On our Star Wars podcast a few weeks ago, I was threatening that I was going to write a monograph about Ewan McGregor’s hair in films, and I’m sure Benjamin Light thought I was just joking. He probably – rightfully? – hoped that I was.
Here’s the sad thing: I could have gone on and on, and in quite a big of greater detail than I did. Their might be a strange little e-book on this topic in the future so, you know, beware.
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At some point, I feel like I could write another piece (though a much shorter one) on the hair of prominent comic book writers, especially those in the Marvel bullpen. In short: They’re all bald! Sometimes they have the wall of hair on the side, a power move that I’m sure is called “The Captain Picard” in barber college. Sometimes they just go for the shave and shine, electing to try to convince us that they chose to shave their head, not that they were losing a war with genetics. (“Make it SO!”)
Oh well. These are the people who decide who of our favorite four color heroes will die (like Peter Parker recently) or get raped and stuffed in a refrigerator.
FYI: TV Tropes informs me that it is actually referred to as “Bald Of Awesome.”
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Benjamin Light informed me tonight that Ewan McGregor was rated as #5 on GQ‘s list of Most Stylish Men. I could tell you who was rated higher than him, but it’s bullshit. At least it wasn’t Michael Fassbender or Channing Tatum.
Fucking Channing Tatum.
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The blog is just days away from ending!
And, as always, I’m going to ask and suggest that you check out our podcasts…
Time Travel Murder Mystery is on a very short hiatus currently, but I imagine that you can expect new episodes again in early January. Meanwhile, Greedo Shot First, our Star Wars podcast for people who hate Star Wars fans, is still going strong. I believe that the subject of our next episode will be a rewatching of The Empire Strikes Back. The haircuts in that movie were really just so so.
I have somewhat of a New Age streak to me, but a lot of this 13 bak’tun, Nibiru, and “galactic synchronization beam” shit, the works of Terrence McKenna, and any of the panicked reports on the Long Calendar you hear about on the internet is just silly. Interesting, but silly. It’s fun, when it’s tongue in cheek, but still silly. It’s your average modern confusion. It’s fun to joke about, to make funny macros of, but it’s as important to our lives as cat memes.
Today a girl I know came into my job. I like her because she’s a bit silly and we can talk about goofy science things sometimes, but I’ve been growing increasingly worried because she’s deadly serious about being terrified about 12/21. She’s been telling me for weeks how she’s been meditating continuously, trying to affect global consciousness shifts for the better. She’s memorizing maps of ley lines and trying to save up good karma to release into the atmosphere. She told me that she’s bought plenty of cat food and is taking tomorrow off of work and that she plans to spend the whole day meditating.
I hear meditation and I keep thinking masturbation.
Could I meditate for a whole day? Well, the manly bragging side of me says sure, that I could certainly give it a try, but honestly, I think I’d run out of material after a while. After a while it’d be just vapors…
Anyway.
I like the think of the world in terms of chess, or more appropriately, abstract chess metaphors. It’s all about analysis, experience, knowledge, imagination, and movement. Progressions. There is a board, a set pattern, but also, there’s a field that stretches out. The moves we make exist before we make them and they continue to exist after they have occurred. The game has ended before it’s even started, and by the time you’ve played it out and finished the game, another one has already started.
That sounds like a endorsement of reincarnation of some kind of psuedo-Buddhist notions. I have none such. To me, metaphysics and God are exactly the same: I am curious about them, but I do not believe in them. Except for the “mysterious ways” in which they work that can all be boiled down to simply physics and scientific understandings of the world.
I’m obsessed with time. Just the same as you, just the same as anyone. People still wear watches. The time readout is a huge part of most cell phone dashboards. We look at calendars, we read our morning horoscopes in the newspapers, and we make plans (and we make God laugh). We can both travel in time and change the past when we use our memories.
To borrow from The Invisibles: Time is the soil in which we grow.
I believe that everything is possible. Or, everything is permitted (and nothing is possible), as Hassan-i Sabbah said, but all is determined under one strict criteria: Perspective.
Creation is the same as destruction, and one follows the other, and always has, at least if you look at it in the right light. Anything can happen (and similarly, can not happen), but it all depends on your scope. The sky is the limit, but only if you let it be.
The end of the world makes for good TV. It makes a bad joke a more often told joke. It probably translates into pageviews right before Christmastime. It turns small minds into bemused minds into fearful minds, and stupidity abounds.
Prophecies are a cool idea, the same as foreshadowing in stories, but they only come true when they’re made to come true. There is no difference between fate and free will. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, whether we’re talking about the end of the world, the perception of the web of time around us, or even the end of this very blog: Mektoub.
