SHARK WEEK!!!!

Hi, how are ya?

There are many ways to approach the annual event on the Discovery Channel known as Shark Week. One can ignore it. One can get angry that other people are enjoying the sharks (Randy). One can enjoy a ceaseless array of documentaries detailing nature's most perfect killing machine. One can declare sharks the new monkeys or pirates or bacon or whatever.

As a kid, I watched the heck out of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (which led me to believe Omaha was an exotic place and Mutual of Omaha a totally cool company), and I watched a hell of a lot of Jacques Cousteau. I was born the year of the release of Jaws, and so sharks were sort of in the zeitgeist while we were growing up. Jason and I checked out the same shark books repeatedly at the library. We owned a few shark books. We had at least two action figure sets that I can remember which were about nothing but sea-exploring,* which really meant shark watching.


If this is how I go out, just know that my last thought was "THIS IS SO AWESOME"

Collecting shark facts wasn't that uncommon for us kids growing up. They could smell blood from a mile away. Their noses could sense electrical impulses. if you checked the contents of their stomach, you could find everything in there from fish, to a license plate to half a dog. Sharks had rows of teeth.

So, in short, I was pre-disposed to an interest in sharks. They were enormous, relentless things that wanted to eat me, and they were there, just beneath the waves.

Discovery Channel seemed to pioneer the best footage of sharks you were likely to see. I actually remember the first Shark Week I watched circa the summer or 1992. The KareBear had left town, and it was me, Jason and The Admiral left behind, and every night I'd watch a different shark documentary. And it was awesome.

My interest has waxed and waned over the years. I still like a good aerial stunt from a Great White taking out a seal. But, you know, a whole week is a lot of sharks.

This year, I'm watching some of Discovery Channel's Shark Week, as well as hitting both the Jaws documentary The Shark is Still Working and a screening of Jaws at the Ritz.



So, anyway, I think to over explain Shark Week is to over explain anything that comes on TV. Why do you like baseball? Law & Order? How can you watch anything on TV with roughly the same subject?

I dunno. The sharks are interesting. Always have been. Always will be. Watching humans interact with sharks, or watching sharks hunt, travel, leap out of the sea? All good stuff.

So, happy Shark Week, everybody.



*It occurs to me that a lot of the sharks we had that we used to play with these toys must have been cheap rubber sharks from the bin at the grocery.

But we totally had these sets:

Tiffany v. Debbie Gibson

From the upcoming Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid.

Tiffany and Gibson do not play the Mega-Python or Gatoroid. But it does not mean they cannot get into a smack-down.

Scott Pilgrim Wraps It Up

So. The Sixth and final Scott Pilgrim book was released in a big, midnight release event last week.

This book has many, many deeply devoted fans. I can see why. The book is fairly clever in its integration of Nintendo-style logic, art style, and inserting gameplay into the book as a sort of magical realism.

Last time we discussed Scott Pilgrim, there was a lot of discussion of NES-style gaming and the fact that this was something I basically "didn't get", and this was true.*

It's not "wrong" for the story to hinge on or pay tribute to the media, but its also, on some level, a barrier to entry. Scott Pilgrim sort of requires that you find the referencing of games amusing, sort of how Ang Lee assumed the use of comic panels in The Hulk would, in no way, become tiresome.

That said: In the upcoming movie, I think this will work great.

A part of me wonders if O'Malley, the book's creator, is a victim of his own success. Book 6, the final book, seems rushed, and as if he simply tried to cram too many beats into a book where the frenetic pace meant that no single idea (almost all of which have been developing since Book 1) receives the kind of conclusion one would find satisfying. Instead, there are a lot of quick explanations, and a lot of (really) pointless fighting. Obviously O'Malley was playing "beat the clock" with having to complete volume 6 before the release of the film, which meant the book now had an artificial but necessary completion date, so no time to rethink things. Further, he now had an ending of a movie with which he was going to have to jive. And to further complicate the issue, he had now put a page limit on himself and was unable to consider adding a seventh volume to more cleanly wrap up his various dngling plot threads.

If, in reading the previous volumes, I had an issue with what I saw as a schizm between a series ostensibly about a character coming to maturity and that character achieving maturity through fighting "evil boyfriends", an entire motif of an overly simplistic world of NES games, objectifying romantic interests to the point of abstraction, etc... This volume did nothing to make me feel that O'Malley pulled a trick out of his hat and took the book up beyond the level it set for itself around the second volume. Frankly, I guess I was hoping for the video gaming to show itself as metaphor, and the achievement of maturity to be shown as something not achieved by fighting, magical items, and perhaps, instead, I wanted a hint of, say, character growth. Or a hint of some kind of wisdom earned.

I guess there's some growth there, but the bar, honestly, is set so low for the protagonist that "growth" is a bit relative. I also wish there'd been a bit more on the Nega-Scott/ amnesia bit. I guess I "got it", but it went by so quickly and with so little impact that it felt like just one more bit O'Malley had to wrap up, ultimately leaving one more place where Scott, as a character, just sort of doesn't go anywhere.

