Category: Stream of Consciousness

Do Not Like

2012-07-13, 4:58 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech

A few weeks back, I laid out my aversion to Facebook and the like.

When I updated the site code a bit to add tags, I considered whether to add all the now-standard bullshit Like/+1/Pin/Reddit/StumbleUpon/Digg (Wait, Digg? That's Still a Thing?) buttons to the bottom of my posts. They'd probably get more exposure that way. And hell, maybe someday, if I'm actually concerned about getting exposure instead of, say, people stumbling on my site randomly while doing a search for "did stan lee bone at jack kirby's wife", I'll bite the bullet and stick a linkbar down there. But for now, I'm perfectly happy with my uncluttered little niche site. (Reminder: this site's title is meant as irony.)

Now, the thing is, upvoting actually does have positive applications. Not just in terms of exposure, but it's a great way to organize a comments section, provided it's implemented as it is on Slashdot or Reddit: popular posts become more prominent, while the trolls get drowned out.

Of course, this has the potential to result in mob-rule stupidity. That's why Slashdot doesn't allow just anybody to upvote comments; certain users are selected as moderators (and other users are selected as meta-moderators to help ensure that the moderators reflect the community). Slashdot's not perfect, but it uses a very effective model for its comments section. (On the other hand, if you put the power in the hands of too few people, you end up with a situation like Digg -- which I quit reading some years back precisely because I thought the voting had fallen to the lowest common denominator, but which as it turns out was being tightly controlled by a small and select group of morons.)

Course, that's not what the Like/+1/Karma/whatever button is typically used for. Typically it's purely masturbatory -- it doesn't affect which posts are more or less prominent, it just functions as a scorecard. The people clicking Thumbs-Up or -Down get to stroke their own egos and the ego of the poster (and it doesn't matter which -- do you really think someone who's got a shit-ton of thumbs-down clicks is any less satisfied than someone who got a bunch of thumbs-up? Because here's the thing: if somebody's got dozens of thumbs-downs, that is exactly what he was trying to get.). It's also a very rudimentary form of gaming, of the sort Ian Bogost parodied in Cow Clicker.

I'll say one thing for it: it at least serves as a substitute for people writing banal little one-word praise posts ("Seconded!", "Yes!", "Like!", "This!"). I'd rather see a "+100" next to somebody's comment than 100 one-line replies.

That said, I'd rather people actually, you know, find intelligent things to say.

Why No Ditko/Marvel Boycott

2012-07-12, 5:22 pm
Categories: Comics, Movies, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Two days ago I mentioned, in passing, that while I'm boycotting Kirby-derived Marvel products, I'm not boycotting Ditko-derived ones.

Now, Ditko got much the same raw deal as Kirby back in the 1960's, and left under similar acrimonious circumstances.

But the major difference is this: while Kirby and his heirs asked for a better deal with Marvel and Marvel responded by suing them, Ditko was offered a better deal and he refused.

A couple of years back, Kurt Busiek said this in a comments thread at Robot 6:

And reportedly, Ditko also feels that Marvel owes him millions, and he's refused the money they've offered him as a bonus from the Spider-Man movie because he feels it's not enough. He thinks they owe him far, far more, and won't compromise his principles by settling for a lesser payment than he deserves.

He feels he was made promises that Marvel hasn't lived up to, going back to those inflatable Spider-Man pillows from the 1960s. That he's lived up to what he sees as his side of the bargain, and he won't renege on it even though he feels Marvel hasn't lived up to theirs. In his worldview, that shames them, not him.

But if you think Ditko thinks he doesn't deserve to be paid more than his page rate, then you're mistaken.

(While Busiek provides no primary source, he has a reputation for doing his homework; I am inclined to believe him on this one.)

I suspect -- though this is conjecture on my part -- that Ditko didn't merely refuse the money because he believed he was owed more, but that Marvel actually would have made him sign a contract stating that he was not entitled to any more. Rather like the one Kirby signed in the 1980's -- Marvel agreed to return Jack's original art in exchange for Jack signing a contract saying he had no claim to any of the characters he'd created. Marvel never lived up to its end of the agreement; the courts have found that while the statute of limitations has expired and Marvel is no longer obligated to return Kirby's art, it can still use that contract as evidence to prevent Kirby's children from reclaiming the rights to any of his characters.