It’s fascinating to look back at ancient cultures and see how they perceived time, how they built up Gods and Demons and explained the world to themselves in stories. I find all of that history of yesteryear interesting, but I’m not afraid of it. I’m more terrified of where the cultures of today go next. Times are hard, paychecks don’t last as long, and we really need to start worrying about where our next LOL will come from.
We should look forward to the moments in which we outgrow our fairy tales, but never forget how important they were to us, especially since they lead us to this…
I’m quite curious about the end of the world, and how things get dismantled over time. I think about that kind of thing especially as this blog draws to a close, as the song slowly fades to its inevitable conclusion, and we put the chairs up and flip off the lights before we go. Let’s leave it with the sage wisdom of the distant past: Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…
“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”
2. Natural blonde Emma Stone has been cast as love interest Gwen Stacy in the next Spiderman movie, to be directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, recently of Never Let Me Go and The Social Network.
Some thoughts on these two prospects:
1. Zack Snyder? That’s fucking ridiculous.
2. Wait, didn’t we all think that Emma Stone was going to be playing Mary Jane Watson (who, if you know your true Spiderman lore, plays Peter Parker/Spiderman’s love interest and eventual wife after the death of Gwen Stacy), right?
Look at that list and tell me that if you had to rank those directors that you wouldn’t put Snyder dead last. Hell, I don’t think the guy would even win in a game of FMK.
2. Alternately, the list of young female actors that Emma Stone was possibly competing against for the primary and secondary female leads in the new Spiderman movie included: Dianna Agron from Glee, Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Scott Pilgrim and the upcoming unnecessary prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, Imogen Poots from 28 Weeks Later, Emma Roberts, Teresa Palmer (who had been cast in George Miller’s Justice League movie that didn’t happen), Lilly Collins, Ophelia Lovibond, Dominique McElligot, and Mia Wasikowska, who was last seen in Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland.
Presumably Mary Jane is still in this movie, but just in the background, not taking center stage until a second or third movie?
1. Supposedly the choice of helmer for this project was Christopher Nolan’s, which, of course, would then have to be approved by the studio. But, based on the very realistic take that Nolan has always adopted in his previous films, can you really believe that Zack Snyder was his top choice? I call studio bullshit.
And if that’s the case, then it’s a shame. Warner Bros, you’re not MGM, you know. You can afford to make some good decisions. I mean, shit, did you guys even see Watchmen? And can you actually look at the teaser trailer for Sucker Punch and say that you actually want to go see that? I’d hate to unfairly malign frat boys and date rapists in the same lumping, but let me put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be rubbing elbows with those kind of people at the theater on the opening night of a movie like Sucker Punch.
2. A lot of this ranting might really just equate to a thinly veiled reason to post pictures of Emma Stone. Sorry.
1. The minor story details that are leaking out of this Superman project are that it’ll include General Zod in some form, which is… whatever, and that it’ll ask and supposedly the answer of “Why Superman?” with young Clark Kent traveling around trying to decide if he should put on a pair of red and blue tights with a cape and go about doing super heroics to restore the status quo. Great. On a related note, who the fuck is still watching Smallville?
2. I’m not really sorry.
1. Now I’m reading that Snyder was not the studio’s first choice for the big chair – OF COURSE – but that Goyer’s script was a bit of a rushed mess, which isn’t all that surprising, and they wanted a director that would turn the project around quickly (most likely because of the stringent deadline imposed on them by that lawsuit recently), not spend time making the project a beast of quality and beauty like Aronofsky might.
A brief history lesson: Along with Terry Gilliam and about a thousand other people, Aronofsky was briefly (in Hollywood development hell terms) in charge of a Watchmen adaptation. I think this is a golden lesson for what happens when you let a guy like Aronofksy fall off a movie like Watchmen: you get a piece of shit director like Snyder instead.
2. I should say something else here rather than just posting copious pictures of Emma Stone, right?
I’ve got to say that while it was fun but not great, I was glad to see Sam Raimi go back to his roots with Drag Me To Hell after he finished with that first Spiderman trilogy. If, for nothing else, he needed a creative win, but it also pointed out, I think, that back in the 90s, directors like him and Peter Jackson really level jumped far too much past their station of talent with the Spiderman movies and the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
If you give a bunch of low budget silly horror guys far too much money and responsibility and power, they’re obviously prone to a disgusting amount of melodrama, wacky musical numbers/”dance” sequences, and excessive slow motion shots.
1. I’m also seeing that now they’re offering Wolverine 2 to Arnofosky. This is not much of a consolation prize. I’m sorry, Darren Aronofsky, but the winner in this is not you. Nor us.
I’m terrified of who they’ll try to cast as Superman now. I didn’t necessarily love Brandon Routh, who will definitely not be coming back for the new film, but he was hardly the worst thing about Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. The worst thing was clearly the plot. And I’m think I’m paranoid about this because in the past the studio has seriously tried to cast Nic Cage, Ashton Kutcher, Brendan Fraser, and some dude from Mutant X as the last son of Krypton.
