Three things today. Two of them looking forward and one looking back…
1. This…
…is hilarious to me. Art by a fella named Murray Groat mashing up TinTin with the Lovecraft mythos. Something about Hergé’s ligne claire style of art mixed with that lovable scamp Cthulhu is just perfect to me. I’m looking forward to Spielberg’s upcoming TinTin movie mostly because it seems like it’s Spielberg just geeking out and that seems fascinating to me since even when he’s at his zaniest, he’s still very controlled, very measured, never what I think you could call “excessive.” How great would it be to see that little French kid taking all tentacled Old Ones from beyond the stars that inspire madness at their very mention? That’s a recipe for box office success, yo.
3. ast night’s season finale of The Venture Bros. was nothing short of amazing and more than made up for what was not so much a bad season but an unspectacular one. There’s just too much to talk about with the episode but I think the show found a niche that I’d like to see it explore more in the future (if it has a future): a one hour running time, which both allows the plotlines to breathe and run on but doesn’t ever stifle their growth. And, Jesus, they managed to wrap up like 15 storylines there too.
If this was the last episode of the show ever (a very sad but quite possible outcome), it was a worthy one. The show went back to it’s well: Balls to the wall failure and immaturity. Hank and Dean got a home school prom. All of the manly men struck out, dreams weren’t just crushed but stomped into the ground, and women are more than a whole other genre to the males of the show, they’re a whole other monstrous species. At first I was amazed at how long the “Rusty Venture” sex act gag went on and then it reached a point of equilibrium where I never wanted it to end. Al and Shore Leave were some of my least favorite characters (mostly because they, like Sgt. Hatred, were an incredibly funny idea that was literally beat into the ground over and over), but I kind of like that they’re the only ones that found happiness.
Is it sad that I not only loved the montage that ended the episode but almost found it as poignant as the final very musical moments of Lost from earlier this year. And, as if showrunners Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer didn’t have enough geek cred, I adored that the montage was set to Pulp’s “Like A Friend,” a song about how relationships are hard and that it’s easy to be yourself if you suck…
…it’s the 5th of November. It’s Guy Fawkes Day. The Gunpowder Plot. Not a huge deal here in America and, well, actually not a deal of any size here in America, but I forgot about it and then was reminded of it by the internet today, thanks to several individuals’ mini salute to the V For Vendetta film adaptation from a few years ago.
And it’s not an outlandish movie to watch so closely to our midterm elections from a few days ago. What a bizarre, strange, curiously odd bit of America that was.
What a strange time we are in currently in this country. Everything is emotions. There’s a phrase I keep hearing bandied about: “post-fact America.” Scary true. Most people get their dish on politicians from stupid email forwards than they do from the honest, serious media, and it’s all bullshit. Of course, there is no such thing as the honest, serious media anymore, is there? You can say anything and it gets reported, which is great, but does it get checked for a basis in reality? No. And why should it? Reality has no basis in our lives anymore, does it?
People are frustrated and upset and with good reason, especially given the precarious financial woe we’ve been in for the past two years. We want someone to blame and most folks don’t even care if if they’re upset at the right person. Tell them anything. Lie to them! Just turn their anger and their fear and heir sadness into something that’ll keep them warm: Hot, irrational anger. They want a rebellion. They don’t know what that means and they don’t care. Just articulate their feelings of uselessness into something that’ll fit onto a sign that they can hold up in public and we’ll worry about the damage we’re allowing to continue to be done in the morning after. And who cares? That’s a million years from now.
Our former president says that Kanye West calling him a racist on TV was the low point of his presidency. Not 9/11, not the lying about WMDs, not Iraq or Afghanistan, and not allowing our economy to slowly fade into shit. Not even the fiddling around and poor management post-Katrina, not even that was the low point of his years in the highest office in the land. No, it was when a rapper said what so many of us were already thinking.
Benjie Light were talking the other day, having a post-election pow wow and just sighing in exasperation at this place we now all inhabit together here in this age of conflict vs. compromise. “Probably less than a thousand people in this country really understand what went wrong with the economy,” he said to me and while I question the exact percentage he uses, I fear that he’s right. Hell, I don’t even fully understand the full intricacies of it – but reading The Big Short is on my to do list! – but I do know that we are better now than we were two years ago.
Not terribly better, no, but we’re on the right track and it’ll be a slow one, and a hard one. Now is the time for serious people to take serious action and leave some of the rhetoric behind. The Tea Party had some amazing victories this past Tuesday, regardless of the facts behind so many of their claims, but it’s fascinating how the real winners within that collective were the ones who went back to the center at the last moment, leaving the nutjobs like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell flapping in the wind. And that’s a good sign though. America can only handle morons to a certain degree and I’m thankful for that. Obviously I don’t agree with something like 95% of the beliefs of your average Republican, though I certainly understand where a lot of their feelings and overreactions come from, but my hope is that if they’re going to control something as goofy as the House of Representatives, then, please let’s have the serious people step up to the plate. The Democrats were lucky to retain the Senate, and guys like Harry Reid should be getting down on their knees and thanking his lucky fucking stars for having not lost (or having had such a ridiculous opponent), but what I’d like to see next is some understanding of how important it is that he actually does something with this second chance.
