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Wednesday, May 07, 2003
X2 Revisited... and revisited...Will anyone back me up in saying that Jason Stryker is actually Mastermind? I've heard it suggested that he is Proteus or Legion or some amalgamation thereof. Here's my proof: * Mixed eye color The argument for Legion/Proteus, though, is also good: * Youth It would be easiest to say that Jason Stryker was an amalgamation of Mastermind, Proteus, and Legion, but that's too easy--kind of like saying that Rogue is really Rogue/Jubilee. I'd prefer to believe that Jason Stryker had either Mastermind or Proteus/Legion in mind when he filmed the kid, but the watered down many-mutant is probably closer to the truth. Getting to the bottom of this will probably require that I pull the boxes from the closet and reread my X-Men collection. For now, though, I'm going to sign off: My girlfriend is coming into town and we're going to party like it's your birthday, sip Bacardi like it's your birthday, and we don't give a f*ck cause that's your birthday. (It's no one's birthday but it is a vacation.) I'll be back around on Monday. posted by kriston at 6:42 PM........ Throw it down, Kieran Healy, throw it downKieran Healy gives an excellent post on generalization in political debate, and check the comments for even more. He also evaluates the merits of the charge of hypocrisy levied at Bill Bennett as a function of the slot machine itself: Public shame, as I’m sure Bill must have pointed out in a book somewhere already, can provide a strong impulse to live a more virtuous life. But Bennett is digging in, insisting with his defenders that he can “handle it”; that people have always known he’s “been a poker player” and liked “church bingo” when growing up; that he’s never specifically condemned gambling; that he can afford the $8 million he’s lost; that it’s his own business and so on. Much of this implies exactly the kind of narrow, privatized view of morality that Bennett himself has made it his vocation to criticize. Some of it is the bluster of an addict, like that old joke about the cokehead who says “I can handle it! Believe me! I’ve been doing it every other night for the last five years, I know all about this stuff!” And some of it is simple misdirection. The comparison to bingo and poker is especially annoying. The former, at least in its non-industrialized church-hall forms, is harmless. The latter has associations both of a fun evening with the lads and a stylish high-stakes game. Both imply a bit of sociability. But Bennett lost his money on slot-machines, the most rationalized, soulless, and solitary form of gambling, and one where you are guaranteed to lose in the medium to long term. (Given that he plays the slots, Bennett’s claim to have broken about even is either a lie or a pathetic rationalization.) Which immediately brought to mind the Hitchens quote that Sue And Not U posted a bit ago, from Letters to a Young Contrarian: In some ways I feel sorry for the racists and religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so. The lesson to be learned, I guess, is that you're best off when you're grossly generalizing about/gambling with your friends. posted by kriston at 11:28 AM........ ...SpeechlessNot even a dozen words into Maureen Dowd's column on Ali G I lit up with all the angles I could take: there were so many ways to mock her that, as if too many people were trying to come through the door at once, I was coming up empty. By the end of the column, I had honestly lost the will--it was actually somewhat endearing to see Maureen Dowd, syndicated New York Times columnist, spend all 750 words of her column gushing about a TV show. After all, Ali G is hilarious. And if you set the scene in your head--MoDo at home alone in her high-rise, sipping on a Pinot Grigio even as late as it was, randomly flipping through channels as she procrastinates a little more on that deadline, finally settling on some unfamiliar HBO program, and then laughing herself off the couch--ah, I can't blame her for that. She did waste her column today, but I'm going to let her have it. I even suggest you read it (especially if you don't know what I'm talking about with Ali G.) Next time, though, we hope to see the hardball, gloves-off, investigative journalism that we've all come to expect from Ms Dowd.... UPDATE: Forgot all about this, but the other day Mattie and I were discussing a book by a professor we both had. In this book, the usually spot-on professor mentions H.L. Mencken and Maureen Dowd in the same breath as "salty dissidents" or something. I observed that Mencken was time-tested, and Mattie said that Dowd was time wasted. Ha, ha, ha... ah, shut up. posted by kriston at 10:32 AM........ On a Highway to DanteI'm seeing the Dante quiz all over the place, so there might as well be an accompanying illustration. This map is the epithomal one in my opinion: Barry Moser's map, from his textual illustrations in the Mandelbaum version. (Moser also owned Mandelbaum's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.) 
