Jeez, Superman!

The Flash has one thing going for him! One! And you can't even let him have that! What are you compensating for??

Work. Is. Hell.

I haven't been posting very much lately, and the reason is work's been sucking more energy from me than Christopher Walken's reverse power plant in Batman Returns (the nerds will get the reference).

Quickie update -

* Movies I've seen consist of Harry Potter, The Simpsons Movie and Transformers. With HP they took my least favourite of the books and made it my favourite of the movies; The Simpsons Movie was hilarious, and The Transformers had its moments, but overall I found it pretty boring (I know, how could I dislike a movie that had both Transformers AND a Smashing Pumpkins song??).

* If you've read Ben's blog, then you know I've signed up for cable. What can I say, it was a moment of weakness! And given that I generally don't leave the house, I think this is a wise investment. Not to mention how well-informed we'll be with all the news channels for when the rapture comes!

*I was planning on holding out and reading Carol's copy, but I caved and bought my own edition of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows. Finished reading it just the other night; there were quite a few moments where I exclaimed out loud and got watery-eyed. Over all, a good read, even if all the chapters of the kids camping in the woods drag on and on and on.

*My Superman DVDs arrived. The show's enjoyable, but a bit dry. I'm hoping it picks up a bit (though the guest stint by the Flash was great!). Oh, and I caved and bought Greg the Bunny, which turned out to be a dumb move, seeing as I'll be able to watch it on cable soon. But hey, at least now I own it for posterity!

*Apparently Dad and Hannah are working at the same bank now. Run, Hannah! Run while you still can! (I'm sure Dad will agree with me on this one).

*Finally, seeing as every time I say I'm considering buying something on my blog I end up getting it, I'm announcing here and now that I intend to buy a mega-mansion. Preferably a castle. That floats. In the clouds.

And I'm spent.

Michael Jackson's Thriller ...

... as performed by inmates in a Filipino prison.



And it all seems like a perfectly innocent and quite enjoyable Internet phenomenon, until evidence comes to light that the warden has the prisoners rehearsing 13 hours a day, until there's blood in their shoes, so as to get the entire thing exactly right. And no, I'm not joking. They covered it on Hack on Triple J this evening. Messed up, huh?

Behold, The Awesomest Kid Ever!

Why Is Talking Like David Brent So Addictive?

Minor Geeky Footnote

I forgot to mention in my 'Shared Universe' post how I like to think of Heroes as being the prologue to the X-Men film series, what with the X-movies being set in 'the not too distant future'. You can very easily see the progression from one to the other, with this ...

... eventually becoming this (dig the German!);

I'll refrain from mentioning how Robocop was also set in the "not too distant future", leading me to pontificate on the ways it, too, could fit into the same chronology (although Robocop versus Magneto would no doubt prove quite amusing).

Best. Thing. Ever.

After hearing about online radio stations you can programme yourself, I decided to take a look see. I found Yahoo!'s LaunchCast, an online radio station where you choose what artists you want to hear. It selects music from those groups, but then it also plays stuff you haven't listed, based on your genre/artist preferences. And it's free! You have to put up with some God awful ads every now and then, but it's soooooo worth it!

Now if only I could programme my own radio hosts. Oh, the tantalising possibilities!

POW! SCOOP! BAM!

Wes Anderson's latest film, rumored to be inspired by the adventures of a young Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson?

It goes without saying how much I'm looking forward to this one.

A Shared Universe

Comic geeks, for the most part, have this obsessive focus on continuity and the concept of the shared universe. If every single appearance of a character doesn’t fit together as a seamless, over-arcing whole, the average comic fan will stretch their imagination to its limits trying to explain any discrepancies. It was such a commonplace occurrence that Stan Lee started awarding fans a thing called a ‘No Prize’ (exactly what it’s described as being) if they could find an in-story reason as to why a character had acted strangely or shown up in a place where they shouldn’t have as a result of editorial oversight.

But ever since the first superhero team-ups, the concept that fans have gravitated toward the most is the concept of the shared universe; where Character A lives in the same time and place as Character X, their lives intersecting every so often. I’m by no means exempt from this; I’ve often scratched my head thinking of ways events in Batman Begins fall into the timeline of Superman Returns, or what Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man was up to during the Fantastic Four film, or why he never pays Daredevil’s Hell’s Kitchen a visit.

On a simple level, it’s part of the fun of comics, trying to work out the ways all the characters in a comic company’s stable fit together. That’s been one of the overwhelming joys of Heroes, and why it’s worked so well as a mainstream appropriation of comic book concepts; watching the many different ways the characters interact without knowing it before finally coming together keeps the audience coming back week after week.

But what drives this enjoyment? Is it that we wish for a sense of a greater community? That we feel so isolated from each other that any reminder of being part of a society is something we can’t help but respond to? And is that the reason why people respond to superhero stories in the first place?

In the end, is it just that we all want to live in a shared universe?

A Lifelong Dream Fulfilled

You can create your own Simpsons character at simpsonsmovie.com!

Now there's nothing left to do but sit back and wait for the replies of "That looks nothing like you!" to come rolling in.