So you can see why Ditko would be wary of signing anything Marvel offers him.

That said: he was offered something, and he refused it. It may have been a bad offer, he certainly had every right to refuse, but that's still fundamentally different from the Kirby situation, where both Jack and, subsequently, his heirs, have been denied anything at all beyond his original page rate, and Marvel has actually sued to keep it that way. Marvel's actions toward Ditko have been deplorable, but at least they've made a token effort to give him something.

Ditko, unlike Kirby, has also received a prominent creator credit in the Spider-Man movies (it's right upfront in the opening credits, as opposed to being buried 2/3 of the way down the closing credits). He certainly doesn't receive the recognition that Stan Lee does, but that too is a result of his own choices; as Mark Evanier recently put it:

The man has every right, of course, to refuse publicity and interviews but it's one of the reasons so many people think Stan Lee created Spider-Man all by himself. From Ditko's occasional letters in print, it's obvious this bothers him greatly...and it would bother anyone. But Lee is a great interview and Ditko is a non-interview and if you don't wave to the search party, there's a real good chance they're going to overlook you. I don't expect this to ever change. And nowadays when I talk about the many injustices in how the comic book industry has shorted major talents on money and/or credit, I've moved Ditko way down the list.

Ditko wants recognition but he refuses to grant interviews or even be photographed. While I can certainly admire his position -- that the work speaks for itself and that he should be recognized for his art instead of, say, being recognized for cameos in a bunch of movies based on it --, it's not a very realistic one.

In a nutshell, the reason I am boycotting Kirby-derived Marvel product and not Ditko-derived Marvel product is this: Kirby and his heirs have been denied money and recognition, while Ditko has refused money and recognition.

(In practice, lately it's amounted to the same thing. I haven't bought a Spider-Man comic in a couple years -- though I've been a Dan Slott fan since his Ren & Stimpy days and I hear his current Spidey work is great! -- and haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man. But as I've noted before, there's a difference between boycotting something and just not buying it.)

Revisionist History

2012-07-10, 6:19 pm
Categories: Comics, Movies, Stream of Consciousness

I read something kinda odd yesterday.

It was linked at Robot 6. It's a piece from a British rapper by the name of Akira the Don, explaining on the Huffington Post why he isn't going to go see Amazing Spider-Man. And there's this little bit in there:

It's not being made because a bunch of people really wanted, more than anything else, to tell the best Spider-Man story they could on the sliver screen. It's being made to stop the rights to the character reverting from Sony back to Marvel. Who, as we have seen, make much better superhero movies than Sony.

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to establish two things.

One: I hate the fucking Huffington Post.

Two: While I am boycotting Kirby-based Marvel product (eg the Marvel Studios films), I am not at present boycotting Ditko-based Marvel product (eg the Sony Pictures Spider-Man films). I haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man, but I still might.

I'd go into a bit more detail, but my reasons for those two points could really each make for a complete post, so I think I'll leave them as something to write about later.

Anyway. It's quite clear that Mr. the Don wrote this with his tongue firmly in cheek and is not serious about it. And also, he (rightly) praised Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. So I'm not really trying to argue with him or tear his post down. But that one line is just kinda weirdly fascinating to me and I want to look at it a little further.

Marvel. Who, as we have seen, make much better superhero movies than Sony.

Really? I mean, Avengers has been a huge critical and financial success, but...are people's attention spans so short that that's going to become the conventional wisdom? The latest Marvel Studios movie was better than the latest Sony movie, ergo Marvel makes much better superhero movies than Sony?

I mean, look. I liked Thor okay. Story was pretty middling, but the art direction was fantastic.

But you wanna tell me it was better than the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies? Really?

Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man 2 -- all got pretty mixed critical receptions. And Punisher: War Zone? Let's put it this way: I was ten paragraphs farther down before I even remembered to scroll back up here and mention it.

Really, when you take a look at it, Sony and Marvel are pretty well even -- each has two big successes and a handful of mediocrity. Marvel's got Iron Man and Avengers, and Sony has the first two Spider-Man movies.

And then there's Fox, which I think probably also fits that bill: the first two X-Men movies were pretty successful, but the rest of their output hasn't been. (Maybe X-Men: First Class? I liked that one, anyway.) Fox may lose just based on the sheer volume of crap it's put out: X-Men 3, Wolverine, Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four vs. Annoying Sarcastic Businessman, Fantastic Four vs. Giant Cloud of Gas...