I’m not sure that syncretic politics is exactly the ideal or should be the goal, not always, but it’s what (and not the “noble idea” of anarchy [in the UK]) I think about when I think back on V For Vendetta. The film was one of the few examples of taking original source material, in this case the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, and taking the elements that worked from it and crafting a slightly different story from it. Or just telling the same story, but much better. The original graphic novel is a bit on the immature side, but I think that’s how reactions to the politics of the 80s feel to us now, despite the similarities to the world then and now.
And granted, the movie features Natalie Portman, whom I always like, for a lot of reasons, but part of that is because she has an eye for good films to appear in. And V For Vendetta is an ambitious tale, and kind of a poetic one, an action movie about this romantic idea about the vox populi, and the gentle tether that connects people with ideas and governments and control. “We the people” aren’t always right, I don’t believe, and more often then not the vox populi is woefully misinformed and complacent and lazy.And it’s not always about the level of control you maintain or that you manage to avoid succumbing to. Isn’t part of the point of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom that you sometimes have to give up the idea of freedom to instead find happiness? Either way, it’s about a balance, one that you can flourish under, and that others can as well, one that people can live with.
The other thing that Commander Light said the other day that was incredibly interesting to me was that this election just a few days ago could be about anything you wanted it to be about. Whatever your point is, whatever your thesis statement is, you’ll find something in your analysis to back it up. It’s a multi-layered thing and whatever is being said about America in those polls and votes and turnouts and wins and losses and bullet points from the mouths of babes and talking heads is whatever you want to be said. But what really matters now, the thing that we really need to find some kind of meaning and purpose in is what happens next.
That’s the one thing you really need to take away from last night’s finale of Lost, super appropriately entitled “The End.” Your favorite TV show is going to end some day (and it was probably yesterday), but not just that, your friendships may end some day. Your relationships. Your circumstances will change. You will have amazing journeys in your life, but even that, some day, will come to an end.
And then…
To me, what the finale did was, in a lot of ways, a truly amazing feat. It gave everyone resolution, not just all the characters, but the audience as well. Everyone got what they wanted, whether they realized they wanted it or not. And they definitely got what they needed. And creators/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were certainly honest about something heading into this last episode about what you should be expecting from it, and that was an answer to just one question: “What is the Sideways world?”
More on that in a second.
Cause this seems to be an episode that, if initial internet reaction is to be believed, has been just about 90% hated. I’m okay with that, but also… not. It only confirms for me further that Lost is our Seinfeld this decade, so of course the ending was despised (and, in that regard, were the 90s about “nothing” and the 00s about “everything?”). But I think it’s a shame that people didn’t like and/or didn’t get the ending. One person on twitter said something to the effect last night of “the finale made me feel like the previous six years were nothing but rape now.” I think that’s a bit strong, but there’s also a meta-answer to that in there somewhere. More on that in a second too.
First things first: This was a wacky, crazy, amazing, beautiful, tragic, mystifying sci fi show about polar bears on a magical island, time travel, synchronicity, esoteric theorizing, faith and hope and both the depths and heights of the human condition. But it was first a show about the characters. I’m sure the producers would have loved to have tackled time travel and paradox theories in the first season, but they couldn’t. No one would’ve watched it, so they got smart and they put the characters first. The show didn’t always succeed, there were some pacing issues here and there, and of course some answers we’d still love to possess (like who was shooting at our heroes on those outriggers in season 5?), but has any show ever came and succeeded as hard as this one?
From episode to episode, you weren’t just watching the show to see answers to questions, you were watching the show to see where the characters went next, and what would happen to them. You cared about that. Sure, the crazy shit going on the island was wonderful, and really, it was a mystery show. But a mystery show with characters at it’s heart. And the mystery aspects only strengthened the human element to all of this.
But for the people who say, “but this is just a TV show!” perhaps don’t understand why we tell ourselves stories. Or why we do TV, or how rare it is for it to actually work out this well. And a mystery is nothing but a story, and that’s what Lost was: a TV show about stories. And it’s a show that asks you to do a little bit of thinking.
On Island last night: Jack is the new Jacob. He’s got to find Desmond, who’s the key to everything, either sinking the Island or it’s salvation. The Locke-ness Monster is also after Desmond, firmly believing that he’ll be the key to putting this Island on the bottom of the ocean. Desmond’s been rescued by Rose and Bernard, and he’s all too happy to go with Locke (to save Rose and Bernard).
On their way to the Source, Locke, Ben, and Desmond encounter Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate. Jack and Locke have a truly sassy showdown and, classically, have a difference of opinion. They both want to go to the Source, and both want to lower Desmond into it to do what he has to. They just think the other’s wrong.