O'Malley did address the question of what sort of person Ramona ultimately was. Sort of. But he blows past the question in a few frames, absolving her, and moving on so he can get to the lengthy, pointless fight.

I confess, to some degree, I began sort of rushing through the entire "fight" with Gideon. We're given hints that Gideon has more depth as a character, and then given mustache-twirling. And in the end, that sort of thing was a major problem for me with the series. We get these glimpses that O'Malley had other ideas or conflicting ideas about who the characters were, but in order to keep his "NES-style march to the Big Boss" plotline going, the more interesting bits get lost in favor of video game cliches.

This criticism, of course, seems ludicrous in light of a guy who thinks Jimmy Olsen is pretty keen, and that we all have a lot to learn from Superman. I understand that Scott Pilgrim was O'Malley's second work, and that a 6-volume, wildly popular series** that reflects pop and youth culture, and that I am no longer associated with the demographic (and, in fact, and disassociating with). But I tend to think allegory and crafting well-designed metaphors in storytelling is important, and I'm not sure that O'Malley's works here. But I DO think its going to make for a killer movie when someone with a 3rd person pespective can look at the story and clean it down to its bare bones while retaining the whimsy that makes it fun.



*I had an NES. But... The only three games I played were Double Dribble, Section Z and Rush N' Attack. None of which I ever played all that much. Somehow, we were the one family in North America with an NES, but no copy of either Super Mario or Legend of Zelda. I was uniformly terrible at the games I did have, and so I usually went and read comics, doodled, or played some pick-up basketball. I recall we actually sold the system to family friends within two years, and no tears were shed.

**This week, Scott Pilgrim took over the paperback graphic books section on the NYT's Best Sellers list.

Yogi Bear Trailer makes me sad

This movie was never going to be very good, I guess. Standard issue half-assed boiler plate junk served up to kids because, seriously, they're small and dumb and haven't seen anything yet and don't know this is awful. But it doesn't mean I'm not still disappointed. It also doesn't mean that I won't go see it. I kind of love Yogi.

I was going to say "oh, Yogi's voice sounds awful", and that's because its not Yogi, its Dan Aykroyd phoning it in and hoping that this is his "Garfield".

Just, you know, WB, don't do this to Quickdraw McGraw. Because then we will have words.

The Kent Farm Today

Found at the Superman Homepage.



I had not known that the Kent Farm was an actual house or barn. Its in pretty wretched condition, but it also doesn't look like anyone has really been in there since the filming 35 years ago.

It kind of makes me wonder why Bryan Singer chose to remake the farm in the middle of Australia for Superman Returns, but his needs were fairly different, I guess.

I confess, I got a little sad seeing the Kent homestead in disrepair.

Elvira is Coming Back to TV

It sounds like Elvira is returning to TV in her classic format as schlock movie hostess in a new version of Elvira's Movie Macabre.

I don't think I need to tell you the import of this bit of news at League HQ.

Here. Also, the video on Elvira's website seems to confirm that this is happening.



I know Jamie will be thrilled.

Found at Caffeinated Joe.

So very torn about the trailer for "Sucker Punch"

That whole "directed by Zack Snyder" thing is so problematic. And then, already, this kind of stuff popped up.

But WWI and WWII aircraft battles, samurai, karate in trench warfare, Weimar-era burlesque, robots, dragons, shotguns, wire work sword fighting, an all-girl action crew, blowing up Nazis... It's like geek bingo.

This movie is going to be terrible, but I'll likely see it anyway.

Time Off for Human Behavior

I'm taking a little time off. The premiere for Mad Men Season 4 was on. Talk amongst yourselves.

Jimmy Olsen has partied too hard

Jimmy learns an important lesson in making promises to one's self before hitting Bourbon Street.

Chloe Sullivan jumping from Smallville to Comics in upcoming Jimmy Olsen Feature

In its 9 seasons on the air, the Superman-before-he-was-Superman TV program Smallville has done much more to borrow from the comics than its created new or given back. But the addition of Chloe Sullivan to the series has been a welcome one. Played by Allison Mack, Chloe has filled many roles, from a sort of proto-Lois Lane, to unrequited admirer of Clark Kent, to information hub/ proto-Oracle of the JLA. Mack has had to literally grow up on the show, and has become one of the more capable actors on the program, even if she's been given some iffy character and plot points the past few seasons. You kind of have to hope she finds more work after this most recent season.


Chloe is Super-Tech Support for the JLA

A few years ago DC Comics announced Chloe would be making her way into the actual print comics, where she has never appeared (outside of a special Smallville comic or two). Looks like that's finally happening.

The gameplan then was to bring her on as a junior reporter of some sort. On the show, she's also Lois's cousin, so that may be happening again here. I'd certainly expect the journalist angle rather than the JLA help desk support angle.