Where pop culture meets geek culture and they make out a little.
General Nerdom
Zombies VS Vampires $5 AMAZON GIFT CARD Throwdown!
9843 days
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Post your best Zombie VS. Vampire scenarios in the comments of this page between now through October 31, and a winner, chosen by the crew here at NR, will receive a $5.00 Amazon Gift Card in their e-mail. Unfortunately, the contest isn’t open to any of the NR staff.
There we go, now let’s have it! Give us your best!
Looking Up In The Sky With My Mind’s Eye
0868 days
A panel from All-Star Superman, with pencils by Frank Quitely and colors by Jamie Grant.
I feel as if I forgot about Superman until I came across Grant Morrison’s interpretation in his All-Star series that debuted in 2005. It crystalized what I loved about this character the first time I saw him racing against a train in Richard Donner’s “Superman: The Movie.” What made the character resonate for me in both was that Morrison and Donner didn’t necessarily reinvent the character. Rather they identified elements that were important about him and explored them. I’m not referring to his powers, which are magnificent of course, but they’re not enough to sustain an emotional journey of a character through a story. It was the character’s humanity. Donner focuses on how Clark Kent grew up and became Superman, while Grant Morrison tells the story of what the Man of Tomorrow does with the last days of his life.
Superman: The Movie (Extended Edition) and Superman II: The Donner Cut
When you watch Superman I and Superman II (The Donner Cut), you may find a superhero comic book movie on the surface, but underneath is the engine of a coming of age story. There’s a moment in the first Superman movie when young Clark Kent is talking with his father after he’s just finished beating a rival schoolmate back to his farm by outrunning a train. He expresses to his father that he’s frustrated because he can do things like kick a football seemingly into orbit. Yet he has to hide his abilities, and stand the ridicule and humiliation of his rival as he drives away with a girl he liked. He’s still that same kid who wants to show off all of the wonderful things he can do when he’s standing before his other father, Jor-El, telling him about the feats he did in his first night as Superman. Jor-El tells him he understands how good it felt to do this, and acknowledges his son’s vanity. He doesn’t judge him for it. Clark doesn’t yet understand consequences, though. When faced with the possibility of a life without Lois Lane after trying to stop two rockets, he turns back time. He can fix anything, that Superman can.
Yet again Clark is still that same kid from Smallville when he’s standing before Jor-El in the Donner Cut of Superman II, complaining about the unfairness of not being able to have what he wants. He doesn’t wish to be alone, another essential human quality Donner focuses on that drives Clark’s choices. A life with the companionship of Lois Lane is possible now, if only he weren’t Superman. Yet he’s warned that there will be consequences if he gives up being Superman.
(SPOILER ALERT, in case you’ve never seen Donner’s Cut)
He discovers those consequences when he returns, powerless, to his fortress to beg his father to restore his powers, which his father does. At a price. If you’ve never seen the Superman movies, you must know that crystals are a key component of his Fortress of Solitude. All of the knowledge of his civilization is stored in these crystals, including the artificial duplicate of Jor-el he speaks with. Jor-el tells his son that restoring his powers will wipe out the remaining energy in the main crystal, rendering it inert. They will never speak again, and Clark will have essentially lost his connection to a second father. There is a poignant scene towards the end, the one in which I feel demonstrates the complete arc of Clark’s growth. He stands looking at the Fortress of Solitude from a distance, with Lois Lane behind him. Without saying a single word he destroys the Fortress of Solitude. It’s a lifeless structure, and he lets go of it. Is it an act of acceptance and letting go, therefore a sign of maturity? I think so.
