The New Twenty

Upholding the family tradition of displaying the birthday bounty for the camera.

As of 5:43 this evening (Hawaii Standard Time), I am thirty years old. So why am I still smiling? Because I realized today that I simply needed to adjust my standard. See, I was a little worried about turning thirty because my entire life I've heard from old people who wish they could have stopped aging at 29, so I was under the impression that 29 is the pinnacle of human perfection, and then it's all downhill from there. And perhaps that was once the case, but things have changed. This is the twenty-first century. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. Don't believe me? I present as evidence examples from the two most important measuring sticks of American culture: hip-hop music and superhero comics.

1. In the song "30 Something," rapper Jay-Z declared that "30's the new 20, nigga." And who can argue? Ten years ago, hip-hop was a young man's* game, and today we have people like Jay-Z, Wyclef Jean, Common, the Wu Tang Clan, who are all pushing forty, still putting out albums and being pretty successful. If these old men are still cool, then clearly I am too.
2. For a good forty or fifty years, Batman and Superman were both generally considered to be 29 years old--the aforementioned pinnacle of human perfection. But by the time I started reading superhero comics in the nineties, that age had been pushed up to 33. Batman's young ward, Robin, was by then in his early twenties, so it simply didn't make sense for his surrogate father to still be 29. In current comics, these brightly-clad ideals of manhood seem to be in their mid-to-late thirties. A product of ever-growing backstories that need to fit in chronologically, but also an acknowledgment that the readership is aging. A couple decades ago, the prevailing logic was that comic book readers wouldn't want to read about protagonists old enough to be their fathers, but the fact now is that most comic book readers are in their twenties and thirties, so it's a non-issue. Finally these men can age. By the time I catch up to Batman and Superman, they'll be at least forty. And if they can still look good in tights, then by golly, so can I!

In conclusion, I may be thirty, but I am still younger than Batman and Jay-Z. Any questions?

*No, I'm not ignoring women, just acknowledging that hip-hop for the most part does.

Mayhem of the Music Meister

Have you ever wondered what kind of Batman villain Doogie Howser would be? Wonder no more.

This is without a doubt the funniest, most entertaining animated Batman musical I have ever seen. And I'd say that even if I'd ever seen any other animated Batman musicals. Even if you're not a cartoon person or a superhero person, you really should take 20 minutes to watch this (click on the picture below to watch the episode).


Also, you can buy the soundtrack.

A Solemn Occasion

This evening FoxyJ brought my attention to the fact that 2009 marks the 75th anniversary of a very important event that forever changed the world: the invention of briefs. As you can read about in this press release (with informational video!), in 1934, the underwear company that would later become Jockey created a new style of men's underwear, inspired by French bathing suits, and then there was no turning back. We here at the Fobcave salute you, Jockey, for your outstanding contribution to humanity--especially the manity part of it.

Two Sins in One Post

I know this is both (1) tasteless and, even worse, (2) obvious, but I can't not say it:

Do you think he'll come back and use Whoopi Goldberg's body to make out with Demi Moore?

I Know Who The Half-Blood Prince Is:

(spoiler alert)

It's your mom.

A Very Useful Chart

I became a Mariah Carey fan around the time of 1995's Daydream (specifically, with the first single, "Fantasy"). I followed her during the following years, even buying Rainbow when it came out during my mission (the mission rule was very vaguely that we were only to listen to music that uplifted us... isn't Mariah uplifiting?), but the disastrous Glitter and then the mediocre Charmbracelet happened to correspond with my conversion into a musical snob, at which time I decided I was too cool for popular artists like Mariah Carey. So until recently, I owned only her middle five albums. But then this past week, a few stars and planets aligned: (1) I had a few weeks' worth of Amazon.com gift certificates from work accrued, waiting for me to use them; (2) perhaps because I spent all week listening to Michael Jackson songs and tributes, I decided that I'm no longer too cool to enjoy pop music; and (3) I realized that there were several Mariah Carey songs I liked but didn't own. So I fixed that. First I bought her first three albums and MTV Unplugged EP, and then I figured what the hey, and bought the two most recent ones as well.

Having completed several hours of research now, I will share my findings with you.


As you can see, Mariah is on a relative upswing. We'll see if she keeps that up with her new album coming out this summer. Stay tuned in, and on the edge of your seats.

Fob & Foxy Plus 3

I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8, but I find myself fascinated, along with the rest of America, with the recent(ish) announcement of their separation. In the first place, my heart goes out to both of them and to their kids, because I have an idea of what that's like (from both the parents' and childrens' perspectives). Secondly, it's got me thinking about when Foxy and I made a similar announcement (though to a much smaller audience) a couple years ago. I've also been thinking about our separation because over on A Motley Vision they've been discussing "Abraham's Purgatory," a short story of mine that is so strongly linked to that period of my life.