I think there’s an interesting message here potentially: Regardless of right and wrong, good and evil are the same. They’re just words.
I’m not going to go recap every single moment here, but eventually Locke and Jack work together to lower Desmond down into the cavernous room below the waterfall which is the Source of the Light. The Man In Black seems so eager, in some ways, to be Locke, to fit into a dichotomy with Jack like Locke, and Jack puts him in his place. And at the bottom of the waterfall, Desmond finds what is essentially a cork and when he pulls it out, the Light goes away. The “goodness” seeps away and is replaced by something darker, more red…
And the Island begins to self destruct.
And I’ve said this before, but one of the things I’ve always loved about Lost is that there are answers for everything. You may never get them, but it’s there somewhere. When you look at the room where the Source was, it’s so clearly designed by someone. And all of those skeletons! Memento mori, yes, but… There’s a story there. Probably quite a few, in fact. You’ll never know what it is. That’s up to you. You decide what it is. And if you don’t want to think up some heavy, almost scientific and fantastical reasoning, then the show never really stops you from saying…
From there we get some truly great moments: The Man In Black is corporeal again, a real human. Jack was wrong, and the Man In Black makes a move for the cliffs by where Jacob’s cave was and where the Man In Black has a boat waiting. And that’ll be the scene of Jack and Locke’s final battle there, in the rain, with Jack orchestrating a truly impressive flying punch, and getting his ass handed to him. It wouldn’t be any kind of finale to this show if Jack wasn’t having the stuffing beat out of both his body and his spirit. The Man In Black’s knife finds Jack’s gut and later nicks his neck and we see those same scars and cuts that have been plaguing Jack in the Sideways universe…
Meanwhile, Richard Alpert and Miles are making their way to Hyrda Island, still thinking they need to blow up the Ajira plane and along the way, they find something we’ve all wanted to see again: FRANK LAPIDUS.
And eventually the Man In Black finds what all humans eventually find: death. At the hands of Kate, no less. And now Sawyer and Kate have to get moving, to get to the Hydra island to meet Lapidus and Miles and Richard Alpert (who may start aging and live out the rest of his life?) and take off while there’s still ground to take off from. But first… Kate has to say goodbye to Jack.
And then, back at what used to be the Source, Jack has to transfer his powers and duties and responsibilities. And as much as Hurley believed in Jack, so does Jack believe in Hurley. And as much as Jack being the protector of the Island made sense, it makes even more sense for Hurleybro to have this job. And for Jack to do something else for the Island: to become it’s fixer, because after what Desmond has done, what the Island needs now is a Doctor.
And Jack goes down into that cave and he pulls up Desmond – I kept wanting him to say “You’ve got to lift it up,” but he didn’t, and it was okay – and tells him to go home and be with his wife and kid and live his life. And Jack put the cork back into the Island (was that Hell leaking out, as Jacob originally said?). And it took everything out of him. And watching it took everything out of me.
It was amazing seeing Jack be wrong again, then finally being right in a way that really mattered. And now the Island has new God/messianic figure, one with a proclivity for saying “Dude,” and who makes copious references to Star Wars.
But let’s go back to the Sideways world… It was brilliant in a lot of ways, which I find myself so surprised saying because it was one of the things I looked forward to the least this past season. It kept seeming like the “Wouldn’t it be nice?” world and it was. Everyone went to the concert and then everyone found their true love or their true purpose and in doing so, they remembered who they were.
All except Jack, who resisted because… well, there’s a lot of interpretations there. For a man who spent most of this past season trying to kill himself in some way, shape, or form, perhaps he’s the man who most clung to life?
All of those beautiful moments: Locke’s rebirth after his legs worked again. Sawyer and Juliet at the vending machine and their lovely call back to “LA X” with “Want to get coffee some time?” Hell, just the fact that Juliet was back at all was amazing to me, as she literally lit up my TV screen, easily glowing as bright as the light at the heart of the Island. And Kate finding Jack, remembering who she was because of him. “That’s not how you know me.” I like that Jack was probably Kate’s true love, but she wasn’t his (something we’ve been saying here for a while now). No, Jack probably couldn’t have allowed himself to really feel that, not when he was so tightly wound, so strong lost in his own past…
And then there’s the very end and Jack finds his father. He’s not in the coffin. He’s there, standing before, with love in his eye, and he explains. And Jack understands. He’s dead. Everyone in the Sideways world is dead. It’s a kind of purgatory, or rather, a sort of limbo, a holding place, if you will, that they’ve all created together in their collective unconscious, united by the amazing things they did on the Island, and a place for them to maybe work on their karma and to find a balance missing in their lives before they move into the afterlife.
I mentioned before how similar Lost was to The Invisibles, and this is exactly how The Invisibles ends: At the end of the world, no one dies, but instead enters the Supercontext, a place created by their collective unconscious in which they can find a balance and be happy. It also puts forth the notion that the ultimate ending, the one that is more possibly than we usually realize, is one in which everyone gets exactly what they want. We love Buddhist ideas here in the West. We also love An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and The Third Policeman and Jacob’s Ladder, yes.
