…and we’re back. Hope everyone had a successful Mass Consumption Day (which, if you consider the “Black Friday” retail madness and multiple meanings of the verb “to consume,” could probably be extended into “Mass Consumption Weekend”). I had a pretty nice day myself, managing to eat just enough but not too much of the traditional bird and pumpkin pie so that I managed to remain reasonably comfortable and functional instead of collapsing into a bloated stupor.
I’m hoping to produce some of those longer entries I keep promising sometime before I have to go back to work, but in the meantime, let’s amuse ourselves with the following:

Now, I don’t play computer games myself — I have nothing against them, I simply lost interest back when the Atari 2600 was still technologically competitive — and I wouldn’t know World of Warcraft from a construction trade show, but I’m always amused by the antics of the one-and-only William Shatner. Especially William Shatner in a kimono. Personally, I’ve always suspected that he could hurl bolts of lightning. How did I know that, when he’s always been so careful to conceal his god-like capabilities? Because he’s The Shat, of course! Duh…

So, I’ve been thinking all day about that Starfighter video game, specifically about how truly weird it is that somebody bothered to make one and that people — at least a few people — are moved to talk about it here in the year 2007, some 23 years down the road from the movie’s release.

Look at this way: the guys who made that game, the bloggers who’ve posted about it, and the people who read those blogs are all using technologies that would’ve sounded almost as science-fictiony back in 1984, the year The Last Starfighter was released, as the idea of aliens recruiting Earth kids to fight in interstellar wars, which is that movie’s premise. The Internet is arguably one of the most revolutionary gadgets our species has ever come up with, and what do we mostly use it for? Besides distributing pictures of naked girls, I mean? To commemorate, reproduce, disseminate, and obsess over pop-cultural artifacts that are two or three decades old. In other words, we’re using this very futuristic tech to talk about stuff from the past. Does that strike anyone else as weird?

I’ve been gradually formulating an idea over the past several months, largely in response to all the recent remakes of movies that I loved as a kid, that popular culture seems to have frozen — some would probably say “stagnated” — somewhere around the end of the 1980s. Oh, sure, a lot of original work is still being produced, but the stuff that really gets people talking all stems from a roughly 25-year period — let’s say 1966-1989 — that ended a generation ago.

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Okay, this is a bit silly, but I couldn’t resist: via Scalzi, who ganked it from Boing Boing, it’s The Monster Initial Stickers Name Generator! What’s that, you say? You don’t know what that means? Well, Monster Initials were these these things you could buy at the 7-Eleven back in the days of shag carpet and bitchin’ custom vans:

Released in 1974, the idea behind this collection was simple: create stickers for all the letters of the alphabet, but feature monster scenarios inside each letter. Alphabet letter stickers with monsters inside them that the kids will all want to collect until they can spell their own names with ’em? Brilliant!

As the blogger I’m quoting above goes on to explain, actual Monster Initial sticker sets are pretty tough to come by these days, so he and a programmer friend have cobbled together this generator thing to let you spell out your name in electronic facsimiles of those uber-rare ’70s-vintage collectibles. Cool, huh? Here’s my name:

Click ’em to see ’em big and admire the groovy artwork.

You know, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t remember these stickers. If they came out in ’74, I was probably just a shade too young to have had any experience with them. But the artwork reminds me a lot of stuff I do recall, specifically a series of monster-themed Slurpee cups that I always loved, and also a series of collectible stickers that featured gross-out parodies of various grocery items. You bought them like trading cards, in a pack with a stick of gum. Anyone remember what those were called?

