FLAPJACKS: You can’t watch it again? Come on.
ME: Oh, all right.
FLAPJACKS: So we start out with Young James Kirk driving across the desert in a classic Chevy.
ME: How do you know it’s a Chevy?
FLAPJACKS: I don’t. Maybe it’s a Ford.
ME: We’re not car guys.
FLAPJACKS: No, we aren’t.
ME: But it’s probably worth a lot of money in the year 23-whatever. It could be a Geo and it would be worth millions.
FLAPJACKS: So you’re saying young James Kirk is driving a million-dollar collectible off a cliff for kicks?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: That’s cool.
ME: That’s retarded.
FLAPJACKS: But in a cool way.
ME: It really isn’t.
FLAPJACKS: He’s going to smash a priceless piece of history for no better reason than because he can? That’s totally punk, man.
ME: You don’t know that he doesn’t have a reason, though.
FLAPJACKS: This is true.
ME: Hey, look! Deadshot’s a cop now!
FLAPJACKS: Floyd Lawton is going to shoot Young Kirk!
ME: How will Young Kirk escape his deadly aim?
FLAPJACKS: By flash-forwarding!
ME: Now Less Young Kirk has a motorcycle, I see.
FLAPJACKS: Boy, I can’t wait to see him crash THAT off a cliff!
ME: Aw, he’s looking up at the unfinished Enterprise.
FLAPJACKS: Probably planning to have sex with it.
ME: What?
FLAPJACKS: This is James Kirk we’re talking about here.
ME: Baby Spock!
FLAPJACKS: Teen Spock!
FLAPJACKS: Teen Spock will not be judged by your Vulcan courts!
ME: How do Vulcan teenagers rebel against their parents, anyway?
FLAPJACKS: Maybe they do math with irrational numbers. Up high!
ME: You do not get a high five for that joke.
FLAPJACKS: Aw.
ME: Old Spock!
FLAPJACKS: You want Spock? We give you Spock! What kinda Spock you want?
ME: Okay, the transporter looks hella cool.
FLAPJACKS: It would not be a new iteration of Star Trek without a new transporter special effect.
ME: What happens when they run out of new transporter special effects?
FLAPJACKS: YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH! YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY WHORE MOUTH!
ME: And we’re in a hangar filled with people wearing red.
FLAPJACKS: Does the hangar blow up?
ME: Don’t be silly. They wouldn’t deprive us of all those individual death scenes.
FLAPJACKS: Montage! The Enterprise! Fighting stuff! In space!
ME: The inside of the Enterprise looks like an iPod.
FLAPJACKS: J.J. Williams is warning us all about the future!
ME: Huh?
FLAPJACKS: All I’m saying is that the phasers have clickwheels.
ME: NO, KIRK AND SPOCK! DO NOT FIGHT EACH OTHER! YOU ARE FRIENDS!
FLAPJACKS: Maybe Spock is in pon farr and he feels the need to defend his territory and then mate with Uhura.
ME: Maybe J.J. Abrams couldn’t find a way to fill up part of the script and he took an old episode of Lost and renamed Jack and Sawyer.
FLAPJACKS: I like my theory better.
ME: Are those people skydiving or are they using jetpacks?
FLAPJACKS: If they’re using jetpacks then this is the best movie ever and all the nerds complaining that the Enterprise isn’t exactly the right shape or whatever can fuck off. Star Trek with jetpacks is Even Better Star Trek.
ME: Well, I – no, I have to agree with you one hundred percent about that.
FLAPJACKS: That’s because I’m not wrong about jetpacks.
ME: Hey, the emergency siren!
FLAPJACKS: Oh, the Enterprise emergency siren! How I’ve missed you! And the doors that go “wsssssh.”
ME: Hey, that’s Bruce Greenwood!
FLAPJACKS: I understand he is playing Captain Pike before Pike ended up in a box that spoke through a little red light.
ME: Kirk with his shirt off!
FLAPJACKS: Uhura with her shirt off!
ME: Scotty – thankfully with his shirt on.
FLAPJACKS: You can tell they think Simon Pegg is a draw because he gets to say something.
ME: You know what would make this movie better? If Scotty fought zom – actually, no, it wouldn’t, never mind.
FLAPJACKS: Caught yourself just in the nick of time there.
ME: John Cho as Sulu, having a sword-fight in a spacesuit!
FLAPJACKS: Didn’t a girl you dated once say she wanted to bone John Cho?
ME: She also wanted to bone Kal Penn.
FLAPJACKS: So she wanted to do both Harold and Kumar?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: Did she ever talk about wanting to be the filling in their sandwich?
ME: Why do you care?
FLAPJACKS: Why wouldn’t I?
ME: Karl Urban IS Leonard McCoy, and he’s intense!
FLAPJACKS: Is McCoy intense?
ME: He is when he is Karl Urban. Karl Urban can stare through metal until it melts.
FLAPJACKS: I bet that comes in handy in surgery.
ME: Montage! Kirk hanging off the edge of a cliff!
FLAPJACKS: A weird-looking monster thing!
ME: Kirk saying “buckle up!”
FLAPJACKS: And not the unmentioned “your pants after I gave you a good rogering.”
ME: Uh huh.
FLAPJACKS: Because he had sex with that person, you see.
ME: No, no, I got it.
FLAPJACKS: Are you sure?
ME: Spock strangling Kirk, Uhura just standing there –
FLAPJACKS: May I just say that Uhura just standing there, ineffectually, really captures the essence of Uhura.
ME: That’s mean.
FLAPJACKS: But not inaccurate.
ME: She did love Tribbles.
FLAPJACKS: Yes.
ME: And she distracted the enemy with a sexy dance in Star Trek V.
FLAPJACKS: I was trying to forget about that entirely.
ME: Sorry.
FLAPJACKS: You should be.
ME: Space-warpy thing, ship being blown up, Kirk fucking some girl…
FLAPJACKS: See? See? Kirk will fuck anything that moves!
ME: Yes, I got it.
FLAPJACKS: And we close with Erik Bana as a Romulan with a Swedish accent.
ME: Holy shit, you’re right, he does have a Swedish accent there.
FLAPJACKS: “Und zeen ve-a teke-a zee vurmy-hule-a tu zee pest, und ve-a cunker hoomuneety. Bork bork bork!”
ME: And… logo.
FLAPJACKS: So what do we think?
ME: Takes liberties with the source material?
FLAPJACKS: Is this an issue?
ME: …no, I do have sex every once in a while, so I have better things to care desperately about. You?
FLAPJACKS: Wait, you have sex?
ME: Shut up. You?
FLAPJACKS: I’m going to go line up at the theatre right now. I figure if I get in before the rush I can get oodles of free stuff from people willing to sponsor my lonely vigil.
ME: Who?
FLAPJACKS: Stupid people, and the people who sell things to stupid people.
ME: Ah.
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