It’s kind of funny to watch the internet reaction in that regard. “It’s a rip off of Jacob’s Ladder!” some cry out. Or, “They totally stole that from An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge!” I love seeing the way people skew there. Those who know of Jacob’s Ladder don’t know of The Third Policeman or haven’t ever heard the name Ambrose Bierce. Or Alan Moore’s Superman tale, “For The Man Who Has Everything.” But… It all fits. It all works. It’s all beautiful, and just another piece in the puzzle.
And I said that the ending to this episode was perfect for everyone, right? Cause it is. On one hand, for those of you who wouldn’t want to see your characters get an amazing resolution in the Sideways universe, you have real Island endings: Jack dies. Hurley and Ben will now run the Island. They won’t do things the same, they won’t continue the patterns they’ve inherited. Kate and Sawyer and Claire and Miles and Richard Alpert and Frank Lapidus will fly away to safety. Jack will go to his resting place, to the spot between the bamboo trees where he first awoke on the Island and he’ll watch his friends’ plane fly away overhead and Vincent will come and keep him company in his last resting place…
And the Sideways world negates none of that. Not a single thing, nor does it betray the interest you’ve developed in this show over the years, and it shouldn’t harm the connection you’ve made with it. It just shouldn’t.
As Christian (loved Kate’s line: “Christian Shephard? Really?”) said, “Everyone dies.” Some of the people in that church died before Jack and some died after. And it makes clear that everything was real. Whatever happened, happened. But they came back together at the end, and remember how we were talking about how time didn’t seem to make sense in the Sideways world? Well, that’s because, there is no time there. There is no now. And when they’re ready and they’ve accepted who they are and who they were, they’ll move on. And those who aren’t ready yet, like Ben or Faraday or Ana Lucia, they won’t go yet. They’ll stay behind and work out what they need to and then, as Lord Of The Rings put it, then they can “sail west.” They can go to the Gray Havens.
In fact, they really should’ve filmed that Jimmy Kimmel special in a church just to echo those last moments with everyone together. I don’t really like Jimmy Kimmel, but the special was interesting, especially watching it pretty near after the beautiful, almost immaculate ending of the episode, when you’re still in shock, still coping.
Right after the end of the episode I went back to watch the beginning of “LA X” and… it works nicely, in my opinion. Jack looks out the window of Oceanic 815 and then looks around the interior of the plane almost as if he’s startled to be back there, struggling to recognize something. The plane hits turbulence and he clings to the arm rest for dear life and it’s broken by Rose’s gentle voice, telling him it’s okay, and that “you can let go now.” It’s so pointed and beautiful when you watch it with new eyes.
And of course the Island is sunk in the Sideways world because in that existence, it’s out of everyone’s mind. They’ve sunk together.
And we can argue about when the happy Sideways reality begins, of course. It’s Jack’s story, of course, so it probably ends the moment Jack closes his eye and that Ajira 316 plane flying overhead could also be metaphorically his Oceanic 815 of his dreams, and Jack’s closing his eyes, going to his final sleep, perchance to dream, a dream of flying. But it all depends on your read: Maybe the Sideways world really did start when Juliet beat the hell out of Jughead at the bottom of that shaft. Or maybe that explosion just used the electromagnetic time travel energy of the Island to send them back to the present. Maybe in your view, Oceanic 815 crashed and everyone died and… Maybe the Sideways world only existed in Jack’s head alone, his final dream of a better life… Whatever way you look at it, you choose your own level of meaning and understanding.
“We should get coffee sometime.” Michael Giacchino. Jack Bender. The actors, every single one of them, not just in the finale but always. “I may not believe in a lot of things, but I believe in duct tape.” The fact that we got as little Boone as possible. How Kate looked in that dress. The idea of Hurley and Ben running the Island together. The fact that the Source is fed from two different streams. That flying punch! The weird shots of the castaways’ beach on the Island, featuring the wreckage of Oceanic 815, (an insert by the good folks at the American Broadcast Network) but devoid of people, reminiscent of the ending of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a pilot.” All those amazing awakenings and FLASHBACKgasms. The fact that you even have to relook at the episode titles of this past season with new meaning (“LA X” no longer refers to just another universe, but a crossroads of sorts). All of the episodes really, referenced tonight (“The Long Con”) or not (Just think about “Enter 77″ now). The idea of Aaron with two moms (that’s a spin off that is literally dying to happen). Hurley saying to Sayid, “You can’t let other people tell you who you are,” because, well, we all play parts and roles. “I’ll see you in another life, brotha!” There’s so many things that we could be talking about, so many great things…
Watching the finale last night, I kept my eye half on twitter during the commercials and it was interesting seeing people saying a lot about how the finale was a love letter to itself and spent a lot of time self referencing. And I agree. And I think it worked beautifully. For a sci fi show about characters and people, I think the end is about us. We’ve all got to come together on this one, and accept it and appreciate it, and then it’s time to move on…
And in that vein, because I don’t want to philosophize on Lost alone (nor would I want to push that button alone), so I asked some of my fellow Counterforcers to weigh in and I want to share with you what they had to say, and then, despite everything happened in “The End,” the very last thing I want to say about this show is exactly the same, not changed at all, and I’ll share that with you, but first…
Benjamin Light:In a nutshell, I can sum up my thoughts on LOST with a text I sent to Marco as the episode ended. I wrote: “This episode feels like falling in love, over and over and over again.”
