28
Jun
Was anybody else hoping that Blizzard would, I dunno, release an entirely new game rather than going back to the same old wells again and again and again?
I mean, they’ve got some of the best creative staff in gaming, period, both from a design/coding and story/art perspective. Surely they could manage something a bit better than the same old same old?
(This isn’t me saying that I won’t play Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3, mind. But I’d like to see them pull a different rabbit out of the hat.)
27
Jun
27
Jun
26
Jun
So Poptown and Sims and Church are busy competing for the “most 90s comic book cover ever,” and I think I have a contender right here.
I would like to make the additional point that DarkChylde more perfectly encapsulates the 90s comic experience than any of their entries, because as a title it lurched from pathetic tiny publisher to pathetic tiny publisher for the better part of a decade, finally collapsing with a “Last Issue Special!” one-shot in 2002.
26
Jun
Dear god: please give Mary Murphy laryngitis forever and ever. Thank you in advance.
Kherington and Twitch: hip-hop. Passable, although as usual Kherington’s problems (most notably the Smile That Never Goes Away and more than one or two points where she just wasn’t hitting the beats hard enough) are glossed over in favour of Twitch’s plusses (which are, in fairness, pretty damned enormous). Not Tabitha and Napoleon’s best routine, either; they’re much better on the lyrical side of hip-hop than the street side of it, to say the least. (I think Shane Sparks or Dave Scott would have ripped this routine apart.) But passable, and Twitch remains excellent, and that’s all that matters.
Courtney and Gev: rumba. Firstly: whoa, that was a dress. Secondly, this is the third week in a row where Courtney and Gev’s obvious and excellent chemistry livened up a relatively straightforward and uninteresting routine; large chunks of this thing seemed to be run through at half-speed, like they were saving up energy for the really big tricks (which were excellent). There’s a limit to the amount of “stately” I can handle in one routine, and this one came up right against that limit. But it wasn’t bad. Then Adam Shankman makes the mistake of giving intelligent, constructive criticism and Nigel and Mary get bored with it because he’s not telling jokes or shrieking or anything.
Comfort and Chris: jazz. Firstly, Tyce Diorio’s “African jazz” routines are about as African as I am. (Which, since my father is South African by birth, means “not a whole lot.”) Secondly, this is the second routine in two weeks where Comfort and Chris needed to hit every beat with full force, and the second time where they did not do that, not even close. Interestingly, Chris was better than Comfort this time, and I think the novelty of Comfort being a talented female hip-hopper with very little ability to extend that talent is about gone now. So: bad routine plus bad dancing. Bottom three, no chance they’re not.
Jessica and Will: disco. The curse of Doriana Sanchez continues, because Doriana Sanchez knows what a disco routine needs: endless, endless lifts! She managed to wait a whole minute this time before going to a chain of momentum-sucking lifts (four in a row, for crissake), and it’s a shame because somewhere in there was a really, really good disco routine; what happened to first-season Doriana Sanchez, who understood that part of the fun of a good disco routine is doing the cheesy, fun handwork with pride? Anyway, this is the third week in a row where Will and Jessica have gotten a complete blowjob from the judges, and the third week in a row I’m hardpressed to call it anything better than passable. Jessica can’t keep up and Will is far sloppier than the judges are willing to admit.
Kourtni and Matt: contemporary. Hey, two contemporary dancers doing a contemporary routine! I wonder if they can do a good job of that. Sonya Tayeh gives them a routine where they flirt with one another, and it’s automatically an uphill struggle because Matt is either gay or really, really weird. (I’m not sure which yet, but I’m leaning towards the latter.) Anyway, it’s a fun, odd number, and they’re wearing ugly clothes, and mostly the judges talk about the clothes, because they are ugly, and because giving Kourtni and Matt compliments might be nice but it’s not like either of them are winning this thing and everybody knows it. Really, it’s hard to comment on their routines, because Kourtni and Matt are just marking time till they go home. It might be a while, but it’ll happen eventually.
Also, Matt has a HUGE NOSE.
Chelsea and Thayne: quickstep. “Hey, America! Here’s a thing about Thayne America doesn’t know: he’s gay.” (Oh, come on, you were thinking it too.) Anyway, this week they have the quickstep, and they laugh and laugh at the ballroom tradition of “having a given frame within which to dance,” because it’s so strange and odd to them! Look, if for some reason I was a contemporary dancer selected to appear on this show, I would spend the entire goddamn three months in between selection and the first show doing crash ballroom training and nothing more; quickstep and salsa and cha-cha-cha are only difficult if you don’t have any practice in them at all. Master the fundamentals and your lyrical training can handle the tricks, kids!
