Despite some severe insomnia, I managed to make my eHow goals for Monday and Tuesday, and put in work on Cover Stories and Who Watches the Watchmen, both of which are looking good.
Today, I was a little off-balance: I discovered TYG is off on Friday, so I will be too, so I put in extra eHows to make up for the time off. Happily, Demand Media just started a new project, writing articles for the TurboTax website. The pay is $40 per article, and they invited me to participate; needless to say, I jumped at it. It’s only a short-term thing, but I intend to squeeze the most out of it I can.
And the really cool news: Screen Enemies of the American Way is now available for sale. It’s always an incredible kick seeing my book in print—more so now that I have TYG to celebrate with. Amusingly, my author’s copies actually came last week, but I assumed it was a Christmas gift and placed it next to the tree. Then today I checked out the return address …
Monthly Archives: December 2010
Midweek progress report
Filed under Screen Enemies of the American Way, Writing
More powerful, more invincible, than ever before
Reading DC’s The Batman Chronicles has become something of a revelation for me.
The series reprints Batman’s adventures, in order, starting from the first appearance. Volume 6, which I finished recently, isn’t one of the best but it does include the good crimebusting story Crime Takes a Holiday; The Joker Walks the Last Mile, which would end the Clown Prince of Crime’s penchant for murder until the early seventies (but makes up for it by the Joker’s absolutely hysterical turn as a supposedly law-abiding citizen); and the Penguin’s ingenious gambling scam in Four Birds of a Feather.
What leaps out at me reading these, though, is that the Batman comes off as well, human.
An amazing human, certainly: Brilliant detective, ace acrobat, a dynamo in hand to hand combat. But not that far beyond what a real human being could plausibly do. That’s a far cry from the past decade or so when it’s been a given that Batman is as far beyond a real human being, in his own way, as Superman is.
In these early stories, one guy can jump Batman from behind in the middle of a fight and take him out; two or three men going hand to hand can overwhelm him. Today you’d need a platoon of ninjas to do the same.
Even in the early seventies (I was reading a Christmas story from the era, Silent Night, Deadly Night recently) the Batman was still closer to his roots than his current fruits; a reluctant thief, a guy in good physical condition but no martial artist, is able to take Batman on for a couple of minutes.
Today it’s a given, almost a mundane fact, that nobody beats the Batman. Heck, in Grant Morrison’s Batman RIP plotline, it turns out he’s even implanted a split personality in his brain to take over if he’s ever mindhacked. As one critic observed, how do you beat someone who thinks of things like that?
Just as Superman’s powers have expanded from his early years (when he couldn’t fly and could be felled by electrical bursts), so have Batman’s. Probably for the same reason: As super-heroes become less amazing and more routine, an obvious solution is to make them more amazing—smarter, more powerful, more skilled, more superior to everyone else (The Superman Encyclopedia by Michael Fleisher has a detailed account of how his powers grew over the years). The same is true of power levels in general: To make a new villain impressive, you simply show him beating up someone who was formerly invincible. It’s why the Silver Surfer was top of the food chain in the Silver Age (Galactus excepted, of course) and now only middling in the ranks of cosmic characters.
I don’t know that one handling of Batman is inherently better than the other, but I must admit I prefer the old way, when it was okay to acknowledge he had limits; a 1980s conversation between Flash and Atom—both professional scientists—pointing out that while talented, Bats was strictly an amateur in the lab—would probably never fly today.
But while Superman’s powers have been drained or reduced a couple of times since the Silver Age, that’s a lot harder to do with Batman’s skills. So .. where does he go from here?
Filed under Comics
Sleep is not knitting up my ravelled sleeve of care
I’m not quite sure why, though at the moment it’s definitely self-reinforcing: I stress out over not sleeping, which makes it that much harder to sleep.
That’s one more reason to be grateful for full-time freelancing: This kind of thing was a lot harder at the Log where I had to actually be at work and functional at specific times (not to mention being awake enough to drive). I just finished two hours of eHow, which means I’m free to take two hours of naps later today.