Anyway. What Mr. the Don clearly means is that he wishes there wasn't this pesky matter of the outstanding movie rights at Sony and Fox, and that Marvel could get all its characters in one basket and we could see, say, Spider-Man and Wolverine in Avengers 2. As a fan, I can certainly relate to that desire; I really think the shared-universe aspect is what's made both Marvel Comics and the Marvel Movie Universe special.

But it's foolish to suggest that Marvel makes much better superhero movies than Sony.

Because -- just as in the comics -- it's not about the corporate rightsholder, damn it. It's about the creative team.

Avengers didn't succeed because it's Marvel, no matter how badly Marvel wants to say it did. Avengers succeeded because of Whedon and Downey and Ruffalo and Johansson and Hiddleston and Jackson and Evans and Hemsworth and Evans -- and, yes, the people who wrote and drew the stories it was based on, like Kirby and Lee and Heck and Millar and Hitch.

And the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies didn't succeed because they were Sony. They succeeded because of Raimi and Maguire and Simmons and Robertson and Campbell and Molina and Dafoe (and in spite of Dafoe's costume). And Ditko and Lee and Romita and Conway and Kane.

And don't get me wrong, there is something to be said about huge media conglomerates owning huge stables of characters who can all meet and interact. There is an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that features both an adaptation of an old Mad spoof and a team-up with Scooby-Doo. It is awesomesauce.

Or, hell, the recent Avengers cartoon where Ben and Johnny come over to the mansion for poker night. That was great! And it's too bad that we can't see something like that happen in a movie because of rights entanglements!

But that stuff's not great just because it's DC/Time Warner or just because it's Marvel/Disney. It's great because great people -- writers, artists, actors, directors -- put it together.

Weather

2012-07-09, 4:17 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

I heard on the radio this morning that there's an excessive heat watch in effect from 10 AM today to 5 AM Wednesday.

At first I assumed that was a mistake, but they repeated it 15 minutes later.

So, uh, I have to say that I'm not sure how this works. Why would an excessive heat warning end at 5 AM?

Do they expect it to be less excessively hot by 5:30?

Not Again

2012-07-07, 3:25 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

Welp, another migraine today.

Went to see the doctor a week ago about all the headaches. She said some of them were probably tension headaches from sitting at a desk all day, and recommended I exercise more and do some neck stretches. She refilled my existing prescription and gave me a sample of a new one -- well, sort of new; it's a triptan and so it's a descendant of what I used to take in high school.

I've managed to put in some exercise every day since (though I might give it a miss today). We're into the part of the year where 102 is a cool day, and the air quality is simply awful, so I can't really ride my bike like I'd like to. But we got a stair machine awhile back and I've been using that.

I'm sure that's helping me get in better shape, and I feel better too, but it sure doesn't look like it's helping with the headaches.

Must say the new prescription's working out so far, though.

The one I used to take in high school didn't work this well -- it would give me a reprieve for a couple hours and then bounce back even worse, and if I took a second pill it would give me such a nasty case of the jitters that I was just as useless and nearly as uncomfortable as if I just had a migraine. After awhile I stopped taking it and switched to over-the-counter stuff (which tends to have roughly the same effect).

Well, I tried the new drug when I got up this morning. The immediate effect seemed to be nausea, which kicked in about 15 minutes after I took it. (Or it could have just been part of the migraine. It's hard to tell.)

But I managed to get back in bed and fall asleep for about two and a half hours, and wake up functional.

The headache's not gone, and when I first got up it pounded with every step I took. After I got some food (Cup Noodles, the thing I keep around for when I can't cook anything more complicated -- plus I've got a sore throat in addition to the headache, so it soothes that a bit) and some coffee in me I started to feel better. Still a bit jittery and out-of-it (I think I've stamped out all the typos in this post, but if you find any that's why), but much better.

Guess I'll have to get this script filled.

Shot Across the Bow

2012-07-05, 6:43 pm
Categories: Comics, Movies, Stream of Consciousness

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of the Avengers movie. (Though if you've made it two months without hearing about it, you probably don't care.)