I could have watched a dozen more “awakening” moments in the sideways world, they were just perfect TV.
It dawned on me at about the 2 hour mark that, rather than wait for a big explosive end to explain everything, the writers instead were just going to willfully ignore some of the big mysteries. And I wasn’t annoyed at all. One of my favorite things about the show is speculating on the mysteries. Having those long, quasi-scientific conversations with friends about even random strangers about what something might mean on the show was half the fun. Lindelof and Cuse decided not to take that away from the fans. Sure, they could have just told us the island is a spaceship from the future and the smoke monster is evil nanotechnology, but why bother? If that’s your theory, it still holds water. This was a show that was famous for its fans’ speculation and debate; the way they left certain mysteries open to interpretation feels very much in keeping with its history.
Conrad Noir:I still don’t know what to think. I’m content with what happened but I don’t know what to feel at all. Maybe nothing, maybe so many things. What I do know was that was the most dragged out event in TV history. Did it really have to go to 11:30?
Oh yes. I believe I read somewhere that the finale was exactly 103 minutes. I would’ve killed for just an extra five more, if you know what I mean, but apparently there’s going to be an extended cut on the DVDs with 20 more minutes.
Benjamin:After the episode ended, I got up to take a leak. After that, I walked down the hall and suddenly started crying. I wasn’t happy or sad. It was like someone had reached inside me and turned all my emotional knobs up to 11. I was like Daniel Faraday, crying at the news of Flight 815 being found and not knowing why.
That’s how good the finale was.
Take a bow, Lost cast and crew, you did it.
Lola:Sometime ago I wrote a post asking whether or not I really wanted answers from LOST. I guess that Lindelof or Cuse are regular readers of Lovely Entropy because the finale contained next to no “answers.”
I watched the finale with my dad and when it ended, I turned to him and said: “What just happened?”
“What is the Dharma Initiative?” he asked me.
“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Where was Walt? WAAAALT!!!”
I think we all felt like that little necked kid in the Tootsie Roll Pop ad:
“What was up with the Hurley Bird? The world may never know.”
I was annoyed at first so I did what I always do when I’m annoyed by LOST: called my brother to complain while searching the internet for answers. As I was searching and complaining something dawned on me: everyone was confused and everybody wanted to talk about it. People were posting theories, they were cracking jokes or they were just outright complaining to people in the room with them, friends over the phone or outright strangers on the internet. Sure, there are people who are going to be annoyed no matter what happens, but the more I think about it the more I kind of liked the finale. It’s open-endedness gives it’s nerdy fanbase enough food for thought to last us until Terry O’Quinn & Michael Emerson’s pilot gets picked up. And not only that, but it saves us all from having to sit through anymore of the writer’s awful, half-assed answers (the whispers were dead people? Seriously LOST?). The finale, in my opinion, was genius in its laziness. The writers are happy because they don’t have to try to find answers that would appeal to everyone. The nerds are happy because they can keep talking about the show they love and ABC is happy because they made a boatload of money last night.
So, anyone have any idea what that church was about?
It’s about everything. And everyone. It’s a story about stories and all stories end.
They can be reread time and again though, revisited, and relived. Just like your favorite song. Just like a game, if you want. It’s adaptive. You can make up your own versions for where the story ends, if you want, your own back stories, your own ideas for what happens to your favorite and least favorite characters after it fades to black.
But you know what else you can do when the story and the song and the game ends? You can start it over, you can return and begin again. You’ll see all the connections you missed, and the little moments will resonate even stronger with you…
When you were a kid, because it was the simplest of all possible answers, they told you that God was up in the sky.
As you got older, when you wanted more complex answers, they told you that God was somewhere within.
As a kid my mother always told me that she knew I’d grow up to be smart. She just knew, she’d assure me. That’s nice to hear, for a boy from his mother, but you have to press on and ask why? Without quantification, that kind of praise can be dangerous. So I pressed on. Why, why, why?
The answer, she told me, was because as a kid I understood about the moon and the sun and space. “Huh?” I’d ask. And she told me that she was always amazed that even before kindergarten I understood that the moon orbited the Earth, the Earth orbited the sun, and the Sol solar system orbited around the giant black hole at the middle of the milky way galaxy, and the galaxy was just a string of other galaxies, probably in a snowflake shape, rotating around something else. “You even knew the name of the sun!” she’d tell me, her eyes beaming with motherly pride.
