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.

One of those days...

You know, when you can't find your Flash bookmark so you have to use your Wonder Woman bookmark even though it's a Flash book? Yeah, one of those.

Compartmentalizing

Because I have things to say that very few people who read this blog care about and because some other things I have to say can potentially do more good if said elsewhere, I've expanded my blogging venues. I've started a blog about comics and related geeky goodness which I don't anticipate anyone here will be interested in but I hope will find an audience elsewhere, and I've begun contributing to the Isocrat.org blog, which is where the majority of my LGBT-related thoughts will now be going. The blog is just one part of Isocrat.org, a massive site of LGBT resources that Scot is putting together with a little help from me and a few other friends. I've been working (slowly) on helping to organize the library of articles Scot has put together, and this morning I published my first post on the blog. Among other things, the post explains a small change I've just made to the About Me text in the sidebar here. -->

The Fobcave, meanwhile, won't change much. It will be the repository of all the "everything else" things I feel like blogging about, which is pretty much what it's always been.

Fishnets and Feminism

So apparently some Christian group is making a hullabaloo about the new Barbie version of the superhero Black Canary. Likely not even aware that this is a character that has been around for some sixty years, they see a Barbie in fishnets and shiny black leather and start crying, "S&M!" (Because, you know, all decent Christians know that the only reason anyone wears leather is to participate in kinky fetish orgies.)

I'm somewhat ambivalent about sexy superheroine costumes. My conservative upbringing lends itself easily to a brand of feminism that distrusts a primarily male-driven comic book industry where female characters on average wear half the clothes of their male counterparts, but at the same time I recognize other feminisms that consider a woman's ability to look sexy a valid expression of her power and independence (perhaps Chanson can correct me if I'm misrepresenting that view). And I also distrust conservative interest groups who protest when Barbie puts on fishnets but have no problem with the fact that the entire children's toy and entertainment industry--from Barbie to Disney to Tonka--does nothing but reinforce outdated gender roles that harm little girls far more than a doll in shiny leather could possibly do.

I like the perspective of Amanda Conner, the (female) artist who designed this particular version of Black Canary's costume, as represented in this interview. And I also know that if I were ever to buy my daughter a Barbie, I'd much rather get her a Black Canary or a Supergirl or Batgirl or Wonder Woman than any other Barbie who's just as unrealistically sexy but doesn't also have the ability to kick Ken's butt going for her--at least not quite so obviously.

My guess, though, is that we can all rest assured that the majority of people who buy these superheroine Barbies will not be seven-year-old girls. Rather, it will be the thirty-something fanboys who quickly realize the advantage of these over more traditional superhero action figures: with the Barbie version you can take Wonder Woman's clothes off.

The Dark Knight

Intense. Very intense. Heath Ledger as the Joker is a force of nature. A very scary force of nature. Worth seeing in IMAX if you can--but make sure you get there on time because it's 2 hours and 40 minutes long so if your theater is like Jordan Commons in Sandy and trying to cram as many showings into the day as possible, they'll skip the previews and go straight to the show. They even announced over the credits that there would be no bonus material at the end, so as to get us out of there faster. At least the first five minutes will be totally new to me the next time I see the movie. And believe me, I'll be seeing it again.

Wondering

A couple weeks ago FoxyJ checked out The Prestige from the library. A very cool movie, but the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was "Hey! It's Batman versus Wolverine! And look, there's Alfred!"

Then shortly after that Ken Jennings posted about "superhero crossover" movies where actors who have starred in superhero movies show up together. Besides The Prestige, Ken alluded to Wonder Boys as the movie that made one of his blog readers proclaim, “Holy smokes, Spidey and Iron Man are doin’ it!” So of course I went right to the library website and put Wonder Boys on hold.

As it turns out, this movie has more than superhero sex that should have made me like it more than I did. Besides having some great performances by Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., and Katie Holmes (Batman's girlfriend, by the way), this film has the Mr. Fob advantage of being about writers and writing. Once I realized this, I was excited--I'm a writer, so maybe this movie would somehow speak to the depths of my soul and tell me something wonderful and profound about writing. Perhaps it was this high expectation that left me feeling most disappointed in the movie with the aspects that had anything to do with writing. I don't know what it was* specifically, but it felt to me like a movie about actors pretending to be writers, not a movie about writers.