And overall, I used to sleep much worse. Meeting TYG and relieving the stress of not having anyone in my life (OK, I had people in my life, but you know what I mean) made a huge improvement to my sleep patterns.
Only not this week.
So it’s just as well I don’t have anywhere to be today but in front of my iBook.
Filed under Personal
A great weekend
TYG and I have set our wedding for next June. We’ve booked Eden State Gardens in Northwest Florida, and since TYG has never seen it, we headed down this past weekend to check it out and make some other prep steps.
It was a wonderful trip. First off, it was warm.
Second, I got to see my best friend and several other friends, and attend two Christmas parties with people I’ve missed dearly.
Third, it was warm.
Fourth, I got to stop by my old comics shop. Not that Durham’s stores aren’t excellent, but the old one is so easy and convenient and they’re all so far away (I’m pretty sure TYG won’t consider “It’s close to the comic store” as a factor when we go house-hunting though).
And did I mention it was warm?
Filed under Personal
Three thoughts about abortion
1)It’s standard government rationale that federal/state money shouldn’t pay for abortion because people are opposed to it. Based on this logic, we should also stop spending money on executions, the CIA and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet somehow, abortion’s the only thing this thinking applies to.
2)Many right-wingers have repeatedly insisted that it’s perfectly rational to single out Muslims boarding planes, profile them and spy on them. Given that anti-abortion terrorism is the work of right-wing Christians, I’m sure they’d agree that it would be completely rational and just to profile and spy on any Christian conservative who comes near an abortion clinic. Just propose it and watch them agree (I intend to bring this up in a column for my old paper next year—I can’t wait to see the agreement).
3)Conservative anti-porn activists also claim that we should ban pornography/erotica because it will lead to adultery, sex addiction, masturbation and rape. By this logic, since anti-abortion rhetoric leads people to murder, I’m sure conservatives would agree that’s a good reason for banning criticism of abortion too.
Filed under Politics
First Amendment cases rarely involve Reader’s Digest
The title phrase refers to the fact that battles over the First Amendment usually don’t involve respectable, clean-cut types of speech, just as Fourth Amendment cases rarely involve someone strip-searching a nun. Defending people’s rights often means defending something unsavory or controversial—but sometimes, people try to have it both ways.
In 1952, Big Jim McLain asserted that only a filthy, stinking, Commie traitor scum would use the Fifth Amendment to hide from the righteous justice of the House UnAmerican Committee.
Decades later, films such as The Front (1976), House on Carroll Street (1988) or Guilty By Suspicion (1991) took the opposite view: Refusing to name names, as the protagonists do, is an act of moral courage, the stuff of heroes. HUAC is shown as the witch-hunt that it was, persecuting innocent people.
The innocence is what struck me while I was proofing the text for Screen Enemies of the American Way; although the movies condemn HUAC, they’re careful to condemn them for persecuting decent, left-wing Americans. Nothing in the movies suggest that persecuting real Communists would be bad too.
In Guilty By Suspicion, deNiro is blacklisted because he attended a couple of Communist Party meetings in the thirties (“I think I got thrown out for arguing.”) and refuses to identify anyone else he met there.
In The Front, Zero Mostel asserts that his ties to the Communist Party were purely to get laid by a large-breasted Red (I don’t believe any of the other blacklistees were Communists either—feel free to correct me if you know otherwise). In Carroll Street, Kelly McGillis is a left-wing civil-rights activist, not a Red.