This especially all troubles me because A) given the chance, this will be fucked up, and B) we all know who desperately should be cast as Clark Kent/Superman:
2. I could really go either way on Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker but it just occurred to me: how great would Jon Hamm be in a Spiderman movie? Right?
3. For all the trouble that these super hero movies and their assorted bullshit can be, can Joss Whedon’s The Avengers come out already?
4. Side bar: Finally got around to seeing Kick-Ass the other day. That movie is fresh, raw bullshit. And was so incredibly boring. I could really see Chloe Moretz become a kind of adolescent Milla Jovovich-type action heroine (but better, of course), but I’m just sad that the road to that hard to start through a movie like this. Not that I was excited about X-Men: First Class before, but I’m somehow less excited now. If possible.
Though those pictures of January Jones as Emma Frost/The White Queen are giggle-inducing.
1. Keep thinking about that Jon Hamm brilliance. Why? Because it’s perfect. Jon Hamm could play Clark Kent and Don Draper could play Superman. Benjamin Light even pointed out it in because, well, do you remember that episode of Mad Men a few weeks ago where Don’s secret identity is about to be found out by the government and he’s having a massive panic attack? He comes into his place with Dr. Faye and tears open his shirt, buttons flying everywhere, and a lot of were thinking, “SUPERMAN!” But now we’ve got Zack Snyder and I can’t help but think that I just got INCEPTED.
But with the dream casting of Jon Hamm one would hope to not cast some 20 year old actress as Lois Lane, I would think.
2. I was re-watching scenes from (500) Days Of Summer and again have to mention how technically impressive that movie is. Marc Webb’s work in that film kind of reminds me of Fincher, to a small degree, who’s probably one of our most impressive working directors as far as the technical aspect goes. Makes me kind of wonder what he’ll do with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo other than just cash in on a hit a la Ron Howard and The Da Vinci Code. That said, I imagine that Fincher could produce a better film version of the Stieg Larsson book than the original Swedish version in his sleep.
You know how it’s upsetting to us when there’s a fine foreign movie that gets an American remake to dumb it down for the audiences on our shores? Well, I’ll go ahead and say what you should all be really thinking: The original Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is not that great. As a film, it’s actually kind of ridiculously poor. Noomi Rapace is fine in the movie, but the rest of the movie is very poorly constructed (not to mention that the book itself is hardly what I’d call “cinematic”). This isn’t a case similar to Let The Right One In and Let Me In.
1. I’m glad that they’re at least making an animated feature of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman, which is the quintessentially greatest Superman story ever. Oddly enough, Lois Lane in that is voiced by Mad Men‘s own Joan Hollway, Christine Hendricks.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m writing pornography in the notebook of the Gods.”
Pictures from various comics by writer Grant Morrison, one of the most fascinating writer of comic books and radical mind warping esoterica out there. There’s many highlights, but one of my favorites of his is a series called The Invisibles, which I’ve talked about a few times here before. I think of it again because of the impending loss of Lost, which has more than a lot similarities in some regards to the comic. That’s a conversation we should have, but another time, I think, cause it’d be a much longer conversation, and… Is it me or does it certainly feels like time is speeding up as we get closer to the end…
Last night Desmond finally properly returned to the world of Lost and I do believe that he not only brought some of his crazy Scottish magic with him, but he also brought the endgame we’ve all been eagerly anticipating/dreading.
And with his return last night, there came not only a new spin on this season’s recurring flash sideways action, but some complicated questions and theories about whether anyone on this show will ever be allowed to live “Happy Ever After.”
Ah, poor Desmond. I’ve said it many a time before, but I truly believe that he lingers somewhere at the living, breathing, constantly raw heart of this show, that he’s immersed in the DNA of Lost like permanent alcohol poisoning. At so many points in his life he’s been not only lost himself, but a constant loser, yet still we love him. He is our sad, wayward Homeric hero and we root for him endlessly, always on the edge of our seat in his continuing quest to return to his Penelope and his Ithaca. And two years ago he found her, only to discover at the end of last season and here in the midpoint of this one that his particular odyssey is not through him.
If this season of Lost, with the continue flash sideways motif going on, has been about, it’s parallels and opposites. Whereas Island Des has always been a coward struggling to find circumstances to make him better, always been a man out of work, a man whose relationships define him more than anything, particularly his love for Penny and the struggle for approval from her father, Charles Widmore. With that family it’s always been a question of worthiness. Widmore never saw Desmond as worthy of his daughter, let alone his fucking Scotch. And though Penny was there, alive and breathing in the flesh in Desmond’s arms so many times, he still went out into the world and struggled to be worthy of her.
