During the drive down to Florida, I was able to catch up on a paperback book a friend of mine had lent me, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor.  The book is more or less a history of the Iron Man comic, but aside from that, it also includes a bit of the history of Marvel Comics itself.

One of the non Iron Man things I found most interesting was Stan Lee’s secret to his naming convention for hero alter ego’s.  Apparently, if Stan had actually been the one to come up with Tony Stark’s name, he would have ended up with a name like Sam Stark.

Stan revealed that he has a thing about the first and last names starting with the same letter.  With names like Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Stephen Strange, Matt Murdock, and Bruce Banner how were we to catch on?  His thinking was that he was less likely to forget a characters name this way.

Well, I found it interesting at least.  Now whenever I see a name like that, I’ll be thinking it’s a Stan Lee name.

On an Iron Man related note.  Having read the history of Iron Man and what has happened to him in the comics since I stopped reading them, I miss Bob Layton and David Michelinie even more now.  They were the ones working on the comic when I first got into Iron Man and those truely were the glory days.  Some of the story lines have just gone plain stupid.  However, I do like what Adi Granov has done with the armor in recent years (his designs were the basis of the movie armor).

Having now seen The Dark Knight a second time, I guess I won’t have to turn in my Iron Man fan-club card just yet.

The Dark Knight is still a great movie, but it loses quite a bit of it’s intensity when you see it a second time and know what happens next.  With the highs and lows of the roller coaster gone, it becomes just another ride.  The Joker alone nearly makes up for it, but the-Joker-to-long-ass-movie ratio just isn’t good enough.

Overall, I give Iron Man the nod over Batman because it’s just more fun to watch and stays that way every time you see it.  Robert Downey’s performance nearly matches Ledger’s and there are barely any scenes where he isn’t in Iron Man.

For the record, my top comic book movies:

1. Iron Man
2. The Dark Knight
3. X2
4. Spider-Man 2
5. Batman Begins

It only took 40 some odd years, but Cesar has finally been dethroned.  It’s just a shame we’ll never see this new Joker again.

I actually went into the Dark Knight flick thinking there was no way it could live up to the hype thats been building up over both the movie itself and Ledger’s performance.  Stuff like “on par with the Godfather”, “as good a sequel as Empire Strikes Back”, and “Oscar worthy performance”.  After seeing it however, all those statements don’t seem quite so far fetched.

It really is an awesome movie and Ledger’s Joker almost single handedly makes it so.  Ledger was to the Joker what Daniel Day-Lewis was to Daniel Plainview.

I’m not yet ready to say I liked it better than Iron Man, but I’m having a hard time saying I didn’t.

My daughter has been a Simpsons fan since she was 3.  I recall at the time thinking, “she shouldn’t be watching this stuff”, but if you see the crap kids watch nowdays, the Simpsons might as well be the new Sesame Street.

Over the years we have accumulated the entire Simpsons DVD collections and while there are untold numbers of excellent episodes, it was only just recently that I realized the genius that is Season 5.  From top to bottom I don’t think any other show has ever had as good a season as that 1993-94 season.  For what it’s worth, season 4 did have Mr. Plow, which I consider to be the greatest episode of all time, but Season 5 was 22 episodes of comedy gold.

Here is just a smidgen of the funny: Methuselah’s rookie card.  Cape Fear.  Chocked full of heady goodness.  The all syrup Squishy and Ernest Borgnine.  Think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts.  Mr. Burns, germs, and the Sproose Moose.  The Inanimate Carbon Rod.  The nacho hat.  Precious antique cans.

Epic win.  The likely reason for this uber season was that most of the writers for the previous four seasons had left the show and Season 5 was a whole new team of writers.  Whether these guys were just that much better than the previous guys, I dunno.  Maybe they were just in the right place, at the right time, doing the right drugs.

Decided to pass on the Will Smith, 4th of July movie this year and opted instead to see James McAvoy in Wanted.  I don’t know who that guy is either, but not only does it have that guy, you get to see Angelina Jolie’s butt crack and hear Morgan Freeman say, “mother fucker”.  How could this movie be full of anything but win, amirite?