As best I can recall, my introduction to the medium of comic books came when I was six years old. I was home from school, sick in bed with a bad cold or the flu or something. My dad went to the local drugstore to get some medicine, and when he returned, he also had with him a little treat that he hoped would cheer me up, or at least distract me in between puking sessions: a pair of what he called “funnybooks.” Which confused me, because they weren’t funny. But that’s beside the point. One was a collection of stories about Superman and his various friends, cousins, and pets. The other (which I found much more appealing, probably due to the semi-lurid cover art) was an issue of a series called Marvel Team-Up.
As the title suggests, the premise of this series was to combine two or more characters who wouldn’t have ordinarily crossed paths in their own titles, and then send them off on an adventure together. In the issue my dad got for me — which somehow is the only one of this series I’ve ever read — the action was played straight. Apparently, however, not every issue was so serious:

Spider-Man and the cast of Saturday Night Live? Wow, I’ve got to track that one down… that’s got to be a hoot. Especially if you read it drunk, which is probably how it was written. Click the pic to go to the image source and a synopsis.
Incidentally, I understand that most issues of Marvel Team-Up were self-contained stories. Naturally, that lone issue my dad got me, the only one I’ve ever read — which, to no one’s surprise I’m sure, I still have — was one of the rare two-parters. To this day, I have idea how Spidey manages to free the Scarlet Witch from Cotton Mather’s foul mind-controlling cross-power…

Sometimes we need to be reminded of the startingly obvious. Click the image and go read the rest of the strip. Funny and wise, a rare combination…

You know, I like to think of myself as a pretty good writer, able to turn a decent phrase and evoke a mood when it suits me. But there are times when I run across something I wish I’d written, something that so perfectly crystallizes an idea, a moment in time, a cultural scene, that I can only doff my hat, hang my head, and think, “Damn, how does he do that?”
Case in point: John Scalzi’s fever dream du jour:

I’ve mentioned before that there’s a musician out there named Mike Scalzi (no relation) who is the leader of a band called Slough Feg, who play unreconstituted pre-hair band-era metal; really, you can taste the bong resin, see the black light Houses of the Holy poster and feel the conversion van plush carpet between your toes when you listen to these dudes.

 

[Listen to the latest Slough Feg album] and be transported to a land that time forgot: where Poison and Cinderella and Winger were all publicly executed for their crimes against humanity, where Vikings do roam the land, hoisting their mighty warhammers to battle the leather clad, GTO-driving survivors of the nuclear apocalypse, and where all the women look just like Julie Strain, and they’re totally hot for you in your Music from “The Elder” t-shirt, and they’ve got a friend who looks like Little Queen-era Ann Wilson that they want to bring over to your garage loft for a special, special time. You know, before you all have to go out and kill some orcs. With your swords. That eat souls.

 

Good times, good times.

Good times indeed… and a good trick of exactly capturing the sticky zeitgeist shared by all early-teenage boys circa 1982 or so, back when our hormone-addled imaginations were fueled by endless reruns of John Carpenter movies on HBO, nascent music videos, Heavy Metal magazine, Robert E. Howard reprints, cheap pin-up posters won at state-fair midway games, and rounds of D&D played in our best friend’s clammy basement bedroom, not to mention the occasional, furtive glimpse of our dad’s Playboy stash and way, way too much sugar delivered by direct Slurpee infusion. God, I do miss those days, sometimes…

Courtesy of Eric D. Snider, a former Utahn who now snarks at movies for a living in Portland, Oregon, comes a manifesto written by this guy, a radio DJ from the Pacific Northwest. With only a few minor tweaks, it could’ve just as easily been written by myself:

What a geek believes

 

According to Rick Emerson

 

I believe that Han shot first. I believe that Ally Sheedy was hotter before Molly Ringwald cleaned her up. I believe in miniatures, models, claymation, and not revealing the shark until you absolutely have to. I believe that George Lucas, for better or for worse, change[d] the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. And I believe that we will someday reach those stars that he himself made visible. I believe that George Lucas is also a narrow-minded, money-grubbing, pig-headed slave to the now, who ought to be locked away from his own creations, lest he do them further harm. I believe that Jean-Luc Picard is the better Starship Captain, but I also believe that James Tiberius Kirk is infinitely cooler. I believe that a child standing in line to buy a book at midnight is fantastic; I believe that reading makes you smart — it’s schools that make you dumb. I believe that any episode of Futurama is better than any program featuring a precocious teenager who’s wise beyond their years. I also believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be the sole exception that proves this rule. I believe that comic books are an art form, and will someday be recognized as such. I believe that good shows die too young; and crap shows last too long. I believe that Eddie Izzard is the funniest man alive, and I don’t care whether you’ve ever heard of him or not — it’s still true. I believe that a girl who likes movies about zombies is hotter than whoever is on the cover of Maxim this month. I believe that Belloch ate that fly, I swear to God that I heard Luke call Leia “Carrie,” and I believe that Samwise Gamgee never quite got the credit he really deserved. I believe in magic, I believe in dreams, I believe in the power of music, movies, and the untold worlds inside an everyday library card. And I do not believe that geeks will inherit the earth; I believe that we already have.