So I've made it just past a month of posting every day, and closer to two months with Regular Updates. The post that kicked it off was about Avengers and creators' rights, and those types of posts seem to be my most popular ones. I've gotten E-Mails from a couple of unexpected readers at this point thanking me for my comments, and given that I get a couple of dozen visitors on a good day and most of those are people looking for Final Fantasy 7 mods, I'm a little surprised and flattered by that.

So here's another post about Avengers and creators' rights. Today we're going to talk about Jim Starlin and his creation, Thanos.

Thanos shows up in the end of the Avengers movie. He's only onscreen for a short tease, but it's a big moment, the reveal of the bad guy who set all this in motion and is now positioned as the major antagonist for the sequel.

More than that, actually: Marvel's working on a Guardians of the Galaxy picture, widely speculated to feature Thanos and give him some background before Avengers 2.

The LA Times' Hero Complex interviewed Starlin after Avengers came out, and it included this exchange:

HC: I spoke to Jerry Robinson once and I congratulated him on the billion-dollar success of "The Dark Knight" and he winced like I had poked him in the eye. Of course I instantly realized that watching Alfred, the Joker, Two-Face, etc. fill the coffers of Warner Bros. was like watching a son raised in another house with another family's name. I don't know the arrangements on this film, but has this project and its success been a mixed experience in any way?

JS: Very mixed. It's nice to see my work recognized as being worth something beyond the printed page, and it was very cool seeing Thanos up on the big screen. Joss Whedon and his crew did an excellent job on "The Avengers" movie and I look forward to the sequel, for obvious reasons. But this is the second film that had something I created for Marvel in it -- the Infinity Gauntlet in "Thor" being the other -- and both films I had to pay for my own ticket to see them. Financial compensation to the creators of these characters doesn't appear to be part of the equation. Hopefully Thanos' walk-on in "The Avengers" will give a boost to a number of my own properties that are in various stages of development for film: "Dreadstar," "Breed" and the novel "Thinning the Predators."

Of course, Thanos's appearance in Avengers has ignited some interest in the character; Marvel's got some new series with him coming out, as well as reprinting some old ones. In a recent post at Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnson saw a press release for a "new" Thanos miniseries and misunderstood Marvel's present-tense copy to imply that it was new work from Starlin rather than a reprint.

But it isn't. Starlin quit freelancing for Marvel back around the beginning of '04, citing the standard "irreconcilable differences".

And while I expect Starlin would get royalties if Marvel reprinted work he'd done in the past 25 years or so, these reprints are books he did back in '77, so he's most likely getting nothing for them.

So that's the story so far. Marvel is preparing a big marketing push involving Thanos, which may culminate in a major role in two Hollywood blockbusters. And it's not sharing anything with his creator.

So when Starlin posted a picture of Thanos on his Facebook account the other day, with these words:

This is probably one of the first concept drawings of Thanos I ever did, long before I started working at Marvel. Jack Kirby's Metron is clearly the more dominant influence in this character's look. Not Darkseid. Both D and T started off much smaller than they eventually became. This was one of the drawings I had in my portfolio when I was hired by Marvel. It was later inked by Rich Buckler.

that may sound like just a "Hey, here's a neat historical artifact I found, check it out" post. But Heidi MacDonald reads it as something much bigger, and I'm inclined to agree.

That seemingly-offhand reference to it being in his portfolio before he was hired by Marvel? What that actually says is, "Thanos was not created as work-for-hire, and I have proof."

I've talked, at some length, about the Kirby heirs' legal battle for the rights to Kirby's characters. Marvel v Kirby to date has hinged on Stan Lee's testimony and a lack of hard evidence contradicting it. Stan says everything Jack did at Marvel was work-for-hire and none of his characters were created independently of Marvel's requests, and Jack's heirs have been unable to produce art proving that he created characters on his own time before pitching them to Marvel. (I have opined, more than once, that such evidence was probably in the box or boxes of Kirby art stolen from Marvel in the 1980's before it could be returned to him; there is of course no proof of this but things certainly worked out well for Marvel.) There's no such problem here; Starlin has solid proof that he created Thanos before he went to work for Marvel, and therefore Thanos was not created for-hire.

Now, there are some other questions that arise.

The biggest is, did Starlin transfer the rights to Thanos to Marvel?

