The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be...for 2008

Technically, my title is inaccurate. A few years down the line, some of the things I mention won't age well, but who cares? I just felt like a Bret Hart shout-out in my title.

Anyway, this may be a little late in terms of "best-of" lists, but in many cases, most people don't get around to seeing the best stuff of a year until the new one starts.

Thus, I begin:

Music:

I don't really follow music too much, most of what I get is from movie soundtracks, but anyway, here's what I dug this year:

"Roar" - Michael Giacchino, the Cloverfield end credits. Michael Giacchino is someone I've only recently discovered, through Cloverfield and Lost, and his shit is epic. This guy could make doing a grocery list sound important. "Roar" reminds you that what you just saw was a GIANT FUCKING MONSTER movie, not just a deconstruction of the genre. 

"Flight of the Conchords" - Flight of the Conchords. The show is hilarious, the songs are toe-tappingly good. (This guest review done by Larry King)

"Volume One" - She & Him. Folksy? Is that how I describe this? 

And my best album of 2008, is, guess what? Something I didn't buy til 2009:

"Batman: The Animated Series Soundtrack" - Shirley Walker. This was put out in a very limited release by LaLa Land Records. If you're a fan of the show, it's a must have. 

Books: 

I'm not sure what I read this year that actually came out this year. 

But I'm pretty sure I read a lot of older stuff. Here's three books that I remember:

Eat this, Not that - The twist is, the fishwich is more unhealthy than the McNuggets...and the butler did it.

The Omnivore's Dilemma - I really don't feel like looking up the author's name. But he taught me that corn is IN FUCKING EVERYTHING. You are corn.

The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi. There are equally crazy people on the right and the left and everyone in between is fucked because of it.

Comics: 

Don't these belong with books, you ask? Fuck you. They're comics.

Captain America & Daredevil - Ed Brubaker w/ Steve Epting & Michael Lark, respectively

No, there isn't some glorious Captain America and Daredevil team up book. But Ed Brubaker is rocking my socks off with Cap, and while his Daredevil isn't too different from what has come before, it's executed well.

Booster Gold - Geoff Johns w/ Dan Jurgeons

Just a straight up fun comic. It also serves as a history lesson for the DC Universe. Oh, and time travel, evil counterparts, and did I mention time travel?

Criminal - Ed Brubaker w/ Sean Phillips

As I eventually give up buying monthly comics and exclusively buy trades, I will continue to pick this up each month its published, as it's got a ton of great extras each issue. Essays on noir from the authors as well as guests like Patton Oswalt. 

Deadpool - Daniel Way w/ Paco Medina

I loves me some Deadpool. Fox is getting my 12 bucks because they put him in the Wolverine movie. And Deadpool has his own comic again. And it's actually good...and hilarious. 

Television: 

I discovered Lost, The Wire, and Deadwood this past year. Television doesn't get much better. Burn Notice and Chuck provide some fun spy action without getting too deep. Fringe started out leaving me wanting The X-Files to come back(although not like it did this summer), but it quickly became a favorite new show. And Heroes sucked balls.

Movies:

In no particular order: Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hellboy 2, Redbelt, The Wrestler, The Fall, Tropic Thunder, Snow Angels

I love these films. Each is amazing in their own way, but looking at this list, The Fall, The Wrestler, and Redbelt would be a great triple feature. I'll probably do a more in-depth look at The Wrestler after I see it again, but I consider all of these "must sees," and as Gene Shallit would say while holding a basket of eggs, "Eggcellent."

Genetic Altering of Dewbacks: Unethical or Unavoidable

For centuries the moisture farmers and hunters of the desolate desert planet Tatooine have domesticated the large reptilian beast of burden known as the Dewback and now they want to take a drastic measure and clone, then genetically alter the animal. The Dewbacks earned their name by getting moisture by licking the dew that had formed of each others’ backs in the morning. If only it were this easy for the moisture farmers of this arid land to collect their crop. These days the water seems to be, for lack of a better phrase, drying up! The planet’s average temperature has risen a drastic 1.5° over the past decade.