I don’t mean to trivialize the damage the blacklist did to people whose politics veered left of center, or didn’t veer at all (the blacklisters routinely reported rumors, inaccuracies and flimsy allegations as facts). But I also don’t think persecuting Communist Party members just for the politics is a good thing either. Despite the lurid claims of the FBI and informants such as Herb Philbrick and Matt Cvetic, the blacklistees weren’t spies or subversives. The standard legal tactic (as detailed in the book Naming Names) was to have an informant explain that when Communists talked about winning power democratically they “really” meant by violence; or that some Communist somewhere advocated violence against the government (violating the Smith Act), so by the laws against conspiracy to commit a crime, any Communist could be held liable for that. Plus, some informants simply lied (and admitted it later).
Apparently even 30 years after the blacklist, Hollywood doesn’t want to defend actual Communists against persecution; much safer to list the crimes the blacklist commited against the innocent.
Which is actually an old tactic in movies. Tea and Sympathy (1956) tackles homophobia by showing how much pain it causes when a sensitive straight guy is tagged as gay. Several movies about the Civil Rights movement show how much pain segregation caused decent white people.
Even in the real world, this approach persists. A book about the “high school slut” stereotype I read a few years back pointed out that when parents sue schools over kids “slut shaming” their daughters, the defense is invariably that she’s a virtuous decent girl, not that slut shaming is objectionable in itself (in fairness, I’d be much more concerned about defending my daughter than establishing fundamental principles if I were in the same boat).
I wonder if this won’t change over time: The McCarthyite period is near and dear to modern conservatives, but with the USSR dead for 20 years and American Communism about as dead, the fear of being labeled “communist” may finally die.
But I’m quite sure there will be other issues that will have to be approached just as gingerly.
Filed under Uncategorized
Time and Green Lanterns
Yesterday I woke up late. Knowing I had one of the day’s eHows already in the bag helped me stay on track, so I was right. Of course, now I’ll need another backup article before too long …
So, moving on to another topic, I caught the Green Lantern trailer over Thanksgiving. Visually impressive (though it has the oddly unsolid look a lot of CGI does), but their handling of Hal Jordan as a smart-ass and (from the look of it) a bit of an idiot annoys me some.
Hal, as originally appeared, was a level-headed professional (like most of Julius Schwartz’s Silver Age characters) whose driving interest was getting his boss to date him in spite of the boss/employee relationship. As a Green Lantern, his motive was a sense of duty, something he took (and still does) very seriously.
Even rereading them now, the old books manage to convey a sense of awe: At both the power Hal wields, at the interplanetary Green Lantern Corps and at the Guardians, the immortals who created it. I don’t know how much awe we’re going to get.
Part of the reason is something Darwyn Cooke commented on when working on DC’s New Frontier miniseries: Most of the big-name heroes were created decades ago and they’re now operating in a very different time and culture.
Heroes, if they have any characterization at all, are rarely as together as they used to be: They’re driven, tormented, screwed up or cocky jerks who have to grow up (zero to hero, as Disney’s Hercules put it). The reason sometimes given for Superman not being as popular as he used to be is precisely that he has his act together (as Kevin Smith put it, Superman’s only angst is that he can’t be an even better Superman).
Likewise, the late-fifties/1960s handling of the Guardians—all-wise beings who genuinely know what’s best—no longer flies. Denny O’Neill’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow scripts from the late sixties showed them as out of touch with real life; the current Green Lantern comics show them as extremely fallible (Gerard Jones, who wrote the book a couple of decades back, said he liked presenting them as trustworthy and beyond question precisely because it’s such an atypical response to authority these days).
Even in the comics, you can see the same pattern at work. Roy Thomas’s All Star Squadron retcon series presented Hourman—who acquires powers from the wonder drug miraclo—as a drug addict, which he certainly wasn’t in the Golden Age; Marvel’s Mark Gruenwald pondered in a few stories if Captain America taking the “super soldier formula” was any different from steroids.
Bruce Banner’s work on the gamma bomb was replaced by biomedical research in the 1970s Hulk series, when building superweapons was unfashionable. And Tony Stark in the Iron Man film is haunted by what his munitions business has done more than he ever was back in the Silver Age.