There is one warning I have to give you about the Donner cut, though. For those who aren’t familiar with the film and its history, a lot of key scenes were never filmed. This included an ending to the movie. When faced with the option of using the ending filmed by Donner’s replacement Richard Lester or simply recycling the ending from the first movie where Superman turns back time again, the latter was chosen. Yes, it does betray the thematic arc of the story. Therefore, I prefer to leave the movie at an earlier scene. It’s one where Superman has brought Lois back to her apartment, and she stands crying because she knows they can’t be together. And she also knows who he is and it will break her heart to see him every day at work but never be able to reach out to him. She asks if she got the man she wanted, and he affirms it. Then they part ways. I say I prefer to leave the movie at this point rather than continue on to the next sequence because what are our heroes and the lessons they learn if they can simply wipe away the lesson as if it never happened?
(End SPOILER)
All-Star Superman
Superman saves the day one more time only to discover that doing so has killed him. What you find in the stories that follow this discovery is an introspective Superman, taking the measure of his life and focusing on what is important to him. There are so many things to settle, decides The Man of Steel. There is his affection for Lois Lane. There is the question that haunts him: what will happen to the human race without a Superman? How can he save the day from beyond the grave? He asks himself what a world without a Superman would be like? (And I might add that it’s an inpspired approach he takes to find out the answer to this in the latter half of the series, made possible by the realms of speculative fiction.)
In trying to find the next Superman he turns to Lex Luthor, telling him in the guise of Clark Kent that Superman and him could have done great things together. In trying to reach out to his greatest enemy, a man who can cure cancer with a cell phone and a safety pin, he finds it’s not Luthor that is his greatest foe. It is Luthor’s ego.
Yet there has to be a way. “There’s always a way,” as he reminds himself numerous times throughout the series. Even when he finds himself powerless and trapped on a planet, slowly being crushed by the heightened gravity around him and trying to find a way to communicate with a race that doesn’t quite speak his language, he still tells himself there’s a way. Even when his final hours are approaching and he reflects on how much he’s accomplished and yet how much more he has to do, there’s still away.
All-Star Superman is essentially Everyman meets Superman. Grant Morrison’s choice to have Superman face his mortality and decide what he values in his life also allows us to have a set of stories that incapsulate why the character has been around for so many decades. I found some of these stories moving, such as the one that explores an episode with his father, Jonathan Kent, from Superman’s days in Smallville when he was Superboy.
After looking up
I think about all of this and come to wonder if perhaps it’s not Superman that is my first love? Perhaps it’s the hero’s quest and coming of age, as I look at other stories I’ve come to love over the years. I think about Huckleberry Finn torn between what he feels is right and what he’s been told is right when it comes to the matter of rescuing the slave Jim and learning to make up his own mind. Or Gilgamesh, seeking out the secrets of immortality after the death of his friend, Ekindu. Perhaps it’s myth? Maybe it’s all of it. Superman was first, though.
On Grease Paint and the Negatives of Chronic Stress
1883 days
Ian McKellen as King Lear.
It is essential to find past-times to help one relax during a semester, as the negative effects of chronic stress may not only affect school work, they may also have long lasting effects on emotional and physical health. Studies have shown that chronic stress may be linked to anxiety, deppression, weight loss, insomnia, and may affect concentration and memory. One needs diversions. Relaxing evenings with friends, or sitting down to enjoy a book, a good story. I enjoy live theater. I saw Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and David Strathairn in Dance of Death on Broadway in 2002. It was an amazing experience, as these were highly skilled performers. There is a theater a few minutes from my house. The dilemma, though, is that we live in an age of instant gratification. CDs, DVDs, the Internet. Anything we want and when we want it. Except none of it is live. What do we do then if we want our theater to be live and instant? Compromise. We kidnap a thespian. Depending on taste, we might need to make room for two.
We must first identify our preferences. Musical theater? Classics, from Lope De Vega and Shakespeare, to Brecht? Ballet? Farse and tragedy and tragicomedy and operettas? Also, while your thespian can play multiple parts, and in some cases perform an entire show for you, this can wear your thespian out faster than if you had two. This is especially true if you’re a Shakespeare aficionado, as I am. I once went through seven thespians in a four month period, as Hamlet can kill almost anyone. For musical theater, Sondheim and Fosse might only cripple or cause them initial discomfort.