Marvel didn't keep good records at that point. Contracts were seldom formal affairs; more commonly, Marvel printed a legend on the back of a freelancer's paycheck saying that in exchange for the pay he transferred all rights to them.

Back-of-the-check contracts are dicey affairs. There's an argument to be made that they're coercive; after all, waiting until after an artist has already done his work expecting a payout for it -- a check he may very well need for rent and food -- and then hitting him with a "By the way, give up ownership or we won't pay you" doesn't exactly create an even playing field for negotiations.

Be that as it may, Marvel's back-of-the-check contracts were upheld recently in Friedrich v Marvel. I've heard that they were also upheld in DeCarlo v Archie but I can't find a primary source to verify that; the summary judgement I found appears to be based on later, more formal contracts that DeCarlo signed, not an original back-of-the-check contract.

But that still means that, if Starlin were to claim ownership of Thanos in court (and this is pure speculation, mind; he's made no indication that he intends to do so), Marvel would want to produce a copy of any contract he signed with them, back-of-the-check or otherwise.

(I've also heard that Starlin crossed out the legend on the back of his checks before signing them, though I haven't seen any primary-source verification on that claim. That would itself make for an interesting legal case -- even assuming back-of-the-check contracts are legally binding in the first place, what if you don't sign, or cross the contract out, and the check still clears? That might not be a wise thing to risk an entire suit on, but it would be fascinating.)

There's another wrinkle, as noted by Nat Gertler in The Beat's comments section:

We’re more likely to run into the Blade situation, which ended up resting (in my not-a-lawyer understanding of the case) not on the question of whether it was work for hire, but on the question of whether the similarities between the original Blade and the movie Blade were sufficient to be infringing.

That's an important point too. Marv Wolfman sued Marvel over the rights to Blade under similar circumstances, and a judge ruled that Marvel's Blade was so substantially different from Wolfman's version as to be legally distinct. And given that so far we've only had a brief tease of Thanos, Marvel's still got two films to make the "substantially different" case.

And there's another point to consider: even if Starlin did transfer the Thanos rights to Marvel, he's permitted to terminate the transfer after 56 years. Thanos first appeared in '73, so Starlin (or, if he doesn't live that long, his statutory heirs) can reclaim him in 2029. And Kurt Busiek (also in the comments section of that Beat post) suggests that this might be a negotiating tactic -- Starlin could agree not to seek reversion in exchange for a percent of royalties for Thanos's use, for example.

Indeed, that comments section is well worth reading, largely because of Nat and Kurt's input. There are a couple of the usual anti-creator types in there (and I'm pretty sure at least one of them is a troll, seeing as he wades right in and immediately says the most provocative and factually wrong thing he possibly can) but if you step over them and get to the people who actually know what they're talking about, you might learn something.

Speaking of anti-creator fanboys? Well, in the Kirby case the constant refrain has been "Kirby's heirs didn't do anything so they don't deserve anything." This, of course, is a case where a creator is still alive. Will that change anything? Will the people pooh-poohing the Kirby heirs' suit rally behind Starlin?

Well, to be fair, some of them might. But in general? Well, here's what one guy said to me a couple of months ago when I brought up Starlin's complaint that Marvel hadn't so much as bought him a movie ticket:

I think Starlin was about as uninvolved in the making of the movie as a person could possibly be. I'd wager I had as much to do with making The Avengers as Jim Starlin did. Granted, I didn't have a character show up for all of a 2 second reveal, but beyond that, our contributions were the same. Where's my free ticket?

(By the way, I got a free ticket to see Avengers. So that means I got more for the movie than Jim Starlin did.)

He went on to make a slippery-slope argument that compensating creators is equivalent to just putting the characters right out into the public domain and will end DC and Marvel, an absurd position I've dismantled previously. (tl;dr no dude a few million dollars for creators is not going to bankrupt the company that just made a billion dollars on its movie.)

Guys like that? It's not about the law and it's not about the ethics. It's The Spice Must Flow. It doesn't matter how Marvel treats creators, as long as it keeps putting out product to consume.