Anyway, their choreographer is some very white lady I have never seen before. How white is she? She sets their routine to Phil Collins. That is how white she is. Whatever, it sucked bag and they’re bottom three most likely. Mary goes to extreme lengths to keep her retarded Hot Tamale Train metaphor alive. THE METAPHOR IS A ZOMBIE NOW.
Chelsie and Mark: lyrical hip-hop. Really, really good. More lyrical than hip-hop, to be honest, but so what. I have trouble finding things to say about this; that’s how good it was. No, wait, here’s something: Chelsie is dancing up to Mark’s level now! Which is pretty damned impressive, all things considered. Hm. What else can I say about this routine? “Tabitha is hot and Napoleon is lucky,” maybe, but that’s not strictly about the routine. Still, I suppose it will have to do.
Katee and Joshua: samba. This was fantastic. They raved about Joshua, and rightly (although I do wish they’d stop pretending he’s just some breaker off the street; he’s got contemporary training at least and possibly some ballroom as well), but Katee is one of the strongest girls in the competition this year and she absolutely fucking owned this piece. Great Latin dance demands a passionate performance, and Joshua and Katee skillfully made it look like they wanted to fuck on the dancefloor through the whole piece without ever being tawdry. And then Nigel demands to see Joshua’s father’s ass, just to see if it is genetic, because that’s exactly what a piece of this calibre deserved to be associated with.
Bottom three: Comfort and Chris, Chelsea and Thayne, Kourtni and Matt.
Going home: Chelsea and Chris.
26
Jun
Okay, I know that Tomahawk is DC’s Revolutionary War hero (complete with vaguely NAMBLAesque sidekick situation, just so you know he’s a DC property), but even so, the idea of a dastardly villain who is a British officer is still kind of comical. It’s totally a mindset thing; you have to initially shake off the mental image of him saying things like “Pip pip, cheerio, old boy – oh, Tomahawk, you dasher, you’ve winkled my plans but good, you Yankee devil you!”
But I really love the art here, because it really does make Lord Shilling look like a nasty badass, or like Jason Isaacs’ total bastard character in The Patriot (a movie which, while often kind of silly, at the very least had Jason Isaacs in it – plus, Donal Logue as A Racist Who Learns A Lesson!) – competent, merciless, and one hundred percent All Business. Lord Shilling doesn’t have any superpowers beyond being an excellent athlete and a brilliant spy, but he doesn’t need any powers to fuck you up. And if you beg Lord Shilling to show you a gentleman’s mercy, he’ll do it by cutting your throat open. He’ll be polite, though, and wait until after you’re dead to remark upon how bloody stupid a request that was.
Really, the more I look at Lord Shilling, the more I like him. He’s from the other school of British characters, the James Bond/John Steed/anonymous badass SAS colonel mode. He’s exactly what a good bad guy should be: competent, cool, can shoot your eyebrow off at fifty paces with a flintlock pistol, and likely has a cutting remark for any situation, even when Tomahawk barely manages to one-up him.
Still – shame about the wig, though.
25
Jun
There’s been a recent spate of right-wing blogs all saying the same thing:
“Now, I’m not racist, but how come all those small-town Iowans are so much more supportive and self-reliant than those big city New Orleans folks were during their disaster?”
Examples range from Tigerhawk’s relatively polite, only implied comparison, to Girl On The Right’s naked white triumphalism.
It’s important to make a few points here.
1.) Reports of looting and violence during Katrina were wildly exaggerated during news coverage of the storm and aftermath. The murders at the SuperDome? Didn’t happen. The shooting at rescuers? Didn’t happen. The widespread looting? Was largely confined to food and fresh water, which in time of crisis is legally allowable. After all the dust (and water) settled down, and police went through all their reports, the total number of murders in New Orleans over the course of the hurricane and immediate aftermath was four – not unreasonably high for a city with New Orleans’ crime rate.
So right off the bat, when someone complains that those horrible New Orleans folks (who just happen to be black) were so horrible with their looting and murdering, feel free to smack them. Given the size of Katrina’s wake as compared to Iowa’s flooding (and this isn’t to dismiss Iowa’s flooding damages as “small”, because they obviously weren’t, but come on, the two events simply aren’t comparable in size – Katrina turned the entire Gulf Coast into one big disaster area while the Iowa floods left Des Moines, the largest city in the state, relatively untouched), New Orleans residents largely behaved in an orderly and civic-minded fashion.
The point here is simple: it’s entirely fair to congratulate Iowans for their civic pride in failing to loot during a much smaller disaster. But comparing to New Orleans, even ignoring the respective difference in scale, is kind of stupid because for the most part New Orleans residents were just as proudly conscious of their duty towards their fellow citizens.