Of course, when I was a kid my mother explained to me what black holes were, as best as she could, as best as I could understand it then, and that’s probably had more effect on me than the memetic concept of God.
There’s just something beautiful about the our gray satellite up there, isn’t there? “Magnificent desolation,” Buzz Aldrin called it. And he’s right. It looks so much to me like the physical manifestation of an actual human soul: bleak, sad, barren, empty, but with beautiful patterns within the dust and craters if you want to see them.
When I was a kid, we constantly would hear things like, “Tonight the sky will be clear and the planets will be aligned enough that you’ll be able to see Pluto!” Of course, this is back when Pluto was still a planet, because it was neutered by classifications. But I kept looking up in the sky and not seeing it.
Same with comets. Supposedly we could certain comets up in the night sky. I never saw them. And I kept looking. I kept wanting to see them. I was like Fox Mulder and John Locke. I wanted to believe. That there was something up there in the sky, that maybe there was something resembling a God-like thing in our universe, and, worst of all and most devastating of all, you know what? I wanted to believe I was special and somehow seeing these things up there would confirm that for me.
But I never saw them.
But there was the moon. You could see the moon. You knew mankind had gone there and come up and could, theoretically, go back again whenever we felt like it. It’s up there, whenever we want to visit it, that first step on a greater journey. No matter how bad life is Earthside, there’s something up there for us. There’s tangible proof just within grasp that we can escape Earthly troubles and change our whole view of the universe, for good or for worse.
A few days ago my mother was telling me about the day of the actual moon landing, when she was a little girl. She had been playing in a friend’s yard when both her and the friend’s mother came out and told them they had to come inside and watch something. “What is it?” they ask. “Something important,” they were told. “The future.” So inside they went and watched as man set foot on the moon.
My mother described the friend’s mother’s grave reaction to the event, her still face as she watched the grainy television images with cold eyes. “God is dead,” the woman kept whispering. Mind you, this is two years before The New York Times announced it.
My mother is somebody who still firmly believes in the idea of a God, if not a specific religion, not out of a firm belief, a strong faith, but a strong hope. She tells me that’s all there is. “All human beliefs, at their core,” she tells me, “have that hope at their center. When you fall in love, you hope it’s with the right person, and you hope they won’t be a shithead or damage your heart or your sense of the world.”
It’s from my mother that I get a lot of my sense of the world, those beliefs and hopes that you get before you actually enter the world and see how bad/wonderful things are for yourself. She’s also the first person to walk me out into our garden at night as a kid and point up at the sky and say, “Look at that thing.” She’s also the person who first put on Star Wars for me as a kid and said, “You’re going to love this.” And I’ll never forget her walking in during the scene and saying along with Obi Wan Kenobi, “That’s no moon. It’s a space station.”
But I said this is would be the end of me howling at the moon. So as I get to the end of this, I’ll say this one last thing about my mother, besides the fact that I love her, that she read Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon to me as a child…
The moon isn’t a real thing to us. Just a symbol. It stands for something different – probably several different somethings – for everyone. Even in the art it inspires. But we don’t really think of it as a real place we can go to. Just somewhere we dream about going.
So this is about me. About childhood, and about symbols. So here’s something that’s not a shock, something I’m pretty sure I’ve said before: Batman is my favorite “super hero.” My favorite comic book character, if you will. My obsession with him starts where a lot of comic book fancies start: he’s just cool, right? But to me, he was always cool because he was real. That could be you under the cape and cowl, fighting crime and fighting a hopeless battle to make the world a better place. That could be me.
How sad that I don’t believe in God, at least not God the way others do, but I do believe in Batman?
Whenever it came up to write that piece, the editor at TR, Alex, who’s a really nice guy, suggested something about comics. Not a tough subject for me since I’m a bit of a dork, but I’d also say a bit of an amateur expert in the field. And there’s a billion things that I could’ve written about then, but the biggest, most current thing at the time and the thing most prevalent comics-wise in my thoughts: Batman was dead.
The gist of the story is simple: Batman, recently deceased, is watching his own funeral from the cusp of the afterlife. The attendees of the funeral are all his friends, loved ones, and the criminals he spent his entire life fighting. And everyone has a eulogy, telling a story of how Batman died, all of them starring a different iteration of the caped crusader and depicting a different death.
But when the stories run out and it’s time to move on, Batman is ushered into the sweet hereafter by his mother. He’s fought the good fight, she tells him, and he’s to be rewarded. And the reward for being the Batman? To continue being the Batman.
And we learn that young Bruce Wayne’s mother read Goodnight Moon to him as a child and it was his favorite book growing up.
The same here, mostly. No more talking about the moon, I promise. Unless something really, really, really interesting comes up. The story up there has been done for a while, but at some point we’re going back. At some point, everything starts over again.
Is it me or was there nothing really of super duper interest that came out news-wise from this past Comic-Con?