So, did you catch all the references? If you’re wondering about those tweaks I mentioned, they’re after the fold:

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Wil Wheaton on reports that Hollywood execs were using last week’s Comic-Con as a focus group:

For those [Hollywood] executives [who almost always seem to screw up movie adaptations of the things fanboys love], I present a very brief, very simple primer in understanding geeks: We want this stuff to be done right because we’ve lived it for our entire lives and know it better than any of you ever will. We’ve played with the action figures and written the fan fiction and crammed fifteen of our friends into the hotel room so we could afford to go to the conventions where we buy T-shirts that say HAN SHOT FIRST because, goddammit, this stuff is our lives. Before we could talk to girls, there was Princess Leia. Before we had cars, there was the Batmobile. Before we could find escape from the horrors of modren life in a bottle, we escaped into the pages of comic books and science fiction magazines.

 

These stories that you buy and put on the big screen may just be numbers on a yearly accounting to you, but they are more than that to us. To us, they are something that brings us together and makes us part of an exclusive (and frequently stinky, unfortunately) club.

I concur. The whole essay is a passionate battle-cry that’s worth reading if you’ve ever salivated at the thought of your favorite superhero coming to live-action life, only to be crushed when the movie turns out to be colossal dud like, well, 98% of the superhero movies that come out. Be warned, though — Wil can get pretty potty-mouthed when he’s worked up about something, and he’s very worked up about the upcoming movie adaptation of Watchmen…

Sorry for the crass title, but that episode of South Park so perfectly encapsulated Paris Hilton’s low character in that one vulgar phrase that I have a difficult time thinking of her in any other terms.

Anyhow, I’ve been trying to work up the dudgeon to comment on the media circus that accompanied her release from jail last night — you’d have thought it was the biggest damn movie premiere in the history of moving pictures, the way EntertainmentExtraAccessTonight was so breathlessly talking about it — but I just can’t seem to summon the words I need to adequately convey my disgust with the media, with the SSW’s stupid fanbase for idolizing this vacuous waste of protoplasm, and even with my own inability to leave this story alone while being fully aware that I’m giving the little twit exactly what she craves: attention. (oh, the hurtful prick of irony!) So I’ll borrow someone else’s observations instead, and let them stand in as reasonably close facsimiles of my own thoughts:

Phil Spector is on trial for murder but nobody notices. The newspapers have been filled with reports that Paris served more time than 80 percent of people accused of similar crimes. They fail to take into account that Paris was pulled over three times. That she was swerving. That she had a signed statement saying she knew she was not allowed to drive. That she failed to show up to mandatory classes. The judges have discretion in these cases for a reason. Paris had flagrantly flouted the law. Several days ago she called Barbara Walters at 2 in the morning, 11 at night West Coast time. Nobody seems to think that’s strange. A call to Barbara Walters at 11 at night from a prison cell.
The jail holds 2,200 people. It is full to capacity. There are only eight medical beds. Paris has occupied one of them almost the entire time.

 

…we shudder and complain about the attention Paris Hilton gets but we talk about her just the same, sometimes in quiet and disparaging tones. We talk about her more than we talk about Iraq and often we talk about how we talk about Paris Hilton when we should be talking about the war in Iraq.

 

But we don’t.

Food for thought, kids. That’s all I’m sayin’…