2.) Iowa residents had the good sense to evacuate, while those stupid N’awlinsians stuck around for the hurricane. First, let’s completely toss aside the fact that Iowa residents had Katrina as a fairly effective learning experience. While we’re at it, let’s ignore all those Floridians who survived Hurricane Andrew and then decided to stick around for the next one when given the chance.
No, instead let’s discuss something really, really simple: hurricanes and floods are different things! I realize this might be revelatory to some, but bear with me.
See, hurricanes, before they are hurricanes, are tropical storms. Nobody is going to evacuate for a tropical storm; no politician would order it and most citizens, other than the most storm-paranoid, aren’t going to bother. Because it’s a tropical storm. If you’re not out at sea, that means a lot of rain and probably some wind damage, but stay indoors and you’ll probably be fine. Katrina, like most serious hurricanes, upgraded from tropical storm to category 1 hurricane (rough, but probably not worth evacuating) to category 3 hurricane (time to beat feet) in rapid succession, so much so that New Orleans’ mandatory evacuation was only ordered with less than 36 hours’ worth of notice to get out of Dodge. And when the damage happened, it all happened at once, quickly and with very little opportunity to prevent damages – primarily because of the massive levee breaks.
Now, Iowa. Iowa wasn’t a flash flood; when flooding began on June 8th, it was a steady, lengthy process. People could see the danger coming because floods, unlike hurricanes, are relatively predictable, and this in turn let them do things like reinforce levees and evacuate people by moving them to high ground. (FUN FACT: moving to high ground is not that useful in a hurricane!)
And of course, there are those piddling little details like there being only one major traffic artery in and out of New Orleans (the I-10) whereas Iowa, as a state, is basically roads and fields; the fact that Katrina victims were largely and systematically prevented from fleeing the city, sometimes at gunpoint; and that 20 percent of N’awlinsians don’t own a car as compared to 6 percent of Iowans, and in both cases those percentages tend to be the people too broke to easily afford, say, a bus ticket.
3.) Iowans are self-respecting, self-reliant salt-of-the-earth folks who don’t need no government dollar to get their lives back on track. It’s entirely possible that Iowans believe this, but they’re entirely too happy to apply for that federal aid they don’t need and don’t want (nearly 15,000 applications in the first week), which incidentally is currently estimated to top out between $3 and $4 billion.
Now, don’t get me wrong; it’s good that they’re getting that money, considering that’s probably close to the total damages suffered. But it takes a special sort of blinded gall to ignore Iowans getting reimbursed almost entirely for their damages and then complain that Katrina victims are sucking on the government teat when total damages from Katrina are estimated between 125 and 150 billion smackers and Katrina’s victims have received only $114 billion, or in between 70 and 90 percent of damages depending on whose damage estimate you believe.
All of this, incidentally, ignores the fact that Iowans are about as likely as New Orleansites (Orleanians? Orleandos? I dunno) to be on welfare or to receive food stamps, so in that regard they likewise suck about the same amount of government teat. Of course, Iowans are a lot more likely to receive giant agricultural subsidies, but I understand that accepting such money does not in any way make you less self-reliant or salt-of-the-earth.
25
Jun
ITEM! The Middleman debuts on the teevee. Unlike a lot of the comic blogosphere, I didn’t read the comic first, so I have the benefit of not having any expectations when considering it as a TV show, and I will say this: while entertaining enough, the dialogue (wherein you can practically hear the panels changing) often errs too far on the side of tweeness. Yes, I’m glad there’s a television show with gun-wielding gorillas and ray guns and robot receptionists, but it’s a bit too stylized in its execution for me to be completely blown away. I’d give it a solid B with room for improvement, and pilot episodes frequently have kinks they need to work out. We’ll see if it continues being overly precious.
ITEM! You know what’s surprisingly good? The “JLA Goes To The Tangent Universe” miniseries DC is publishing. Now, given all the immense amount of crap DC has published regarding different universes over the last year, I honestly expected this comic to be terrible, and Ron Marz on the writing skills didn’t particularly give me hope as I’ve never been a fan – but it’s really quite decent in an understated way. Partly it’s because the Tangent Universe was always pretty decent and revisiting it is pleasant (and Marz is doing a decent job not overplaying the “JLA reacts to different universe” bit in a hamhanded manner), and partly it’s because the path of the Tangent world (with the Tangent’s Superman, a near-omnipotent psychic, taking over as a dictator) is dramatically different from standard superhero fare in a way that seems unforced and genuine, and partly it’s because Marz is really hitting all the character voices really well. It’s just a decent little superhero comic, and that’s just fine.