I mean, the Lost panel sounded interesting, but it always does. No real super huge news teased from the last Lost panel ever, more just silly videos and what have you, it seemed like. Probably to preserve the mystery about what direction the new/final season will take? Whatever direction it is, I like how they’re teasing us with the strong possibility that next year will start with the rebooted timeline created via Jack/Juliet blowing up Jughead. Hmmm.
Other things of note from the just concluded Comic-Con 2009:
Felicia Day.
Apparently this young lady is on fire. She was good in Dr. Horrible as the harmless decent sweet Mary Sue female lead, and while her online show, The Guild, is just not for me, it’s apparently quite popular. She’s in those commercials for whatever the hell appliance store it is and she’s in that as yet unaired episode of Dollhouse which will supposedly lead to more appearances in season 2. She’s on fire!
And having witnessed her in person earlier this year at Wondercon, I can’t begin to describe to you how lovely she is in person. She almost looks bad for your teeth.
Iron Man 2.
Well, no, not really. The first Iron Man movie was okay, not bad at all, and kind of refreshing in what a trainwreck it wasn’t. But it wasn’t spectacular and part of that, I think, has to do with how uninteresting the Iron Man character is. If I was writing an Iron Man comic/movie, you want to know how I’d do it? Exactly the same as the first movie, just minus the actual suit of metal and guys in suits of metal hitting each other and just all of that bullshit, really. And maybe add in a little more sex. But it’d be a lot of Tony Stark just traveling the world, getting drunk, and solving all the world’s problems with money. Trust me, it’d work.
Zombieland.
Honestly, I could give a shit about this movie. In fact, it looks kind of stupid to me. But look at that picture up above. That’s hardcore, right?
The trailer for the new Tron movie, Tron 2.0, Tron: Legacy, Tr2n, whatever the hell it’s called:
The quality on that video is crap. Go here to see it in much better quality, minus the soundtrack score.
Granted, if it were up to me, I’d suggest they just remake Tron, because who’s honestly seen that movie recently? The last time I saw it, I was probably 4 and back, then I thought it was awesome, but back then cames like Pong were The Shit.
The only actual bit of comic book whatever news that I’ve heard out of SDCC that was remotely interesting, and believe me, this is. And a long time coming too. So much so that it’d be impossible to sum up quickly, but for now, let’s just say: Fuck Todd McFarlane.
The new season of Heroes!
No, I can’t back that up. Sorry. Not even close. August Bravo told me not long ago that he had to eventually drop this show and it sounds like he picked the perfect time. From what I can tell the next season will focus on some kind of weird carnival bullshit, Sylar looking creepy, and a very special episode where Claire the cheerleader gives lipstick lesbianism (with the lovely MadelineZima) a on off try, probably right around Sweeps.
Doctor Who‘s new specials and the next iteration.
In short: Fuck the haters. And pity the confused. Sadly, the movies rumors were way off, but that’s probably for the best right now. The trailer for the next special in the UK, “The Waters Of Mars” is here:
That’s the new trailer, from the recent Comic-Con panel, and you can find the original teaser trailer here, and the preview scene here. I’ll spare you the teaser for “The End Of Time” because it’s just a kind of placeholder. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know.
And, of course, filming is underway on the new season already with the new Doctor and the new companion:
The panel with Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Elizabeth Mitchelle, and Eliza Dushku (who is now dating Rick Fucking Fox) sounded interesting. Kind of fan service-y with no real depth, but interesting nonetheless.
Semi-unrelated, it’s been suggested to me that perhaps Counterforce should go to Comic-Con next year? That would be… something, wouldn’t it?
The other day I was checking out the beginning of volume 3 of Alan Moore’s excellent comic series, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, entitled Century, and I was struck by quite a few things.
Century, I should add, is very frustratingly being released in three volumes over the course of the next three years. The first volume, “1910,” seen above, is awesome and fun. I can’t wait for next year’s “1969.”
Meet Janni Dakkar AKA “Jenny Diver” AKA “No One.”
If you’ve not heard of the series before, but do remember that atrocious movie “adaptation” from a few years back starring Sean Connery, then have no fear, the comics are absolutely nothing like that. But the gist of the plot is essentially the same: In a play on Phillip Jose Farmer’s World Newton family, classic characters from old British literature combine to form a sort of Justice League of Victorian England.
But who does he want her to go meet?
You’ll also remember that this resulted in a truly atrocious movie based on the graphic novel, starring Sean Connery and directed by Stephen Norrington. The less said about it, the better.
Her father, the dying Captain Nemo, of course.
One could go on forever about The League’s several volumes so far, and it’d be fascinating, especially the way the comic handles not just history, but the history of British fiction and mashes up it all up into fascinating stories of intrigue and adventure.
The beginning of the third volume, Century, shows us the vision of a group of occultists trying to raise the Moonchild, something British occultists are frequently trying to do. The characters themselves, especially Simon Iff, are right out of Aleister “the wickedest man in the world” Crowley’s novel, The Moonchild, which is about groups of good and evil magicians trying to breed and raise a magical child that would end this aeon and bring about the next one, that they would control. For a more contemporary reference, think Bree from LonelyGirl15 or Suri Cruise.