Wanted combines the ultra cool fight scenes of The Matrix with the style and blood of Fight Club.  Instead of kung fu, they use guns.  Instead of bullet time, they curve bullets.  Instead of moral fiber, they have fabric that decides who dies next.  Most importantly, instead of Keanu, they have actors.

Maybe not Oscar material here, but a fun, adrenaline-rush-action-romp of a movie none the less.

P.S. I am aware that neither The Matrix nor Fight Club contain any moral fiber.

After a couple of days fighting with the Fotobook plugin for WordPress, I am finally victorious.  As it is now my vanquished foe, it is required to do anything I wish.  Unfortunately, all it seems willing to do is fetch my Facebook photos, but it does do a well enough job of that.

The fighting was based upon the fact that the 3.1 version just wouldn’t work for me.  I dug through the code, reset/re-installed the plugin, tried a little voodoo, nothing worked.  As I was about to give up, I decided to give an older revision a try.  Luckily, the 3.0.7 version appears to work flawlessly.

The whole reason I even bothered with any of this is because the Fotobook plugin allows me to easily import photos from my Facebook albums directly into this site.  As such, I have now replaced the old gallery I was using with this one, which can be accessed through the Photos page.

Took the kids to see WALL•E this weekend and while it is a good film, though a tad too slow to keep it’s target audience fully interested, the opening short was excellent.

As is customary of every Pixar movie, they open with an animated short film. This one was called Presto. To sum up, it is about a magician who has two hats with a magical connection that allows objects to pass through one to the other. Through these hats, and with the assistance of his rabbit, he performs his magic.

If the creators of Presto ever come out and state that the game Portal was an influence, I wouldn’t be surprised. If they ever claim the opposite, much like the cake, they will be full of lies. The short plays out just like I’d envision a movie based on the Portal technology would with limitless applications of the Portal’s portalness. Because it is a short, the film’s concept never becomes tired and leaves you wishing it would keep going, much like it’s gamesake.

In other Portal related news. Someone has actually created a Portal inspired, custom voice file for specific models of Garmin GPS’s. GLaGPS

Lets keep the grumpy old man theme going.

What the hell happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons?  When I was young, my whole week was built around waiting for Saturday morning to come around.  I’d sleep on the couch in the living room on Friday night just so that I wouldn’t have to waste any time getting to the TV the next morning.  From 8 to 12, if it was animated, I was watching it.  I’d even watch the crap like the Gummy Bears or the Monchichis just because I knew something good was coming on next.

Dungeons and Dragons, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Looney Tunes, Mr. T.  Ok, I didn’t actually watch Mr. T and his gymnast friends, but I pity the fool that doesn’t know why pittying fools is funny.

Nowadays, my kids could give two shits about Saturday Morning.  If they watch anything, it’s just dvr’d Spongebob or Simpsons episodes.  I must admit however, that I do really enjoy the new Spectacular Spider-Man series.

Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else’s house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else’s stuff is all over the goddamn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven’t used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven’t moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there’s usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there’s NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else’s shit is on the dresser.

Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, “Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down!”

George Carlin 1937-2008

My movie weekend continued today with me finally seeing The Incredible Hulk.  While I was actually one of the few people who enjoyed the Ang Lee version, I was excited when I heard they’d be making a “do over” type movie with Edward Norton.  Despite the low Tomato Meter scores from “real critics” (a lower overall score than Indy 4? /facepalm), I tend to agree with the real people scores and found the movie to be quite entertaining.

I liked the, previously on the Hulk, style origin recap which gives a bit of a nod to the TV series origin.  Finding a way to get Bill Bixby into the movie = win.  Norton, as usual, was excelent.  The CGI and action sequences were well done (halved-car boxing gloves ftw).  And there is no better way to end it than with a cameo by Tony Stark.

I think my only real gripe is that I’ll take the Sam Elliott played, General Ross over the William Hurt one any day.