Likewise, the image of a test pilot today is simply not as cool as it was back when Chuck Yeager and his cohorts were breaking the sound barrier and doing other spectacular feats (the same is true of astronauts, I think). So maybe it’s not surprising that Hal in the trailer comes off having more in common with Jack Black or a smart-ass comic actor than with the comic books’ Hal Jordan (I’ve no doubt that by the end of the movie, he’ll prove he has the stuff of champions).
But I have a strong suspicion I’ll wind up watching it anyway.
Scheduling errors. Or is it sleeping errors?
I’m coming to the conclusion my schedule needs adjusting again.
In theory, starting work at 6:30 a.m. works well. I’m a morning person, I’ve been waking up at 5:30 a.m. for years—by choice—so it shouldn’t be a problem (currently I prefer rising at 5 a.m.—more time for exercise, TV, e-mail—but I can pull off 5:30).
Except that I don’t want to use an alarm because TYG wakes up (usually) in the 6:30-7 a.m. range, and she doesn’t need me waking her any earlier. As a result, if I wake up at 4:30 a.m., I’m likely to get up; I know from experience that if I go back to sleep at that point, I’ll probably oversleep. Thirty minutes late is doable, but if it’s longer than that, I’ll have to hustle to get anything done.
Case in point: I woke up late this morning, then spent more time than I should discussing wedding plans with TYG. So my imp of the perverse starts whispering that since I’ve already blown the day, it doesn’t really matter if I goof off a little more … end result: I complete my day’s eHows but none of the fiction I wanted to do.
So I need a time warchest, I think. A couple of eHows above my normal quota so that if I wake up late, hey, I’m not behind, I’ve already done the first article.
I already do extra articles to make up for vacation time (and with holiday festivities and guests coming in, I’m going to need them) but this would be a separate time bank. Just for oversleeping.
I made myself do the first one tonight, so I have it in reserve. The holidays will keep me from squeezing out any more, I suspect, but maybe I can add a couple more once we’re past New Year’s.
Fingers crossed.
After we conquer the Mideast, what next?
Digby blogs here about a proposal on the Red State blog to invade Mexico.
Why? It’s the only way to put an end to drug cartel violence.
And next? We annex it! Make Mexico the 51st state and we avoid any nation building, plus we solve the illegal-immigration problem.
(Note: I’d love to see how the bigot wing of the anti-immigration movement reacts to the idea of making all Mexicans U.S. citizens. I also wonder if avoiding nation-building means the blogger thinks we won’t have to pay for all the destruction or invasion wreaks).
This isn’t all that startling. Other than picking Mexico, it’s not that different from the calls for “American Empire” that some right-wingers floated during the Bush years, even down to the same logic: Those countries are in a mess, and we could govern them so much better! An American Empire would bring peace and civilization to all those godless untermenschen around the world! The spectacular failures and costs of our transforming mission in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t make a difference.
It’s not surprising this idea has an appeal. I’ve known fellow Brits nostalgic for the empire, and I’ve read some Russians are nostalgic for the days of USSR. Being part of a mighty nation that conquers everyone else means we get a bit of reflected glory; for many people, that glory is far more important than, say, having good schools, good roads or good medical care.
It’s the same logic by which pundits and bloggers sitting at their keyboards demanding we invade or nuke Iran insist that doing so makes them “strong”—as if this was just as brave as actually fighting on the ground. Heck, radio talking head Hugh Hewitt asserted during the Bush years that working in New York put him on the frontline as any soldier in the field.
The Red State post also reflects the assumption that “American exceptionalism” translates into a blank check for us to do anything we choose, but not for anyone else to do the same thing. Digby points out that the cartels are acquiring most of their firepower in Texas; I have a strong suspicion that if Mexico invaded Texas to shut down the flow of guns, the blogger would consider that completely different.