ITEM! I’ll just echo again what everybody else already said: The Incredible Hulk is pretty good. Not Iron Man good, but good. And Lou Ferrigno remains awesome.
ITEM! Trinity continues to underwhelm me. I mean, never mind that the whole “entire DC Universe jerks off over how awesome Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are” thing is one I have never particularly enjoyed, but additionally it smacks of telling-not-showing. I figure, if you’re going to write a comic about the three of them, I don’t need to be told over and over again how special and important they are. Presumably if someone buys the comic they already think Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are pretty great shakes, and do not need to see the rest of the JLA getting their asses kicked and then praising Heaven when the almighty frigging Trinity shows up.
But beyond that, the comic is just kind of bland. I say this with disappointment, because Kurt Busiek is probably one of my most reliably favorite writers; I greatly enjoyed his run on Superman – I thought the Prankster issue in particular was one of the best in years. (Honestly, somebody should just pay him a lot of money to write a series where he gets to write short arcs about minor nobodies in a superhero universe if we can’t get Astro City on a regular basis.)
ITEM! On the other hand, Secret Invasion continues to be mostly pretty good, with most of the tie-ins both recognizing the comic-book lunacy of Earth being invaded by little green men and running with it while simultaneously managing to successfully convey the paranoia of the Body Snatchers-like plot points. It’s a really tricky balancing act to pull off and Marvel is doing it with nearly a dozen books, all simultaneously. Sure, there are some minor gripes to be made about how the third issue of the main series was basically a placeholder, or how Mighty Avengers serving as a backstory book is probably a bit of a waste, but these are at best secondary complaints; the primary issue is the quality of the story being told. And it’s really good. (High point: the return of Lyja in the Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four mini, which also has the Richards children operating a tankbot.)
ITEM! Chuck Dixon John Nee Dan Didio blah blah bling bling blah. I have literally no opinion to express about this; like many comic fans I don’t like the direction DC has taken over the past year, but like many comic fans I am also relatively clueless as to how much of that is Dan Didio’s fault, and I don’t like to rely purely on gossip when offering forth opinions (well, not always, anyway). So I got nothing to say there.
24
Jun
Well, I’m coming to the one-year mark of providing what can theoretically be dubbed “entertainment” here on mightygodking.com, and really I’m horribly gratified to see the readership steadily climb upwards; it’s worth noting, to me at least, that this site has finally broken into Technorati’s Top 10K Of The Web (“except for real sites like CNN.com and ESPN and, you know, shit people actually check every day – but definitely top 10K of the blogs!”). It totally makes me feel like a bigshot on the Internet.
Of course, the one-year mark means that it is also time to pay my ISP the moneys so I can continue doing what it is what I do.
Now, traditionally among semi-successful blogs, this is the point where the hat is held out expectantly and the site maintainer says something about how “your contributions can keep this site going because it’s a big timesink and a little compensation goes a long way and really, it’s less than a magazine subscription,” and all of that is true, I suppose, but in all honesty I would be doing this if my audience was fifty people or fifty thousand or fifty million [1], so I can’t really claim the “your money keeps me going” argument with any validity.
And besides, I can’t claim your money in any case, because, as longtime readers know, I prefer to keep my site’s use and alteration of copyrighted images as firmly as fair-dealing as possible, both out of principle and because I don’t want to get sued if I can avoid it [2], and under Canadian copyright law [3] monetary gain weakens a fair dealing argument.
All of that having been said, for folks who feel appreciative, there is always my Amazon Wishlist, with items ranging in price from “made me kind of chuckle one time when I was having a bad day” to “I slept with you that one time and accidentally gave you the clap, and wish to express my regret over that.” [4] But, and I would like to stress this, it is totally not obligatory in any way.
[1] By 2013.
[2] Although I’m pretty sure Archie Comics is coming after me at some point.
[3] Until the Tories gut it, anyway.
[4] YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE
24
Jun
The multiverse moves. It moves around itself. Think of it as an enormous wheel – you can most easily travel to any point on the wheel by traveling to and from the center. Which just means you need a way to get to the center. That’s why I called my ship the Spoke. Of course, my metaphor is actually in reality completely inaccurate, and in retrospect, I should called it “the Axle.” But you get the gist.
Dr. Jonathan Dhir is a genius; a master of transdimensional physics, one of the very few to ever take that knowledge out of the realm of theory and into the practical. He’s likewise a good man, brave and smart. Maybe a bit obsessive, as some scientists tend to be. But not a bad man by any stretch.
His only problem is that his wife is dead.