To answer your question, Sue, there's Phlegethon - which was a boiling river of blood reserved for those who committed crimes against their neighbors. Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus are all represented: the only classical river of Hell that's missing is Lethe. (I imagine because Dante wanted to preserve a symmetry with the four rivers that ran from Eden.) Oh - I meant to say, this is an epithomal image that can be purchased. For the real deal, you need to go to Orvieto and see the Signorelli Chapel. posted by kriston at 9:48 AM........ Abandon all hope, ye who enter my bedroomGreat. I'll never be free of Kinsolving. I'm not taking any more of these damned quizzes, not after this shocker: The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell! Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test Level 2 is altogether not too bad, but considering that the only criteria for which I didn't spike the radar were Repentance and Virtue, I might expect to see myself a little further down. If I do find myself freezing my pants off with Dis, at least I know who will be playing Brutus and Cassius. (They broke the mold when they made Steve-O and Esteban.) If I do end up in the second level... I'm going to nail Dido. posted by kriston at 1:04 AM........ Tuesday, May 06, 2003
It All Comes Down to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil YoungI added Southern Appeal to the roll call, and not just because he didn't receive the warmest welcome at these pages a couple posts back. Even at my most kneejerk, I can't fault Feddie for lack of decorum, and I should be willing to try to appreciate the strict federalist position (anathema though it has become to me recently.) In my earlier post I didn't clarify (any more than "Absurd"), but I think Feddie is making a higher argument than Pryor is. Pryor's record looks more like that of an ideological judicial activist than that of a conservative federalist (especially regarding where he does and does not file amicus curiae briefs), as I've noted a few times and as both Feddie and Heldman have noted extensively. Since both of their interests are informed by expertise it cannot help but to track both. My interest is informed by a scandalously unintensive job at the moment, unless we're talking about X-Men--there I'm willing to go to the mat. posted by kriston at 7:38 PM........ The Worst YetI think I've read all the major reviews of X2 and this is not only the worst X-Men review I've seen, it's probably one of the poorest movie reviews I've ever seen. I'm going to go ahead and bet that Susan--even though she starts running through the prime numbers when I talk about comics, and in fact, emotionally belittles me and occasionally violently kicks me in the face if I leave comics in plain sight in my bedroom--yes, even Susan knows more about the X-Men than this tool: The moody Wolverine (Jackman, a little old for this kind of silliness) can flash blades out of his wrists. Okay, but, really, how useful is that? He's no better armed at that point than a man with a bayonet. Then there's a kid who can flip fireballs across the room and another who appears to be able to shoot fire out of his sunglasses. On the other hand, Storm (Halle Berry) can control weather, Jane Grey (Famke Janssen) can part the waters like Moses, and Dr. Xavier appears to be literally able to stop the universe -- that is, halt time. So what would a knife fighter have in common with God? Or possibly I'm thinking too hard about this stuff.... The rest remain ciphers, the saddest being Anna Paquin, whose character's mutant talent, other than ugly mall-droog hair, appears to be to make things happen backward. I guess. She's some kind of Mistress of Rewind. Stephen Hunter, no one expects you to head to the comic book shop before the movie, but you are expected at the least to stop molesting yourself in the theater long enough to look up at the screen for a couple of frames. I'm angered not so much that his trivial knowledge about the X-Men is surpassed even by my girlfriend's, as by the fact that this slop is published. Someone punch me in the forehead cause I'm about to destroy this TPS report. posted by kriston at 12:01 PM........ Pryor's in trouble...if what Christ Rock says is true: whomever you hate will wind up in your family. ("Hate hispanics? Your daughter will bring home livin' la vida loca!") Pryor believes that legally sanctioned homosexuality will lead to constitutionally protected necrophilia, via arguments of federalism and a belief that courts are unable or unwilling to see shades of grey with regards to the application of precedence. Absurd. Take a look at this debate between the author of the weblog and Sam Heldman, who has practically dedicated his site to tracking the Bill Pryor nomination story. posted by kriston at 11:25 AM........ Monday, May 05, 2003