The 1.5° increase in temperature has caused an issue that effects more than just the moisture farmers. The Dewback, which is the one of the few animals that can survive in the harsh climate of the planet, are starting to lessen in number. The Galactic Non-Sentient Protection Agency has not designated Dewbacks as a threatened species. These beasts travel to the Jundland Wastes, where the sands are the ideal temperature to lay their eggs, once a year for mating season. The species has done this journey for so long and it has become so engrained in their genetics, that it is near impossible to breed a Dewback in captivity. Over this past decade the number of newborn Dewbacks has dropped a significant 5% and is believed to grow exponentially over this next decade. Because of this decrease and the planets dependency on the animal, scientists speculate that cloning the species may need to begin within the decade.

Owners of Dewbacks have other concerns about their Dewbacks and are voicing their opinions to the scientists researching and advocating the cloning of the species. Doc Breetel is a young human gem hunter who resides just outside Anchorhead. “Every year I lose my Dewback, Vernil, for about five weeks during mating season. I can’t be walking around the wastelands hunting for precious stones on foot. If they’re going to clone these things, they could at least find a way to deal with this problem,” he says. Many people rely upon Dewbacks as simple desert transportation and assisting them in their daily business, ranging from the moisture farmers, to local construction companies using them to haul equipment across town. All of these Dewback owners lose their animal for several weeks during mating season, stalling business until they return. Why do they let the Dewback go away? Ask ex-Republic gunner Remmie Dextin. “We had just bought a Dewback for my friend’s dad’s used transport lot to haul scrap metal around. Mating season rolled around and we still had some work to do, so we tried to keep the Dewback in his pen. Bad idea. The thing broke through the fence and knocked me over, damaging my leg beyond repair.” And the solution to the mating season problem is very simple. When the animal is cloned they can be genetically altered and turned asexual. However, the Galactic Non-Sentient Protection Agency still claims that it is unethical to turn such a reproduction-oriented animal asexual.

The idea of neutering the Dewbacks has been discussed much in the past years. The animal’s tough hide and poor healing ability make operating more pain than it’s worth. The animal’s reproductive orgas also lie very close to several important nerve clusters which, if even slightly knicked, would severly damage the Dewback’s nervous system. Not only that, but the size and genes of the Dewback make it immune to any legal tranquilizers. There have been several illegal neuterings done recently, but in the end have left the Dewback unable to work at the same capacity it did before the operation due to damage done to the nervous system.

The Dewback owners on Tatooine would be very grateful to have an animal that does not disappear for weeks (up to two and a half months depending on the distance to the Jundland Wastes) once a year. However, until the GNSPA allow the altering of genes on cloned animals, individuals like Doc Breetel will have to continue to manage with the Dewback mating season like the residents of Tatooine have for centuries.

COMICS! On The March

For the past few years, respectable journalistic outlets have been covering the rising tide of comic book culture. They hide their shame by re-naming the artform as "graphic novels."* Or they give themselves some ironic distance with endless variations on "Biff! Bam! Pow! Holy [Relevant Subject Matter], Batman!" & "Comics: Not Just For Kids Anymore!" Nonetheless, it seems like the secret shame of comic book fandom is out of the closet.

In Japan, where the equivalent artform is known as manga, comics are read in public by all members of society according to these articles. People openly and notoriously read these books on the subway, so the legend goes. Since I take two different trains during my commute to work every day I thought it might be a good opportunity to do some fieldwork to see if the same is happening in the United States.

In theory, my route would be ideal for spotting comic book readers. The first leg, the RiverLine to Camden, goes to Rutgers University. The second train, the Patco into Philadelphia, provides access to numerous undergraduate universities as well being the main means of arriving at a moderate-size art school, the University of the Arts. If the comic book surge is bringing in new readership, as these reports allege, commuter trains packed with artistically-inclined undergraduates should be prime observations territory.