There is also thespian maintenance. You will want to keep them in a room on a second floor, preferably with a balcony, which will allow them to have contact with visiting friends and family members. The thespian is an emotional creature, as you’ll become fully aware of during their first weeks of captivity while they sob in lamentation. Therefore these balcony visits will be essential. Sliding recent write-ups of their work may also help, whether fictitious or not. See your local community college journalism department for assistance.
Also consider diet. Don’t feed your thespian too much within two hours of any planned use, as they will be weighed down. A few more things to consider for maintaining your thespian include decorating their rooms (a little stage in one corner can go a long way to making your thespian feel cozy) or cages if you’re under budget constraints; their voices are delicate, therefore much like cigars, you want to keep them in a temperature controlled enviroment; keep little statues covered in gold foil as “awards” you can give them as treats; if you have a method actor and you ask them to take on the part of an animal, you may want to lay down newspaper; and exercise. The little stage in the corner works great for step aerobics.
Remember that when we talk about kidnapping your own thespian, we’re really talking about a guarantee of your future, and of your health. While the costs might appear steep, remember to weigh them against the cost, as well as discomfort, which you might have to face in the long run from chronic stress. To health and happiness.
Nights on Mary Street: Summer 1997-Spring 1998
0898 days
The seating capacity is listed at three-hundred and twenty five, and even if only half of that attended that night, there were still plenty of witnesses. A little over one-hundred people, if not more, who remained silent. There had probably been that many the week before who watched a seventeen year old boy whose leg was trembling in his jeans as he stared beyond the stage lights and into that void from which he was drawing laughter every few moments. I had prepared the material for that previous week.
I had a notebook with the spiral binding smashed down. I poured ideas into this notebook at school, on the bus in the mornings and afternoons. I would try out the material by slipping it in to conversations with friends, strangers. I would make note of what worked and try to understand why the rest didn’t work. Would a slight change in phrasing clarify the punch line?
SUMMER-FALL 1997
I sat outside of the Improv Comedy Club Miami every Monday night for about two months when they hosted Open Mic Night. I don’t remember going home after school. I don’t even remember eating dinner. I would get off the Metro-Rail at the Coconut Grove or Douglas Road stations, then board a smaller bus that went back and forth between the two stations, dropping off passengers on the sidewalks of Coconut Grove.
There had been an opportunity before the waiting, and before the club owner and the event coordinator for the open mic night discoverer I was seventeen. I had heard about an open mic night event and after talking about doing something like that for a while I decided to go to this club and reserve a spot. I arrived early, I gave my name and the young lady at the counter at the front of the club put me down. Then I entered the club and I could see the small stage and the crowd seated at their tables. My group and I found a table at the other end of the club and we sat and waited. Performers started going on and I waited my turn. How would they know to find me? Performers went on, and some received laughs while others found reasons never to come back. I don’t know which would feel worse when you’re standing up there and the material isn’t working: silence or booing? When the last performer left the stage and the host for the night announced the winner of the open mic night, I realized I had missed my opportunity. Don’t think it passed me by, now, because it didn’t. I didn’t once see any of the performers stand up from any table and walk up to the stage. I could have stood up and walked back to the front and asked if Iwas right to wait for my turn out in the audience as I watched each performers’ set. I was afraid. I sat at my table while my friend Idolka held my hand, and the numbing feeling in my stomach spread through the rest of my body. Then the night was over, and the two month wait outside of the club every Monday night began. They had found out how old I was and wouldn’t let me back in. There was even one night where the event coordinator, as a calm as he could remain, told me to leave as I was interfering with the patrons. My two months ended when neither the owner of the club nor the event coordinator were present, and I was allowed to go on. I didn’t get booed off the stage. There were giggles and a few small laughs, and then I was off the stage. While it wasn’t a spectacular set, I didn’t faint, I didn’t freeze up, and I wanted more.