Massive NerdJacob Levy wins two thousand points for being a lawyer and an X-scholar. The man deserves a mutant nickname: check out all his posts and then watch him own this comments section. Jesus, X2 is so good, it doesn't even matter. If Sue doesn't enjoy it when she visits this weekend, we're through. posted by kriston at 5:01 PM........ And Then There Was X2Frankly, the movie owned. Pure and simple. I'll go on record as saying that I winced through the original ("What happens when a toad gets struck by lightning?" Worse than any line from a Star Trek movie). Kevin has it right when he said that X2 made X-Men look like a made-for-TV movie. After seeing the movie, which owned, we talked a bit about the comic-book movie bubble. It's hard to say if it's really at its zenith right now: X2 will pull in Ft. Knox at the theatres, and about as much in DVD sales; Spider-Man 2 will probably top X2, and then you can expect another sequel for each after that. Daredevil wasn't really much to write home about and I doubt that Hulk will be either--but so what? As long as some of the comic-book adaptations are banking, all of them should see a little bit of the trickle down, at least while the X-Men and Spiderman series are still being released. After that, it's a bit trickier: studios might just see the comic ship as having sailed once the flagship titles have run their course. Then again, if you made all that money with a comic movie, the assumption has to be that you're more likely to make that money again with another comic movie than you might with another Die Hard movie. There are still more characters to adapt: the Fantastic Four would make for a kick-ass movie, and so would a properly done Flash. The X-Men and Spiderman series--nigh invulnerable at this point--aside, I could see a couple of eventualities that would burst the comic bubble. If a studio were to remake Superman, or do another Batman, and these films were anything south of incredible, I think you'd see the bottom fall out of the comic book boom. (In the case of Batman, I don't mean another Jerry Schumacher Batman, which isn't going to happen anyway--I mean some kind of retelling of Batman, like the "year one" plot supposedly taken up by Daron Aronofsky a while back.) Studios take a whiff of public opinion as far as they can, and if one of these were to ring falsely I doubt you'd have executives so eager to sign their names to $200 million films. I hope that they give everyone from Ghostrider to Spider-Ham his own movie, but I think this fantasy golden era may already be running its track. Soon the Star Wars series will become one with the Force, the LOTR franchise will pass from Middle-Earth, and The Matrix saga will, um, be revolved. We're running low on epic sagas to keep the fires burning. posted by kriston at 2:52 PM........
From 2Blowhards, a pic of Zaha Hadid's Cincinatti Civic Center:
I think it's plain-jane as far as "visionary" architecture goes; some of his other concepts have been much better. I wanted to comment not so much about Hadid's work, but about the damned Blanton Museum, which could've been so extraordinary. Nothing against Cincinatti--but it does piss me off that they should be preeminent on the visual map over Austin. Our own damned fault, I guess. (If you're not familiar with the story--if you haven't heard me bitch about it again and again and again--UT invited the Swiss architectural team Herzog and de Meuron to design a museum for UT in Austin, only to pass them over for a home-grown box-oriented design. You can see a few of their projects here. I'd post a pic if I could find the strength. Sigh... I don't think this wound will ever heal.) posted by kriston at 9:55 AM........  Switzerland - A neutral power for as long as most can remember, it has avoided war for several centuries. However, it is still considered highly advanced and a global power. Positives: Judicial. Neutrality. World-Renouned. Powerful without Force. Makes Excellent Watches, Etc. Negatives: Target of Ridicule. Constant Struggle to Avoid Conflict. Target of Criminal Bank Accounts. Which Country of the World are You? brought to you by Quizilla I wasn't able to not get Switzerland. I would have preferred Finland. posted by kriston at 1:01 AM........ |