Alas, it is not quite the case. Thus far I have witness only two incidents of people reading comics on the trains. They are not promising.

1st Encounter: Approximately two weeks ago on the RiverLine I spotted an aging, obese white male reading an issue of the Jeph Loeb HULK series. Not really the image comics are trying to encourage right now. On the other hand, dude was LOVING that comic book. He was folding pages around the spine and bending it like you read a newspaper, just devouring the thing. The look in his eyes was like a kid in a candy store. I suspect he was mildly mentally disabled.

2nd Encounter: This morning on the Patco I stood next to a paunchy, goateed white male in his early 30s wearing wire-rimmed spectacles; he looked rather meek. He was reading a new copy of the WATCHMEN trade paperback so I assume he is either new to comics or generally is a hardcore mainstream superheroes-only type of fan. I have no reason to suspect he was also mentally disabled but its a safe bet his social skills are severely impaired.

The results of my scientific study of new comic readership are, as you can observe, thus far quite disappointing.

Even expanding this to encompass other likely locations for comics reading does not bear fruit. Every afternoon I walk to the Starbucks near my firm, which is also the nearest Starbucks to the University of the Arts. The store is always teeming with artsy girls in their late teens and early twenties, who I have been led to believe love indie comics and manga, sitting there drinking coffee and reading. I have yet to spot any of them reading a comic book so it appears they are not so into the whole thing. You know what they ARE into? Avoiding eye contact with me so as to not give the false impression that I have a green light to approach them.

They must smell the fanboy on me.

* The term "comic book" in an anachronism anyway. It hearkens back to ye olde times when the first comic books were literally re-packaged newspaper comic strips. Stan Lee prefers the term "comicbook," no space between the words, to signify the break.

A Very Pauly Christmas Part 1: It's a Wonderful Life

This will be the first of a series of Christmas movies I'll be writing about over the next month. Here's my list:
It's a Wonderful Life
Gremlins
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Die Hard
Eastern Promises
Home Alone 1 & 2
Scrooged
Jingle All the Way
Muppet Christmas Films & Specials

There isn't any sort of unifying theme amongst these films, they're just some of my favorite Christmas movies. I might throw in some Christmas episodes of old television shows, too. So without further ado,

It's a Wonderful Life was a film I would always watch on NBC after the Thanksgiving Parade and before everyone would come over for dinner. For whatever reason, they've stopped showing it in that time frame, so I picked it up on DVD a year or two ago. However, this film, and others like it, are ones that I prefer to watch as a network broadcast. I enjoy the breaks that tell me "It's a Wonderful Life will be right back" or remind of the fact that I'm watching It's a Wonderful Life on NBC. There was just something comforting in the whole network holiday movie presentation package.

Anyway, there's not much I can say about the film except that it's overlooked how many hilarious one-liners there are.
"What d'you mean you don't like coconut?"
"Listen, brainless."
"I like him" "You like every boy!"
"This is an interesting situation!"
"He's making violent love to me, mother!"
While only one of these lines is actually said by Jimmy Stewart, it's funnier to think of any line in film as if Jimmy Stewart said it.

I don't have much else to say, other than if you don't love this film, or if you don't think you love this film, please give it another shot and you'll find that is as hilarious as it is sentimental. And if that doesn't work out for you, check out the alternate ending below, as done by SNL in 1992:

MTV's True Life

...A show in which young people make terrible choices.

This, of course, from a network specializing in shows about young people making terrible choices. Every show on MTV, good or bad, mostly bad, glamorizes generational narcissism. The Hills is rich kids living a glitzed up but still somehow dreary version of the typical suburban over-privileged white kid lifestyle. The Real World is your six or seven least-favorite self-absorbed douchebags shipped off to a familiar-yet-exotic locale to film an improvised Sartre play. The Tila Tequila brand features... sadness. Just sadness.