That, in turn, got me thinking about one of my favorite series of graphic novels, The Invisibles, by Grant Morrison, about a group of anarchy loving occultists who are trying to stop the Archons/Older Ones (think: Cthulhu type evil Gods) from using their own moonchild to bring about the end of the world. There moonchild is wonderfully gruesome looking, this sloppering thing of tentacles in a somewhat humanoid body that has to be kept behind this huge cloak to shield you from it’s unbelievable hideousness. Plus, there was a scene where a bunch of bad dudes were watching a porn tape of the Moonchild fucking Princess Diana to bring about another, more potent, more human looking moonchild that… well, nevermind. Princess Diana’s always had an interesting relationship with the comics medium and I realize that out of context this all sounds a little more than bizarre. Ah, but if only I could find you a nice scan… Sigh.
Regardless, most occultists are stupid little bitches, or those who can’t handle their own mediocrity, so they turn it into something “magical” and “bizarre” and use it to have a lot of group sex. Think: Your average Drama Club or Band Geeks at high school. Aleister Crowley was really no different. Though I would’ve enjoyed partying at his vacation home in Sicily, called the Occult Abbey Of Thelema. And in particular, the nightmare room…
The way it worked was: If you wanted to party with Crowley and his coven of orgiasts, that was cool with them – Crowley’s motto was “Do As You Please” after all – but there was one catch. To party with them, you had to first survive for a time in Le Chambre de Cauchmars, The Room Of Nightmares. The room was basically just a room, but with frescoes of Heaven, Earth, and especially Hell painted on the walls. The image of Hell was said to have contained some of the foulest, most depraved things ever. But still, not so bad right? Not so fast, champ. Before you began your time in the room, you had to take Papa Crowley’s special mixture of hashish and opium and acid and then trip the light fantastic as the walls of the Nightmare Room seemed to literally come alive and try to rip the flesh off of your bones.
Look at that silly dork.
Charming, right? The idea was to make your soul vulnerable to every evil spirit there was to master them, to survive a gaze into the abyss of horrible and come out stronger for it. Also, it must’ve been fun for Crowley and his fellow dungeon folk to watch people just losing their shit left and right.
Ah, to be at the whimsy of the magic man. And then there’s music: Primarily “Moonchild” by King Crimson, which I was reminded of coincidentally just a moment ago (I shit you not) when “The M62 Song” by The Doves came on, which includes portions of the song by King Crimson. What weird, small world.
But, ah, the moon. The lunar eclipse. Night and day, masculine and feminine. From an art perspective, or a crazy black magic perspective, there’s just something more infinitely interesting and mysterious about the moon, right? Something that just makes us want to put pictures of wolves howling at it on t-shirts. Apollo was a douchebag, and it’s not like you can sit there and stare up at the sun, but you can spend hours and hours and hours just staring up at the moon, letting it’s majesty wash over you and inspire you.
Three things today. Two of them looking forward and one looking back…
…is hilarious to me. Art by a fella named Murray Groat mashing up TinTin with the Lovecraft mythos. Something about Hergé’s ligne claire style of art mixed with that lovable scamp Cthulhu is just perfect to me. I’m looking forward to Spielberg’s upcoming TinTin movie mostly because it seems like it’s Spielberg just geeking out and that seems fascinating to me since even when he’s at his zaniest, he’s still very controlled, very measured, never what I think you could call “excessive.” How great would it be to see that little French kid taking all tentacled Old Ones from beyond the stars that inspire madness at their very mention? That’s a recipe for box office success, yo.
And, yes, also bullshit: That they’re still trying to push forward with the big screen Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot. We’ll see if it actually makes it to movie theaters. But you should read the always classy Joss Whedon’s reaction to the latest news of the matter.
from here.
If this was the last episode of the show ever (a very sad but quite possible outcome), it was a worthy one. The show went back to it’s well: Balls to the wall failure and immaturity. Hank and Dean got a home school prom. All of the manly men struck out, dreams weren’t just crushed but stomped into the ground, and women are more than a whole other genre to the males of the show, they’re a whole other monstrous species. At first I was amazed at how long the “Rusty Venture” sex act gag went on and then it reached a point of equilibrium where I never wanted it to end. Al and Shore Leave were some of my least favorite characters (mostly because they, like Sgt. Hatred, were an incredibly funny idea that was literally beat into the ground over and over), but I kind of like that they’re the only ones that found happiness.
I mentioned before how similar Lost was to The Invisibles
Women blame blackberrys and iphones 
The other day I was checking out the beginning of volume 3 of Alan Moore’s excellent comic series, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, entitled Century, and I was struck by quite a few things.
Meet Janni Dakkar AKA “Jenny Diver” AKA “No One.”
But who does he want her to go meet?
Her father, the dying Captain Nemo, of course.
Look at that silly dork.