I'm not sure I have much to say beyond that, except that it's been on my mind, and I'm happy to still be married to FoxyJ, and I'm happy that she and I can own that decision as ours alone and not something anyone else told us to do. I also hope the best for Jon and Kate and their family, whether that means their separation becomes permanent or that they get back together or whatever, and I hope that when you talk abou them--if you care to--that you remember they're real people and deserve real compassion.

Today's Confessions

1. I'm kind of sad about Michael Jackson dying.
2. I will totally buy the inevitable posthumous release, despite feeling like that's a betrayal to artistic integrity, since the only reason the album he's been working on hasn't been released yet is because he didn't think it was ready.
3. I will do the same whenever (Jah forbid) Lauryn Hill dies. Like Jacko, she's got to have a buttload of recordings being held back by her perfectionism.
   

Who dat is?

That's just my baby daddy!



If not for the magicks of the internet, treasures like this might be lost forever.

A True Maverick: A Republican Without Money

I know there are likely all kinds of motivations behind McCain's and before that Palin's willingness to appear on SNL with Tina Fey, but I just love that we live in a world where politicians are willing to mock themselves.

It's probably wrong that I find it more tragic when something like this happens to a famous person,

but for some reason I do.

Crisis!!!

So I didn't much care about the fact that gas prices have doubled in the past two years until now. I mean, really, I'm just a nobody and who cares if it costs me a small fortune just to drive to the grocery store a few times a month? But I just discovered that Diddy has had to start flying on commercial flights instead of on his own private jet. Stop the presses! Someone fix this tragedy now! We can't have our celebrities sitting on the same plane as normal folks--even if they are in first class.

For The Record

A conversation at the grocery store this morning at 6:30:

CLERK: Okay, here's a trivia question.
MR. FOB: Um. Okay.
CLERK: What's the name of Donald Duck's fiancée?
MR. FOB: Daisy?
CLERK: (Overjoyed) No! Daisy is his cousin. His fiancée is Daffy!

I didn't argue because it was 6:30 and because I don't argue with people I don't know, at least not in person. But let it be known publicly in my passive-aggressive way that he was wrong and I was right. Daisy is Donald's girlfriend; Daffy is a male duck, which in theory would allow him to be Donald's fiancé (I didn't hear whether the clerk was pronouncing one or two e's), except that Daffy is owned by Warner Brothers and Donald by Disney. Not even Romeo and Juliet were that star-crossed.

Why I (heart) Mr. Bennett

No, not Lizzie and Jane's father, though he is a likable character.

Noah Bennett, from the series that if you haven't already seen you should run immediately to your local library (or Netflix) and put the first season on hold. When I started watching Season One this past Sunday, I found Mr. Bennett attractive, in a well-dressed-and-mysterious-secret- agent-man kind of way, even though he was apparently a bad guy. But then halfway through the season (about Tuesday afternoon my time) he became a good guy and the mild attraction turned into a full-fledged fictional character crush. It helps that I can identify with his motivations. Because believe me, I would totally lie, murder, and brainwash innocent people to protect my daughter.

(Consider that a warning.)

And he was totally crushing on me too. I saw the way he looked at me.

But alas, our short-lived romance ended Wednesday night when FoxyJ and I finished Season One (yes, I bring my wife along when I have clandestine meetings with TV lovers; there's enough of Mr. Bennett--or Noah, as he likes me to call him--to go around). Here's looking forward to Heroes Season Two on DVD.

Heath

I'm not qualified to write any kind of meaningful "Remembering Heath Ledger" post, but I will say that I was deeply moved by his performance as a heterosexually married gay man in Brokeback Mountain and have been excited for the past year or so to see him as the Joker in this summer's Dark Knight. Twenty-eight is too young to die, and two is too young to lose a father.

Remember when cows went on strike because people weren't putting milk on their Chex?

That was crazy.

It's a Small Gay Mormon World

A month or so ago I cataloged an anime movie called Akira. For some reason about half of the voice actors in the English dub of Akira use pseudonyms here that they pretty much don't use anywhere else. One of those is a guy credited as Jimmy Flinders, who IMDb says is really Cam Clarke. At the time I cataloged the video I checked the Library of Congress's Name Authority File and found no record for Jimmy Flinders and only one record with the name Cam Clarke. In the citation for that record Clarke is listed as the illustrator of a picture book adaptation of Carol Lynn Pearson's My Turn on Earth, which I thought was an interesting coincidence (because I happen to have seen that particular cornerstone of 70s Mormon pop culture), but also took as evidence that the Cam Clarke in LC's NAF was not my Cam Clarke aka Jimmy Flinders, voice actor for everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to He-Man: Master of the Universe.