There's always a fresh rationalization on the horizon. "He signed a contract." No he didn't. "Well, he's dead now." Okay, but this guy's alive. "The character we know is the work of dozens of creators over a period of decades, so no one person can really claim credit to him." Even if that were true in some cases, Thanos is unmistakably Jim Starlin's character. "Well, it was only a tiny cameo, so he's not entitled to anything." And once Thanos has more than a cameo, it's going to be "Well okay, that's terrible, but the industry's not like that anymore; it's all better now." (A point Scott Kurtz raised recently, right about two weeks before Static co-creator Robert Washington III died of multiple heart attacks at the age of 47 and his family had to turn to charity to get him buried.)

There is and will continue to be a vocal minority of comic book fans who will side with the publishers no matter what. (Oh God how I hope it's a minority -- but I think it is. You can find a vocal population of people on the Internet who will angrily, zealously defend absolutely any dumbass position you can possibly think of.) And it's particularly galling when that includes guys like Kurtz, an actual cartoonist who makes an actual living from actual creator-owned comics. But The Spice Must Flow -- they like Marvel, they like the comics and the movies and the characters and the shared universe, and they see attempts at compensation by the people who actually created those characters as a threat. A threat to the free flow of those comics and movies or, perhaps even worse, the threat of making them feel guilty for enjoying them.

I think that's why justifications like "Well the heirs didn't do it so they don't deserve anything" and "Well okay, that's how it was in the Bad Old Days but it just doesn't happen anymore" are so prevalent: because they show a sympathy toward creators without actually indicting the current management at Disney/Marvel for any kind of wrongdoing. It means they don't have to feel bad about buying the latest issue of Daredevil (which, don't get me wrong, I hear is a really excellent comic -- and I'm certainly not asking you to feel bad if you buy it!).

But strip those away and there's always another excuse, always another justification.

And hell, maybe I'm just as knee-jerk in coming down on the side of creators over corporations. (Ken Penders might disagree -- I'm not allowed to post on his forums and I suspect it's because I once described his claims against Archie as "some legitimately crazy shit" -- but truth be told I hope he's right and I hope he wins. And yeah that comment was pretty out-of-line and I should probably walk it back to "I am skeptical but wish him luck.") But you know, I don't feel too bad about knee-jerk support of human beings. I don't mind being the guy who says "You know, if a movie makes a billion dollars, the guys who created the characters it's based on should get a higher share of that than zero percent."

Course, appeals to emotion aren't going to help Starlin get any compensation.

The good news is, he seems to have a better case and more leverage than most of the other comic creators who've fought Goliath.

Or maybe he just wanted to show people a drawing of Thanos. I dunno, I'm not a mind reader.

Two Thirty-Six

2012-07-04, 3:16 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

America's been called a "grand experiment". I kinda like that -- I like the empiricist, Enlightenment choice of words.

An experiment -- you start out with something and see how it goes, and you can adjust the parameters as you go.

Regardless of political persuasion, I think most of us can agree that America was founded on some pretty great principles and some pretty awful ones too, and that a couple of hundred years later we've come a long way but we're still very much in the "Pretty good but not perfect" category.

Anyhow. As America's Birthday goes, I gotta go with September 17, 1787, the date the Constitution was ratified. But hell, the Declaration of Independence is pretty neat too, and worth a barbecue and some beers. (American beers. Though I noticed there were some British beers heavily marked down in the store the other day for some reason...)

Oh, and speaking of those two documents, this is on the front page of dictionary.com today:

Picture of the Constitution labeled 'Words of the Declaration'

Great job, reference.com. Great job.

The Cheap Theater

2012-07-03, 9:57 pm
Categories: Books, Cartoons, Comics, Movies, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

I don't go to as many movies as I used to.

Mostly it's because I used to go to a lot of movies with my dad, and he's in Maui now.

But price plays into it too. Ticket prices have fucking skyrocketed, outpaced pretty much only by comic books.

This week, I went to Tempe Cinemas a couple times. It used to be what we called the dollar theater, but now it's $3, or $2 on Tuesdays.

But on the plus side, the place has improved. They've fixed up the bathrooms, the theaters are in better shape, and they appear to have switched to digital projectors, because the picture is fucking clean. Digital projection gets rid of one of the major drawbacks to seeing a movie at the cheap theater: you no longer find yourself looking at a print that's been viewed a few hundred times and is covered in scratches.

Anyhow, I caught two very different movies this week: The Pirates: Band of Misfits and Cabin in the Woods.

Pirates is Aardman. And I love me some Aardman, and have since I first saw The Wrong Trousers close on 20 years ago.