Of course there’s parallels to Jack’s love for Kate there. Kate was right there in front of him but Jack was willing to blow up a nuclear bomb to start over again, to be worthy of her (or to get the fuck away from her once and for all). And Desmond wasn’t necessarily as extreme enough as a nuclear weapon, but for him it was about winning a race around the world, besting her father in one of his own challenges. That fails, of course, and somehow Desmond discovers a vastly more important calling in life: Saving the world by pressing a button every 108 minutes for three years.
And then there’s Sideways Desmond! He’s a man defined by his work, both immersed in his materialistic joys and apart from the world that offers them, and he’s beloved by his employer/father figure, Charles Widmore.
You just know that 60 year old MacCutcheon tastes amazing.
And of course Charlie comes into his life again, and he ruins it all again.
Well, Charlie, and all those crazy electromagnetics.
This is a complicated episode, both in itself and what it means for the future for Lost, and the way it’s evolved from the show’s past and complicated mythology so far. Parallels and opposites: The worst three words that Desmond could ever face in his life, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” mean something powerfully different in the Sideways World, a call to something else he should be struggling to find. His odyssey is just beginning and his Penelope is just out there waiting for him. He now needs to seek out what Charlie called, “spectacular, consciousness altering love.”
But then again, Charlie’s a fucking junkie. What the hell does he know?
And so many wonderful returns: Fisher Stevens as George Minkowski, his driver who wants to find him some “companionship,” Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore/Faraday, and Finnoula Flanagan as Eloise Widmore/Hawking. Everyone seems to know something more than Desmond, to know that he’s not ready yet for… something, but in some way they’re going to aid him on his quest. Faraday is a musician (one who wants to combine classic music with modern rock) in this Sideways timeline, which was perhaps his heart’s desire even if his dreaming destiny is science, but I loved the philosophical ramblings he shared with Desmond. This is not the world that they were meant to have, he says. Something’s been changed. Like the after of a nuclear weapon going off. Do you want to blow up a nuclear bomb? Desmond asks. I think I already have, Widmore/Faraday replies.
And then Desmond meets the woman of his dreams, the love of his life in another life. Parallels and opposites: This time she’s the one running the tour de stade. She probably has a lot of frustrations to vent (she is, sadly, stuck in Flash Forward at least through this season, after all).
Unrelated, I think this episode highlights a strong difference between Americans and Europeans…
Americans drink and they get drunk. The Eurotrash have really developed and mastered the skill to just keep drinking. Pouring yourself a glass of whiskey is just an extension of your hand, something you just do, like breathing, eating, or genital manipulation. It’s an ability we used to have, but clearly lost. It’s something magical that I think we’ve really lost since the days of the swinging 60s and the era of Mad Men.
It’s nice to have you back, Penny.
Other than that… There’s so much you could say about this episode, about all of it, all over the spectrum. Too much. I typically wouldn’t recommend Jeff Jensen’s Lost ramblings over Entertainment Weekly because they’re usually pretty asinine, but he brings up some good thoughts in his write up about last night’s “Happy Ever After.” Also, I’ll begrudgingly credit him with a good phrasing for the solenoid/toroidal coil chamber room in which Charles Widmore conducts his electromagnetic experiment on Desmond: “Quantum Sweat Lodge.”
And I tell you, all those years ago, I wish that Hurley hadn’t been reading the Flash/Green Lantern team up comic (the one that teased the audience with the notion of polar bears), but had instead been reading the classic Gardner Fox/Carmine Infantino story, “Flash Of Two Worlds.” It’s the story that pretty much created the DC Comics Multiverse and gave birth to a modern look back at the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics (and has been obsessed over by numerous prominent Scottish comic book writers since). Thought the conversation about the Flash back in “Catch 22″ is a lot funnier to me now. Desmond is a man in two worlds now, he is both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick now. That is, Desmond is the Flash, and things are going to start moving faster now…
…because now the end looms larger still. Things are set in motion, and timetables are being advanced all over the place. Sayid is running around killing people all willy nilly. Desmond’s able to cross his consciousness between two worlds, and seems to have found a mission in both. We’re going somewhere now, but where? Who can say? And who knows in what direction. Up? Down? Forwards or backwards? Or perhaps Sideways.
I wasn’t. Thought Catalog was nice enough to publish a piece by me the other day: “A Selection Of Films Rated On The Quality Of Ewan McGregor’s Hair In Them.”
The top 5 most shocking things 
Actor decapitates own mother
Music
Doctor Doom
Do women avoid talking to their fathers
CANCER in the form of JESUS
Third Eye Blind
Megan Fox causing couples to break up
Lady Gaga 
There’s always time in time and space 
Person of the year