So I set aside the info on Mr. Clarke until this week, when I finished the training that authorized me to create my own name authority records to be put into LC's file. As I did research in order to create a record for my Cam Clarke, though, I came across this Wikipedia article, which says that Clarke is best known in Latter-day Saint circles as the original "Jimmy Flinders," one of the lead characters of the other cornerstone of 70s Mormon pop culture, Saturday's Warrior. So he was Mormon, after all!

Then I came across this CD that Clarke recorded in the 90s, a collection of popular love songs recast from a gay perspective. Clarke, as it turns out, is a gay Mormon. (By which I mean that he has identified as gay for at least part of his life and he at least grew up Mormon, but I don't presume to say anything about his current identity in terms of the two things.)

He is also the stepbrother of Lex de Azevedo, popular LDS musician, which makes him the uncle of Rachel Coleman, the creator of Signing Time, a DVD series that S-Boogie watched nearly every day of the first two years of her life and of which Little Dude is now a devoted fan.

So I still don't know that voice actor/singer/gay Mormon Cam Clarke is the same as picture book illustrator Cam Clarke, but I do know that the former is related to Lex de Azevedo, who wrote the score for My Turn on Earth, and it's not unlikely that gay Mormon Clarke has some connection to Carol Lynn Pearson, the matron saint of gay Mormons everywhere. So I suspect the two are one and the same. I've emailed Mr. Clarke to ask him to clarify the issue, so hopefully he'll be kind enough to respond.

What I do know that I didn't know yesterday morning is this:

1. Leonardo is a gay Mormon.

2. He-Man is a gay Mormon.

(Apologies to L for the provocative pictures.)

I can't imagine anyone being very surprised about He-Man being gay. I mean really, all the man wears is furry underwear. Leonardo is a bit of surprise, as I would have suspected it first of his brother Donatello, but hey, for all I know, all four of them are. But it certainly never occurred to me that either He-Man or Leonardo might be Mormon. I'll tell you one thing for sure: neither of them went to BYU dressed like that.

An Open Letter to the Mindless Masses

Dear Masses,

I had an idea tonight.

What if, instead of everyone in America being football fans, we varied things up a bit? You know, some people could be into football and others could be into lacrosse and others could be into scuba diving and others could be into Parcheesi? Then maybe, just maybe, every time there's a stupid football game at stupid Husky Stadium they wouldn't have to close all the stupid streets I need to get to my stupid home! (Wait, scratch that last stupid.) And then, while we're at it, maybe we could get some funding at our universities for programs besides football--maybe, I don't know, something remotely related to education?

I dunno. Just an idea.

Love,

Mr. Fob

Drug of the Nation

One of the many ridiculous things that FoxyJ and I have been known to be proud of is the fact that we don't have cable and therefore we and our children are not corrupted by the evils of television. "S-Boogie doesn't even know who that is," we say smugly when other parents talk about annoying children's television characters.

Well, no more.

Last Monday night I finished watching Smallville Season Six (Tom Welling=nice to look at but not a great actor=the perfect Clark Kent), which I had checked out from the library, and then realized that Season Seven was premiering on Thursday night. So Tuesday morning I somewhat impulsively went online and made arrangements to have the Comcast guy stop by on Thursday afternoon.

It's only twelve bucks a month (plus horrendous taxes and fees) for the most basic thirty channels. I decided it was worth twelve bucks a month to be able to watch Smallville, Legion of Superheroes, and The Batman (can you spot a trend?), plus the occasional new episode of The Simpsons (which I would care more about watching regularly if the new ones were nearly as good as the old ones). The irony in all this is that it ends up the former three shows are all on one of the two channels we get clearly without cable. Oh well. Now we have other options.

Like this afternoon, S-Boogie watched two hours of PBS instead of two hours of Dora the Explorer on DVD. Which isn't that bad, I guess. PBS has good kids' shows. On Saturday I let her watch Legion of Superheroes and The Batman with me. Both are a little more violent than I'd ideally like my four-year-old watching, but they're no worse than the Justice League and Teen Titans DVDs I often let her watch with me. It's a compromise I make to be able to watch the shows I like while she's awake, and to spend some time doing something with her that we both enjoy (because, I'll be honest, I was sick of Dora the Explorer months ago). What I realized on Saturday, though, is that the worst part about letting kids watch TV is not the programs themselves; it's the commercials. If I keep letting her watch those, she's going to start asking me to buy her things and getting opinions on what brand of cereal she has to have RIGHT NOW!!! I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

But then I guess it's the price I pay to have my direct link to the united states of unconsciousness. And really, what kind of parent would I be if I deprived my daughter of her weekly dose of animated superheroes?

Would This Make Sense If I Had Cable?

S-Boogie got a Happy Meal last week that came with this Squirrel Boy (?) toy and a colored pencil. The color of the pencil, according to its label, is Vietnam. Were they all out of North Korea?