I suspect this ties into the general disdain on the right for treaties and international law (at least as they apply to us—if Bad Nations such as Iran break treaties, that’s unacceptable): Having America “bound” by such things doesn’t feed their ego the way America dictating terms to the world does. Perhaps that’s one reason we have to keep outspending the rest of the world on arms: The only reason we can get away with this is our ability to impose our will at gunpoint (to the extent we can). If we didn’t have absolute military superiority, that would change very fast.
And, of course, there’s always the factor that these warhawks aren’t on the frontlines. From their perspective war with Iran, Yemen, Mexico or whoever is cheap: They’re not going to fight or make any sort of sacrifices (raises taxes to pay for those billions in arms? Don’t be insane!) so why not call for more war? How else can bask in the glory and heroism that’s rightfully theirs?
I can’t say it better than George Orwell: ““The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.
Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.”
Filed under Politics
One movie and books
THE MOTEL (2004) is a coming of age story in which a young Chinese-American teen working for his mother at the title establishment gets an odd mix of life lessons from a teen bully, a Korean-American womanizer and the slightly older Chinese waitress at a nearby restaurant. Lightweight but pleasant. “It’s okay for you to like it. You’re a boy.”
THE STAR TREASURE by Keith Laumer has by-the-book Space Navy officer baffled when the discovery of his best bud’s corpse leads to murderous attacks, a frameup for treason and eventual sentencing to a hellhole prison planet, all in hopes of making confess the Big Secret he doesn’t have. While the plot has many familiar elements (man into superman is a theme Laumer’s played many times), it’s unusual for Laumer to have a conformist hero (Ban genuinely can’t believe that what’s happening to him indicates a real problem) or to seem so baffled about how to resolve things—the book can’t decide between overthrowing the system or preserving it.
THE ISLAND OF FU MANCHU is the Caribbean base from which the Devil Doctor plots to shut down America’s Atlantic fleet if not recognized as an independent power (“I use the same methods as the dictators of Europe, yet they are treated with respect.”). A very good one, though deus ex at the finish, Rohmer being apparently unable to think of any way to stop Fu Manchu except for an act of God. Also heavier on the Yellow Peril overtones than they’ve been ina while (“There’s a war in Europe—but Fu Manchu threatens the entire white race!”), which I presume is to make him a threat equal to the Axis (amusingly, this explains Hitler’s death in the previous book as propaganda put out by the British government editing it).
The success of Vampire Diaries on TV apparently convinced the publishing world to complete author LJ Smith’s unfinished NIGHT WORLD series, so I decided to refresh my memories of the earlier installments. SECRET VAMPIRE is the first book, in which a terminally ill cancer patient discovers that her male Dioscuri has feelings for her other than friendship and has this cure that will make her disease proof—Unfortunately, since such feelings are Forbidden, that creates a few problems for both of them …
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS are three vampires fleeing their patriarchal clan, pursued by an arrogant brother who has to re-evaluate his view of humans when he soul-bonds with a mortal (one of those Love At First Sight Even If You Hate Them Things). Very much a mythos-building book, emphasizing more of the Night World customs including long-time hate between vampires and werewolves (making me wonder when that became such a standard—I know it’s part of the VAMPIRE RPG, but were they the first?).
SPELLBINDER has a good witch increasingly alarmed as she soul-bonds with a human, discovers her amoral sexpot cousin wants him too and then that her sorcerous efforts to break the bond have unleashed the homicidal spirit of a murdered witch. This reveals the origins of the Nightworld in good and evil twins, one of whom became the first vampire via her immortality spell, the other destroying her with magic and becoming the ancestor of all witches(no origin for werewolves yet) and the existence of Circle Daybreak, which is dedicated to forging bonds with mundanes.
THE NEMESIS OF EVIL was the first volume in Lin Carter’s Zarkon, Lord of the Unkonwn pulp pastiche, wherein the title Doc Savage clone and his crew go up a power-hungry phony cult leader claiming the wisdom of ancient Lemuria. Kenneth Robeson it’s not, but fun, and an interesting origin for this crusader.