It's got a great cast (and #2 even looks like Martin Freeman), a ton of sight gags and one-liners that fly by fast, and a swordfight with Queen Victoria. It is recommended viewing for all ages!

Cabin in the Woods is not recommended viewing for all ages, but it is recommended viewing! I went into it cold, knowing nothing about it beyond "cabin-in-the-woods horror movie co-written and produced by Joss Whedon", and I think that is the optimal way to see it, so I will say nothing about it except that I love that there is actually a plot explanation for all the clichés, all the archetypes, and why the teenagers keep doing stupid shit.

Now, there was something a little odd about it: I'm pretty confident it was another digital copy, because the print was crystal clear for the most part, but there were a couple of spots, lines, and pops over the course of the movie. I'm curious: were these artificial and intentional? Like, did anybody else see it and notice a big black spot on the print right after the girl takes off her top? Because I'm tempted to believe this was some kind of Grindhouse-style deliberate fuckery, but I can't say for sure.

(Failing that, is there any other possible explanation for a few analog artifacts on an otherwise pristine, seemingly digital print? Like, is there a digital-file-to-analog-projector thing going on and the projector occasionally hiccups, or what? Or did I just see a film print that was in really, really good shape despite being at the cheap theater?)

Now, despite my gushing about the picture quality, which is better than I've ever seen it at Tempe Cinemas previously, the projection left something to be desired. Pirates had a couple of edges cut off, and about the right 1/8 of the picture in Cabin was out of focus.

Still and all, the seats were nice, the picture and sound were great, the audiences were well-behaved -- I had a better experience at the cheap theater than I usually do at the regular theater, and I suspect I will be making this a more frequent habit. There are plenty of movies coming out that I'd like to see in the theater but not pay full price for.

And they had a promo going: a new restaurant called Pizza 'n Greens opened a few doors down from the theater, and they're offering a $1 pizza slice if you bring a ticket stub in (or 10% off your whole bill). We went in after Pirates, and each ordered a slice. Instead of a slice, they made us fresh little miniature pizzas, and the service was great. We decided to come back and spend more -- which we did, after seeing Cabin. This time I tried a calzone and my lady tried a fatoush (Mediterranean salad) -- because as it turns out the menu is a sort of interesting mix of pizza and middle-eastern food. (I was tempted to have a chicken shawerma but decided I was in the mood for a good calzone at the last minute.) Anyway, once again, good food, great service, look forward to going again, recommend them, and oh by the way they deliver until 5 AM so if you need delivery at all hours of the night they're a good option for that.

And then we went to Changing Hands and I found a used copy of The Art of Ditko for $15, so I had to pick that up. And I also found that Stross's Rule 34 is out in paperback, so I grabbed me one of those too.

All in all, good times. And man, there are a lot of links in this post! My post probably looks like I ran Intellitext over it, except the links actually useful and pertinent and (hopefully) not just fucking obnoxious.

Not My Constitution

2012-06-29, 7:22 pm
Categories: Comics, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

To briefly summarize my opinion of the recently-upheld Affordable Care Act: I'm a liberal. I want real universal healthcare, not something run by private industry with a profit motive.

The Affordable Care Act isn't what I had in mind -- for fuck's sake, it was designed by the Heritage Foundation -- but it's Better than Nothing. I've got my reservations about the government mandating that consumers support a specific private industry (again, Heritage Foundation), but it's an improvement and it's already saved lives.

What's baffling to me is hearing people rail, following yesterday's ruling, that it's unconstitutional. Well, it's not.

Rand Paul actually said "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so." Well, I guess that depends on your definition of "a couple", Rand, but if by "a couple" you mean "five", then yes, actually that's exactly what it means. By definition. Deciding what is and isn't constitutional is the Supreme Court's entire job description. (Now, if you want to argue about Marbury v Madison we can go down that rabbit hole, but are you really prepared to challenge the last 209 years of case law?)

That doesn't mean you have to agree with their rulings! I think, for example, that Citizens United was a terrible ruling! But it was, by definition, constitutional.

And we can also argue that something is "not what the Founding Fathers intended" (provided that we keep in mind, you know, that neither was freeing the slaves nor giving women the vote). For example, I think that modern interpretations of the Second Amendment that essentially completely ignore the "well-regulated militia" clause are at odds with the original intent of the Bill of Rights. But again -- if the Supreme Court says something is constitutional, it's constitutional, whether you personally agree with it or not.