SPRING 1998
My Mom and my brothers took a trip to Disneyworld during springbreak in April. I had already been to Disneyworld, and I wanted some time to myself, therefore I chose to stay behind. This is something I did a few times whenever the family took trips, and it took quite an effort the first few times to convince my Mom to let me stay.
I’m not sure what my exact thought process was that led me to get dressed and grab my bus card to stand outside on Le Jeune Road and catch the bus to the Douglas Road station, there to transfer to the bus into the Grove. It was one of those moments where I wanted something and had wanted it for a very long time, and I failed to see any reason why I shouldn’t try one more time. The timing felt right. I was on my own away from my family, I would be turning eighteen in about three weeks. This needed to be done. I couldn’t have just one brief interlude on that stage.
I think it was one of my friends who called my name for me to come to the stage that night. I had pieced together a rough set over all of those months. It was all rough material, one of the bits being about talking about President Bill Clinton entering Congress as if he was walking to the BeeGees “Staying Alive” while Al Gore and Hillary Clinton stood behind him providing the chorus. I remember looking down at my leg and being surprised that I couldn’t see it visibly shaking as I could I feel it doing exactly that. I remember the man they told me was an FBI Agent, who would sit in the front tables close to the stage and heckle the performers. I remember being surprised when some of the material received a good laugh.
Then I remember the next week. I had used up all of the material in my notebook the previous week, but I wanted to go back again. I figured I could put something together quickly. That was vey naive, as I didn’t have the experience to do something like that. Professional Stand-Up Comedians gather a large body of material from which they can draw from at a moment’s notice and piece together a quick set. I was not a professional.
There’s a sense of hyperawareness when an audience is quiet and there are lights blinding you. It’s almost like a zen experience. I remember walking up to the stage, excited, and walking up to the microphone. I remember the silence of the audience after I said my opening bit (which I refuse to recount to anyone who wasn’t there that night). In that silence came the realization that I was in trouble, and there proceeded a strange calm over my body as I accepted there was nothing I could come up with at that very moment that would save me. My friends tried to console me afterwards. They performed there on a regular basis. They understood.
The Lucas Factor
2899 days
by Stoker
in General Nerdom
Oh how the mighty do fall.
Ok, so here we go talking about our favorite, or least favorite, train wrecks. There have been a few in recent memory that have stood out. I mean where to begin, “Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (I try to pretend it didn’t happen), “Beowulf” (I love the poem and to say that there are going to be a lot of students who are about to fail tests because of the lack of fidelity in this is a huge understatement), “All Star Batman and Robin” (Mr. Miller I love your old stuff but not everyone is Marv and Jim Lee if you make a commitment to turn in pages you should do just that).
You know what? I’m going to go back to the first thing on the above list. My biggest train wreck is not a thing, it isn’t a film or a television show, not a comic or a gadget. No ladies and gents my biggest train wreck, the thing that I find the most repulsive in recent history, is a person and that person is…
(drum roll please)
And why is he my biggest train wreck, you may ask. Quite simply, as we were discussing a few weeks ago, George Lucas raped my childhood.
Let us begin with the holy trilogy. To start out Han shoots first god damn it, HAN ALWAYS SHOOTS FIRST!!!! That is what makes Han a bad ass; he is all about the preemptive strike. Greedo is a lame character and to allow him to even get a shot off lowers Han. Oh let’s see what else. When was the last time you heard a Jedi scream like a little bitch when he was falling…never! Jedi are intergalactic samurai and samurai do not scream like little bitches. Plus, what the hell are you doing taking Sebastian Shaw out and replacing him with Hayden Christensen (the guy has all the acting chops of a rock) in Return of the Jedi?
Then there is the total debacle that are Episodes 1, 2, and 3; microscopic organisms in the blood stream, Anakin is a little girl man. Jar Jar Binks (need I say more).
