A Harvard professor and a Texan start talking at a bar. The Texan asks “Where ya from?” The Harvard professor says “Where I come from, we don’t end our sentences with prepositions.” The Texan asks “Where ya from, jackass?”
“Heroes is like looking at an ex-girlfriend. You know there was so much potential there, and you want to believe in it, but you can’t look past the scathing flaws that make you wrong for one another.”
Champions Online (the latest superhero-meets-World of Warcraft game) has a quiz I found kind of amusing.
You are pure evil, and hate personified. You don’t care anything about your fellow man, and are guided only by your desire to rule over your inferiors, i.e. everybody but you. ‘Mercy,’ you ask, prior to grinding an enemy beneath your mighty heel, ‘What is mercy?’
I was browsing around Once Upon A Geek, which has a lot of amusing superhero content. For example, I liked this blending of Peanuts and the Watchmen.
They also collected some interesting Christmas-themed covers. Below the jump: Spiderman lassoing a surly Wolverine with Christmas lights, and two shots of Santa packing heat.
In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese’s.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child’s birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant’s music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain’s namesake mouse perform.
“The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles,” says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. “There’s a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there.”…
In Toledo, Ohio, four women were charged with disorderly conduct after a melee erupted at a Chuck E. Cheese’s there last year. According to police reports, it started when parents complained to the restaurant manager that children were loitering at the drawing machine…
“I thought they were going to attack me,” says Sheri Kellar-Raab, the first officer who responded…
The company stationed armed security guards inside the restaurant in an effort to make it safer.”It was like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film,” says Mr. Zielinski, referring to the “Pulp Fiction” director. “What parent is going to take their kids to a place where there is alcohol and pistols get brandished?”
I can definitely relate to the protagonist of this article.
Arizona State University student Alex Botsios said he had no problem giving a nighttime intruder his wallet and guitars.
When the man asked for Botsios’ laptop, however, the first-year law student drew the line.
“I was like, ‘Dude, no — please, no!” Botsios said. “I have all my case notes…that’s four months of work!”
Police said Gabriel Saucedo entered Botsios’ apartment through an open window early Thursday morning. When Botsios woke up, Saucedo threatened him with a baseball bat, police said.
He was just like, ‘I’m going to smash your head in,'” Botsios said.
At that point, the law student wrestled the bat away and began punching Saucedo, Botsios said.
“I basically grabbed him and threw him this way, and he held onto the bat so it threw him to the ground,” he said.
Police said they took Saucedo to the hospital for stitches before they arrested him on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping. Other than a bruised knuckle and a few scratches, Botsios was unharmed.
Superhero parodies are very hard to write. Generally, you can’t parody something that treats itself as ridiculous to begin with. This means that poking fun at ridiculous elements of superhero stories, like what superheroes wear, is usually unsuccessful. Fortunately, many elements have more comedic potential because the stories take them seriously.
2. As superhero stories progress, the writers run out of material and the likelihood that the stories will take bizarre twists approaches 100%. He’s a clone! His parents were superspies! His aunt marries a supervillain! His girlfriend falls for a werewolf! He grows six arms! He writes his girlfriend out of history by making a deal with the devil! And that’s just Spiderman. Don’t even get me started on the total strangeness surrounding Jimmy Olsen.
When a network decides at the last moment to use another episode as the pilot, it’s essentially admitting that the first episode is too awful to air. So they switch to something that was never meant to be used as a pilot in the first place. Smooth. That would be like an NFL coach telling his quarterback that he didn’t like the way he was throwing with his right arm, so he should play the next game with just his left. A surefire plan for success!
The New York Times confirms that the Alaskan state trooper in “Troopergate” is actually Matt Parkman, a former police officer best known for his psychic abilities and contributing to the rampant power inflation in the second season of Heroes. She probably had him fired after he tried to give her some of the African crazy-beans that he’s been gorging on for the last two episodes. “They’ll let you see the future!” Riiiiight.
The Associated Press reports that a judge in Ohio offered to cut a fine for blaring rap music if the defendant listened to 20 hours of classical music. The defendant lasted 15 minutes.
The Batman was terrible. If you’re mainly watching this for comedic potential, I’d get as many Spanish-speakers or gringos as you can find, and let’s learn about the difference between “el” and “la” with Batman. –There’s a spectacularly strange scene where Batman tries interrogating Riddler and Riddler bursts into a soprano rendition of Ave Maria. […]
–There’s intense violence but not a lot of feeling here. It’s not a very exciting movie. But it’s functional. It’s frequently tedious but rarely boring. Only the political sermons and Weasel are viciously bad. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the first movie. –Most of what sucked about Suicide Squad 1 was an overfocus on […]
1:30 – 6:55: Cyborg sees his Mother Box acting up. Then Mera sees her Mother box acting up. Then Amazon guards see their Mother Box acting up. Also there’s a Lex Luthor flashback where the computer shows him that Mother Boxes are plot relevant in case you missed that. PS: In the first 8 minutes […]
–Wonder Woman 1984 is not nearly as good at the original. Pluses: the cast is still very charming, and a few of the fight scenes are effective. I did actually like most of the first hour of the movie. –Setting: In the original Wonder Woman, the WWI setting contributes to a hard bleakness which effectively […]
1. I don’t know where to start with Captain Marvel. So many things went so wildly wrong that we’d need a presidential commission to get to the bottom of it. It’s like the Chernobyl of superhero movies. 2. If at any point you feel like your action movie would benefit from a character whose main […]
1. This version of Spider-Man is a useless toolbox who actively avoids doing interesting things, and what he does attempt is usually wimpy and/or incompetent. 2. Unlike most main characters, his choices don’t matter much. For example, he chooses to leave his supersuit at home (but his aunt sneaks it in anyway) and he tries […]
We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]