And now we get to the title of the post. Because something occurred to me: this is pretty much the political version of Not My Batman.

See, in comics, you've got fanboys who only acknowledge one interpretation of Batman and declare all other interpretations to be somehow wrong, no matter what the actual owners of Batman at DC Comics have to say about it. And in politics, you've got fanboys who only acknowledge one interpretation of the Constitution and declare all other interpretations to be somehow wrong, no matter what the actual arbiters of constitutionality at the Supreme Court have to say about it. It's the same instinct, the same sense of entitlement.

It's okay to say you don't like something. There are plenty of Batman stories and Supreme Court rulings that I can point to and say that they stink and should never have happened. I can even say they're inconsistent with how I think Batman's history/the Constitution should be read.

But they're still valid, whether I like it or not.

The main difference is that DC overturns precedent a hell of a lot more frequently than the Supreme Court.

Related: Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be, The Onion, November 14, 2009.

Not a Luddite, But...

2012-06-28, 8:34 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Until recently, I used to tell people that, for a computer scientist, I'm something of a Luddite. I don't use Facebook or Twitter, I don't have a smartphone -- I don't even text.

More recently, it's occurred to me that it's not that I'm a Luddite, I'm just a guy with a different set of priorities. And actually my tech savvy is probably responsible for some of that.

I don't have a Facebook account because I want control of my privacy settings. It's not like I'm anonymous or anything; if you're reading this, then profoundly embarrassing things with my real name attached to them are just a couple of clicks away. A couple of clicks max.

But that's my call. That's not "third-party site suddenly changes its privacy policy without warning" territory. And whatever I may put on this site, it certainly doesn't constitute permission for advertisers to sell it to each other.

I understand the appeal of Facebook. I did the MySpace thing, back when that was a thing people were doing. It was cool to get back in touch with people I hadn't seen since high school. But ultmately it was a new place for them to send me all those damn chain E-Mails and personality tests I had asked them all to stop sending me; it was a time sink of the sort I'm not much interested in anymore, and if they really want to get in touch with me they can Google my name. I'm not hard to find.

As for Twitter -- well shit, if you read this blog you already know that even my off-the-cuff single-sentence posts won't fit in 140 characters. I am not at my best in short bursts; I am at my best telling long, rambling stories that set up an atmosphere. (Kazz once compared me to Garrison Keillor. I'm pretty sure that was after he kicked that beer can into the back of my head.)

On texting, well, my initial opinion of it is pretty much what Samuel L Jackson had to say about it on Boondocks (NSFW):

But that's because I have a simple, 12-button flip phone. I understand that texting's a lot quicker if you've got a touchscreen or a keyboard, and I understand its value for quick, asynchronous, precise communication. It's not a replacement for a phone call, it's a replacement for voicemail. And voicemail sucks.

As for why I don't have a smartphone: Well, to start with, I've always been a horsepower guy. I sit at a computer all day at work and then I go sit at another one at home. As such I've never really felt much need for a laptop (I got my first one for free maybe a year and a half ago and barely use it), let alone a smartphone.

On the other hand, I do like toys. And I can really see the appeal of a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that fits in my pocket. Not to mention, you know, I am a computer scientist, and this is the future of computing.

So yeah, I've kinda hit a point where I want a smartphone.

But then you hit the predatory pricing.

I'm with Sprint. They've been good to me. But I will be goddamned if I'm going to enter into a two-year, $60-a-month-minimum contract with them.

I'm a temp. I don't know if I'll be employed come December. If I get hired, I'll probably buy a smartphone (just in time for all the Christmas sales!). But I'll also probably jump ship to Virgin or Cricket or one of the pay-as-you-go carriers.

Meantime, I've got this little Samsung flip phone I've had for some 5 years, that is serviceable as a phone and alarm clock and little else. For example, I discovered the other day that it doesn't even have a way to transfer the photos you take with it to a computer. Which I guess is okay, because I never use that camera anyway and it's scratched to fuck as it is.

(I discovered this after getting my picture with Phil LaMarr at Phoenix Comicon last month. That's not a very long story but it is a story for another day, I think.)