It was only after the end of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” that I finally got it. George Lucas is laughing at us. He sits in his throne of power over at Skywalker ranch and says to himself “George, how can I get into the fans pockets today and then make them depressed about something they once loved? Oh I know! How about I create a movie in which one of cinemas most beloved heroes survives a nuclear blast at ground zero, then finds his long lost son who forces him to ride on the back of a motorcycle like a little bitch (my Indy would have said “Move over kid, I’m driving”) then throw in some intelligent ants, a man swinging through trees like a monkey, and a shit load of aliens.”
To thee George Lucas, I say nay. No longer shall I be duped into spending my hard earned cash on your garbage. No longer will I get my hopes up for something that should be awesome but clearly is no more than a joke to its creator. I scream to the heavens, NO MORE GEORGE LUCAS! I have never before rated a person on a scale of o to five before but let it be known that Lucas only receives a grade high because of my fond child hood memories before he ruined everything…
1/5 - Basic shite.
Einstein and thoughts on a possible U.S. Patent
1913 days
Whether or not it’s true, there are still theories that on December 21st, 2012, something drastic is going to happen to our planet. One of the theories I find most interesting is that our poles might drastically shift, making the North and South Poles trade their locations. Performing only cursory research on the internet, I discovered that even Albert Einstein, the intellect who redefined our understanding of the fabric of gravity, predicted in 1959 that something might happen on the Winter Solstice of 2012. I was once in the Scouts, and while disaster wasn’t always going to befall at every turn, we were still taught to be prepared.
With an intellect like Einstein’s guiding me, therefore, I’ve decided how to prepare myself just in case the poles do shift and our planet starts spinning in the opposite direction: I’m getting handlebars.
Test Day.
I bought a set of metal push-up bars. I knew palm comfort would be 
an issue, therefore I paid a little more for a set of bars with foam grips. Then came the question of how to fasten the bars to a sturdy surface, as well as what that surface should be. In the end, I decided that I would like them cemented directly to a concrete surface. Unsure how to go about mixing cement and incorporating the bars to the sidewalk outside of the house, I decided to search for alternative fastening methods until I could ask the first construction crew I come across on the freeway. The receipt on the bars said I had a 14-day window to return them in, and I wanted to find out if they could withstand the ordeal. That’s when I began to ask if I had enough strength to last through the shift.
I called my friend Joel and told him what I was trying to do, and then asked him if he would meet me at a park a few blocks from my house. I needed to find out where my strength stood, and then take that information and formulate a strength building routine that would help me reach my goal by 2012.
“How are you going to do that?” Joel asked me when he got to the park.
I asked him to follow me to the monkey bars.
Joel played football in high school, and also worked as a furniture delivery man for some time after that. I estimated, therefore, that he had enough strength in him to give me a fair representation of the cosmic force I would be conditioning myself to go up against. I reached my hands out to the monkey bars, and when I felt I had decent grip, I asked him to grab my legs around the shins.
There was a fire station next to the park, and the firefighters would sometimes exercise by taking walks in groups through the park. The presence of fully trained emergency care personnel was a good thing for me, since there were two of them on one of these walks who saw me hanging horizontally in the air as Joel pulled me by the legs and I screamed when I heard something pop in my shoulder, losing my grip and falling face first into the sand around the monkey bars.
Selina’s praise, and a few thoughts on storytellers
1919 days
If we had schoolwork to attend to when we returned to our classrooms, it didn’t matter. Was he telling the factual truth? It doesn’t matter at this point. I think about this young man, in his jeans and his t-shirt, who stood for an hour, probably less, on the stage in our school cafeteria and mesmerized us with a story about a pet snake he had owned as a child. I’ve learned that storytellers used to paint images of story elements on their cave walls, to remind them of their place in the story…like post it notes. From those origins, where storytellers would chant and dance and share stories with an audience, we have evolved as a species to where we now articulate these stories with verbs and nouns and the occasional use of proper grammar. I sat there mesmerized, thousands of years of evolution culminating into such a short span of time. Who would think a good time would take so long to perfect? I wanted to be a part of that heritage one day. Then I found myself sitting in the grass with the rest of the class outside of the classroom about two weeks later.
