My Favourite Characters: A Little Like a Turkey, But Not Much

This year he's 40 years old, and he's one of the first of his kind I ever looked up to (so to speak).

Gonzo The Great, formerly Cigar Box Frackle, (performed with nothing short of genius by Dave Goelz), star of The Muppet Show on stage and screens large and small, appearing in comics, cartoons, theme parks and lunchboxes, this anything muppet is not so much a favorite character as he is one of my very first personal heroes.

Without shame, I assure you, I love Gonzo.

While I have never pursued his interests (I don't even endure roller coasters well, so I won't be catching cannonballs any time soon) and I never dated outside my species (I'd never knock Camilla the Chicken, it seems to work for them), I certainly admire Gonzo's unquenchable enthusiasm.

I hope never to live in a bus station locker or cement mixer, but I'm glad someone can, does, and loves it.

I can't twist my nose completely upside down (oh, not for lack of trying, thanks for the memories, six-year old Mike), but I want to never be afraid to try new things.

Obscure of origin, snazzy of suits, and with the finest of friends, he's known as a weirdo or a whatever.

In one of my favorite exchanges in Boom! Studios The Muppet Show Comic Book by the splendid Roger Langridge, Scooter, pressing for information on Gonzo's species for the insurance forms, approaches him in hospital following a mad, daredevil stunt with a good question:


Weirdo. Artist. Whatever.

Movie Review: Despicable Me

I saw an advance screening of an upcoming movie this past Saturday with my lovely wife, my close friend, and his daughter.

It was Universal Pictures' latest, a CGI comedy churned out by the hard-working animators of France and American vocal talent.

And I must respectfully disagree with Bookmonkey's post regarding the awesomeness of 'Despicable Me'.

While Jason Segel's character Vector is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with, the true star of the picture and the source of the lion's share of the awesomeness to be had is in the personage of Gru (pictured below).

Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is a stone-cold old-school super-villain. Greedy, grasping Gru with his underground lair and his deformed minions and his schemes for wealth & power cannot be ignored. Because it's the CLASSICS, the tried and true, that really stand for something.

Like the heavy, steel, jet-propelled car; great for parallel parking.

Or a creepy old mansion, ideal for cooking up cunning plans.

And nobody will argue for long with a traditional freeze ray.

So, with my hat off to Bookmonkey, he is completely in the wrong: 'Despicable Me' is a gorgeously rendered, cleverly written, devilishly funny film treat, but it all comes down to Mr. Gru.

My Favourite Characters: Surly Space Simian

What's on his mind?

Gaze into stop-motion monkey eyes and ask yourself that very question, gentle blog-o-phile.

My favourite character this week is from my favourite cartoon of the year: Titan Maximum. From the twisted geniuses what brung us Robot Chicken, nine short episodes to date is simply not enough. When it comes out on DVD this August, I strongly encourage it be purchased, watched, and passed on to others. Especially me. Especially because of... monkey.

His name is Leon, 'voiced' by Dan Milano, although he seems entirely non-verbal. In the selfish, bizarre future human culture on the moon of Titan, this monkey is hard at work on the jobs too dull or dangerous for humans.

One of the great, strong silent types, pilot of the left leg of the giant robot mecha Titan Maximum, grudging token monkey in the human crew Titan Force Five, Leon is adorable, stalwart, competant, and makes the foul-mouthed human douchebags he's surrounded by seem all the more ludicrous.

When you can't say something nice...

The Hugos: The Man In The High Castle

I really like the movies 'Bladerunner' and 'Screamers', and I'm fond of 'Total Recall' as well. Even 'Minority Report' and 'Paycheck' were pretty cool. I confess I zoned out halfway through 'A Scanner Darkly'.

The same mind that inspired those movies and others, who asked us to question our identities and the nature of reality asked us to examine one such alternate history in the 1963 Hugo winning novel The Man in the High Castle.

Philip Kindred Dick was a self-described freaky dude, and I can't necessarily condone his excessive divorces and drug use, but wikipedia quotes Dick as liking Robert Heinlein as a person without agreeing with anything he wrote.

If that kooky guy liked someone as different from himself as Heinlein, then I'm gonna hafta say I like PKD, even though I have NOT ONE CLUE what he was writing ABOUT. NOT EVER.

Not in 'Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch', not in 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer', not even in 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'.

I just don't get it. Paranoid, weird, unfathomable things pouring from the soul of a man who thought he was hit by space lasers and became Elijah the prophet.

If 'getting it' is not the point, then this deserved more than 2.5 stars I gave it. After all, being weird is no crime and usually I LOVE that sort of thing. At the very least, being willing to admit you DON'T know what's going on, what the world really is, or even who YOU really are is at the heart of a lot of science fiction. It's a willingness to QUESTION, to re-examine, that makes science and its fiction great.