Some have said there are fifty-two universes; this is thinking small. The megaverse roams in clusters of fifty-two universes at a time. Some are completely barren of all life. Some do not entirely conform to our concept of physics. One is made entirely out of jelly. No, I’m not joking about that last one. It’s really made out of jelly. Not edible jelly, mind you. But jelly.
Dhir and his wife – it was true love, the kind you only ever read about in storyscrolls. (They never really went to books in his universe, although they’ve long since computerized the process.) And Dhir was a genius, but not a universal one; he couldn’t cure the comaegulanara his wife contracted.
Ordinary people grieve and move on. But Dhir had other options most people don’t, and a certain sort of persistent quality that’s greatly magnified when you’re a brilliant scientist.
If anything can exist somewhere, that means it does. And that means if anyone can exist somewhere, that means they do.
He wasn’t sure if humans could safely traverse the boundaries of the multiverse, let alone the megaverse. When he launched the Spoke out of its orbit he calculated that there was a .7 percent chance it would blink into nothingness, and him along with it. He was willing to take the risk.
It took him a very long time, and he had many, many adventures along the way, becoming something of a hero in the process. He found universes where he and his wife both died as children, never even meeting. He found universes where his wife was alive, but unfortunately so was that universe’s version of himself, and he wasn’t the sort to intrude. He found universes where his wife was alive and he was dead, but unfortunately he was a dead woman and his wife and he were both gay. (That universe was awkward, but not so awkward as the universe where he and his wife were both arthropods.)
Of course it’s a moral act. Somewhere, there is a place where she is alone. She isn’t supposed to be alone.
Finally he found it, a universe where his wife was human (more or less), and not dead, and that universe’s version of himself died young in a war some time previous, never even meeting her. And she was lonely, and she couldn’t quite figure out how not to be lonely. She’d even joined this team of young heroes wearing gaudy costumes, trying to make the universe a better place, and he was amazed – if his wife had ever had superpowers, she would have done exactly that. He was sure of it.
Of course, now he’d have to convince her he wasn’t insane or psychotic – not to mention make her fall in love with him – and yes, that would probably be difficult. But Dr. Dhir is, if anything, a remarkably methodical and patient man.
I’ve seen the birth of species, the death of galaxies and the universe from the outside looking in. I’d trade all of those memories away for five minutes of her time – because to me, she is the universe. And I think I could be hers.
23
Jun
The folks over at Balloon Juice are mocking John McCain’s proposal of an “X-Prize”-like monetary prize incentive for developing more efficient batteries. The general thrust of criticism is that if you’re going to have government investment in business, better to have it targeted for research efforts that pay off faster than as an undirected, unorganized “prize” that no serious research team would consider worthy of the effort (since the payoff in designing a better battery is having patents on the better battery, not the three hundred million smackers).
This isn’t entirely incorrect, but it overlooks the one definite plus of an X-Prize-like incentive; it widens and democratizes research effort. It was only about a century ago that the majority of invention was done by talented amateurs – and this during the Gilded Age, remember.
My favorite example is probably the Wright Brothers, who invented powered heavier-than-air flight on their own; they were distinctly not part of the research community involved in designing heavier-than-air flying machines, so much so that it took over thirty years for the Smithsonian to recognize that they actually invented it. They had no scientific background and essentially invented the basic theory of propellor aerodynamics because nobody else had done it.
What other Wrights could be lurking in the background, needing only an incentive, however meager and illusory it might be, to kickstart their heads? For that reason alone, X-Prizes are worth pursuing as part of any environmental or energy technology strategy.
23
Jun
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
23
Jun
ME: You know, I rather think the whole Photoshopping thing is getting a bit predictable these days.
MYSELF: I was thinking that myself. I mean, it’s almost getting to be a schtick, isn’t it?
ME: And you’ve got to figure there’s more interesting things to Photoshop than just grabbing a selection of some element of pop-culture nostalgia…
MYSELF: Like Pele bicycle-kicking a buffalo in the nuts.
ME: Whoa. How did I think of that?
MYSELF: My creative process is something of a mystery. Even to me.
ME: That is true.
MYSELF: So I’m settled then. No more pastiches of Photoshoppery. From this point forth, my next Photoshop project is Pele bicycle-kicking a buffalo in the nuts.
ME: Or possibly an elephant.
MYSELF: Or the late Generalissimo Franco.
Enter FLAPJACKS.
FLAPJACKS: Hey, dude, look what I just scored: a whole whack of those old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks!
ME: …God dammit.
23
Jun
"[O]ne of the funniest bloggers on the planet... I only wish he updated more."
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-- Jenn