Everyone was talking about the man with the snake story, and about the pets they owned. Most of the kids had goldfish, or dogs, or cats. There was this one boy, I’ll call him Soda Truck because that’s the nickname he gave himself in the classroom yearbook that was passed out at the end of the year. He really called himself Soda Truck, which I didn’t understand because I always saw him drinking milk. There were four of us, myself and three girls; Jessica, Lisa, and Selina. Selina lived in the same building I did. I liked Selina, and I had stayed quiet while the other girls told what pets they had. I was biding my time. Goldfish all around, which was exciting for me because I had a parakeet. I thought this would impress her. Soda Truck had been listening and looking over, and I had kept making eye contact with him, which I didn’t want to do. Just when I was about to jump in and say I had a parakeet, to which I expected to receive a reaction of awe, Soda cuts me off and starts talking about this chinchilla he has. He tells us about how it’s this little ball of fur with these huge eyes and this long and fluffy tail. The girls were eating this up, and I didn’t want to be outdone.
I told them I had a marsupial.
I’m pretty sure I had never seen a marsupial at that point in my life. It must have been a word I had heard one night while falling asleep with the television on. Yet there I sat with three girls and one guy in complete silence after I had revealed that I had a marsupial. I didn’t even know what one was, but I had all of their attention, including Selina’s.
I wasn’t completely sure what a marsupial was. I didn’t even know how many varieties there were of them at the time. From koalas, kangaroos, brushtail possums to the sugar glider, something that looks like a giant squirrel but with a smaller snout. Lisa asked me what it was like, and I just started talking. I said it was about a little bigger than a cat. I had my arms stretched out to illustrate the size of the animal. My teacher gave me this odd look, but she was smiling, and she asked me if it had a pouch, because that’s what marsupials have to carry their young in. I said it did. What’s its name, someone asked. Lord Jingles, I said back. And he definitely has a pouch, and sometimes my brother likes to hide things in it, so I have to keep him away from Lord Jingles. This went on for a few minutes until we went back inside and started to work on the math portion of the day’s lesson.
My brother Jorge and I sat in our room that afternoon while our Mom made us dinner. Jorge had been sick the last few days with a flu, and he had all of the windows closed because the light bothered him. Every time he had a flu or a cold or the chicken pox, the windows would be closed and I would have to turn on a small lamp to read anything in the afternoon. We sat there talking about my day at school, and I told him about Lord Jingles. When he asked me why I had done it, I told him, and he understood.
“Do you think anyone will ever figure it out?” he said.
I told him probably not. They would probably forget it in a few days. So the next day I went to school. It was a few minutes after I came back from recess that one of the security guards came to get me. My brother had been checked into the hospital at around nine that morning. They had to hold me down after that, and I cried in the corner of the room. I knew he had been sick, but I didn’t think he would have to go to the hospital. My Mom was sitting in the office when they brought me in with my eyes all red.
“Who is Lord Jingles?” she said to me.
Selina had been impressed when she thought I had a marsupial. She talked about it with her friends, and then her sisters, and then her sisters told their mother. Animal control had come by at eight thirty that morning. They informed our mother about reports of an illegal animal on the premises. They asked her to stand aside so they could check the house, and they started going through the house. When they went into my room, my brother made a squeak, and the room was so dark because the curtains were down, and the guy from animal control must have been new at his job because my mom says he just jumped up and my brother jumped out of bed after that. And the guy shot him with one of the tranquilizer darts, right in the left buttocks . The tranquilizer wasn’t too strong, the man from animal control had come prepared to deal with something the size of a house cat. However, my brother always had health problems. He had an allergic reaction to the chemicals in the dart. They had to remove part of his buttocks in order to prevent infection from spreading.
My brother and I don’t talk very often these days. I tried to make it up to him. I gave him my bike, I cleaned his dishes for years. I even made a little pillow he could put to the side and sit on so he wouldn’t be lopsided when he sat at the dinner table.