What sets True Life apart is that it abandons most pretense of glamorizing its subject. It genuinely takes a documentary approach. Each episode explores a single theme or experience of a refreshingly broad, racially, socially and economically cross-section of people 16-22. E.g. love triangles, long distance relationships, compulsive behavior, drug abuse, emotional traumas, graduations, marriage. What unites all of the episodes is that these people uniformly make terrible choices.

With a couple years of curmudgeonly distance between that demographic and myself, I feel confident in judging the people making the choices. Oh, the smug grin that spreads across my face as I witness slow-motion trainwrecks.

Beyond that, though, each story possesses a strange gravity. I want to know what happens to these people later on. The worst thing is when it looks like someone has their life back on the tracks then the coda comes on, written in black-and-white. He relapsed. She went back to the abusive boyfriend.

Not all the episodes end that bad. Sometimes there's a happy ending. Mostly, nothing changes. Life goes on, with the people stuck in the same rut.

So, the point of all this, if I have one is: What are the producers of True Life trying to say? Its a documentaty, right, but this is MTV. I can't shake the feeling that I'm being sold something, some lifestyle, some cultural product because I'm hanging on the margins of a valuable demographic. Yet, improbably, True Life exists above it all, unadulterated.

Review: "Twilight"

Let me begin by pointing out that I have not seen the film but I have seen a trailer, so I feel that this makes me qualified to make a review.

Let me also point out that upon seeing the trailer on Lifetime (during Golden Girls or Fraiser), someone pointed out to me that they believed it to be a Lifetime movie about vampires.

Also, let me point out that when I heard this, I watched the trailer a second time and found out that the male lead is from the Harry Potter series of films. Thus I am double qualified.

The film (trailer) begins as dramatically as one could hope a teenage vampires film (trailer) to begin. The use of fog around the school parking lot creates an ominous feeling, already putting me on the edge of my seat. Then they push the drama even further. That low hanging precipitation that earlier in the film (trailer) worried me, has its ground-bound cousin, the puddle, transforms a mini-van into a several ton deadly torpedo careening towards our leading lady and her dad’s sweet pickup truck. At this point the drama has me close to shitting myself. The director of the film (trailer) now uses some amazing fades to show the connection made between the leading lady and the male lead that stopped the mini-van… with his hand! All the fades can mean is that these two are truly in love.

The tension grows as he denies explaining that he’s a vampire. She points out that he’s pale, cold, and burns easily. When she mutters the word ‘vampire’ you can sense the sexual tension in both their loins ready to explode.

However, before he can hold his pale undead body against hers, the dude’s vampire friends show up and want to get a piece of the girl too, because vampires love orgies. But the male lead refuses, lots of fighting ensues and glowing blue font reveals the most important line of the film (trailer)… ‘Forever Begins Now.’ Holy shit, my mind is blown. This teenage vampire film (trailer) has show me that love has no boundaries and how now tosses out some Kant level philosophy all in less than two and a half minutes.

Overall it was pretty awesome. My only problem is that it seems kind of short, like maybe they cut some stuff out. I’m pretty sure the bad vampires lose, but I’m not exactly sure. Sequel?

Review: Baz Luhrmann's Australia

Dear Wolverine,

Why did you make this movie? And when did you take up acting? Were you possessed by the Shadow King? Or did Mastermind create an illusion that convinced you you were living the life of an Australian "cowboy"? Perhaps Spider-Man's foe, Mysterio, convinced you that you were this "Drover" character whose name was also his profession of cattle drover. Mesmero once convinced me that I was the proprietor of an erotic cake bakery. And I could understand wanting to believe the illusion. While I was an erotic cake baker in my mind, I was never happier. But why would you want to live in this illusion? I looked for any signs in your eyes that you were fighting, but you appeared to have given up. 

Please, we're all concerned for you, even Scott.* Come by the mansion and we shall get your mind all sorted out. 

Sincerely,

Professor Charles Francis Xavier

*Though he's still a dick