Your friendly neighbourhood Bookmonkey loaned me many PKD books in my early twenties.

He'd be glad to recommend some to you.

Blogs Are Hard

You know this.

Either you write them or you read them or both.

And I have no advice to give you to make them easier.

Shall I mention that I chuckle when I see George Takei hawking Sharp Quatro TVs? Because he's awesome.

But is telling you THAT a good use of my time? It was on a commercial that ran while I am half-watching SPACE channel (a repeat of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine- The Way of the Warrior is on. This is also awesome.)

I'm not doing very well at uni-tasking right now, as you're guessed. But now that the Klingons have withdrawn from the Khitomer Accords I'll shut the TV down and finish this little literary abortion.

I don't know what I'm doing.

There's three months gone from the time I set myself to finish writing a novel. Know what I've done? Jack-Effing-Crap.

So, if I review Geo. Alec Effinger's 1972 debut novel 'What Entropy Means To Me' by saying I dislike it in every respect, is that because I'm jealous? Yes. Yes, it is.

Also, I barely understand it, thanks to the generous helpings of intellectal literary references and what may be liberal sprinklings of in-jokes. (It might be a satire, since my personal definition of satire is an unfunny parody, usually with an obscure moral purpose. And if I add that it seems pretentious or self-indulgent it's like admitting I'm not smart enough to understand what he was doing. Which is totally true. I'm not.)

It's a sort-of fantasy quest story with an unreliable narrator Seyt, spinning whimsy about his probably dead brother Dore, while their mad incestuous family of book-drowning royals on the planet Home apparently give each other lobotomies while vying for religious and political power over one another.

Among other things, I think Effinger was suggesting that the fantasy quest novel was dead or overdone. While this is almost certainly true, in some sense, it is rather disheartening to dwell on the opinion that even 40 years ago everyone already knew that everything had already been written already, and by better than the likes of YOU.

It sucks the wind out of my sails whenever I realise that I don't have the creative chops to do what I wish I could do.

And so I blog.

Maybe if I keep practicing I'll be a writer someday.

As The Refreshments put it in their song 'Down Together':

"Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun

Never thought much about individuals, but he is dead anyway."

Long-awaited Levitz Legion!

Today I plunked down my quatloos at Happy Harbor Comics for Legion of Super-Heroes #1, written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Yildray Cinar. Check out my earlier posts for some Gushy McFanboy devoting a week to the Legion and their kooky adventures a thousand years hence.

So, here's the spoilers. Future! Planet exploding! Brainiac 5 STILL not getting a haircut!

Twenty years since his hundred-odd issue runs on various Legion titles in the seventies and eighties, and I'm excited to see Paul Levitz freed from the Phantom Zone and back in action like Lar 'Mon-El' Gand only less allergic to pencil lead!

This former DC President was responsible for much of modern Legion history and storytelling style. He brought us the Great Darkness Saga, weathered the First Crisis, and so much more.

Their Interlac looks a little rusty (page four's planet Titan Academy and Time Institute seem to be labelled 'ACACDEMY' & 'TIME INSTITUE') and convicted anti-alien bigot and murderer Earth-Man seems to be breaking the Legion code just by being a member, but I'll be a Korbal lightning beast if I don't look forward to next issue. (It's probably a Titanian dialect thing)

What just happened to Imra's kids? What on Oa is a Dyogene when it's squishing around at home like a floating blue slug? Who's Polar Boy's bed-friend on page 36? And how soon will Matter-Eater Lad and company be back from their 21st Century Espionage mission? Now?... Now?... How 'bout now?

Check out the ongoing Legion title for the current events of 3010, and ongoing Adventure Comics (also by Levitz) for some catch-up backstory, and discuss it all at dccomic.com message boards. Welcome to the future!

Time to Ditch Chuck

Or was that chuck Ditch? Nope, there's no TV show called Ditch. Maybe next year.

What am I jabbering about, you ask? This time last year I was looking forward to season 3 of Chuck, a clever little spy-show parody with an attractive and amusing cast.

And at the time, that seemed reasonable.

Yeah, I'm done with that now.

Instead of an untrained, inept but loveable not-a-spy who has no chance with the spy-girl, we have a trained, deadly but difficult to like spy who has, in fact, already GOT the spy-girl. And his wacky secret identity boring life is no more, so mad dog spy Casey has to get a real job cause Chuck has the mad dog spy job. Right? There's not much comedy or drama, and no romantic tension or clever parody left. It's just a so-so spy show these days. I'm not even sure the incomparable Scott Bakula can peak my interest any longer. I'm sad to admit it.

But it got a fourth season!

Better Off Ted? Cancelled.

V? Renewed.

Pushing Daisies? Cancelled.

Chuck? Renewed.

Dogs and Cats? Living together.

Am I complaining too much? Good!

Read a book!