I remember feeling similarly about Finding Forrester, which like this was a great movie but felt somewhat artificial to me as far as representing anything like the world of writers that I know. Is it just that these are particular representations of a larger topic that I have a particular experience with, and because the particulars don't match up it seems fake to me? Or is it that they just don't do a good job of being movies about writers? My friends who (like me) are pretentious enough to call yourselves writers, have you seen movies about writers that rang true to you? Have the rest of you had similar experiences with movies about some other subject in your personal domain?

And is this why I was also disappointed by Unbreakable, which everyone told me I'd love as a comic-book fan, but ultimately felt like the work of an outsider to the genre?**


*After writing this post but before publishing it, I've figured out what I don't like about the portrayal of writing in either of the films mentioned above. In both writing is made out to be this magical process that somehow transcends the experience of mere mortal non-writers, but I don't know any writer for whom this is the case. You come up with an idea, you force it onto paper (or onto the screen), it's crap, and then you work and work until it's less crap than it was at first. There's nothing magical about it.

**Notice how I nicely brought the post back to the theme of superheroes, which is what I'd started with but otherwise had nothing to do with anything? Isn't that wonderfully literary of me?

Spoiler Warning

Today is Wednesday. For those of you who aren't comic book geeks (which may be everyone who reads this blog), Wednesday is new comics day, the day a new shipment arrives at comic book shops everywhere. Today a comic is coming out that is supposed to be relatively important as far as stories in a shared fictional universe go. I'll be heading to Comics Dungeon this afternoon to pick it up. This morning I took a look at my preferred comics news site, as I do several times a day, and saw a story referring to an article in today's New York Daily News that apparently gives away the last-page reveal of this important comic that's coming out today. I resisted the urge to click on the link.

This goes against my nature, and it's hurting.

I knew about the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense two years before I saw it. I enjoyed watching the movie knowing what was coming, catching all the little clues that most people probably didn't notice until the second time they watched it.

I knew about the death at the end of Harry Potter Book 6 before I ever picked up Book 1. Again, it was kind of cool to read the story knowing what was coming. But I resisted seeing any major spoilers about Book 7 before reading it, so I was totally shocked when Harry died at the end. (Just kidding, Cricket. That was for you.)

I must admit, it's not uncommon for me to look at my Amazon.com wishlist before my birthday or Christmas to see what people have bought for me. I wouldn't want them to tell me what they got--part of the fun of ruining the surprise is finding out for myself.

My justification is that I don't actually ruin the surprise; I just experience it earlier. I wonder, though, if by removing the surprise experience from the reading experience or viewing experience or gift-opening experience, I'm missing out on something. This is why, if I can, I'm going to avoid reading that New York Daily News article until after I read my new comics this afternoon. I'll report back on whether saving the surprise makes my comics reading that much more transcendental.

Public Service Announcement: Set Your Clocks Back

No, it's not time for daylight savings. In fact, you don't even need to set your clock back an entire hour--just a minute or so. Why, you ask? Dr. Fob will explain:

Did you know that in Australia toilets flush the wrong way? It's for some complicated reason whose details don't really matter. The only thing you need to know is this: Toilets flush counter-clockwise in the norther hemisphere because of the way the Earth rotates. (And, you know, because that's the way God intended it.)

Did you know that if you spin your toilet-cleaning brush clockwise while the toilet flushes, you can make the water flush the wrong way? It's so simple, I can't believe that no one but me has ever ever thought of it in the history of the world. But trust me, no one has.

Did you know that in Superman: The Movie, Superman flies around the Earth so fast that he makes it spin the wrong way, causing time itself to go backwards? He did this to undo Lois Lane's untimely death in one of the most scientifically sound and narratively satisfying action movie climaxes of all time.

So if you felt something strange this afternoon, this is why: I was cleaning my toilet and I made it flush clockwise. Considering that I am in the northern hemisphere, if you've been paying attention then you understand what this means--I made the Earth spin backwards. And of course by now you've followed the trail of infallible logic to conclude that, for the minute or so that my toilet flushed the wrong way, I made time go backwards.

And that is why you need to set your clocks and watches back a minute.

See, kids, science is fun when you understand it as well as I do!

Darn Personality Quizzes Revealing My Secret Identity...

Your results:
You are Superman

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Superman 85% Spider-Man 75% Hulk 65% Supergirl 65% Robin 55% Green Lantern 55% Batman 55% The Flash 50% Wonder Woman 45% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 10%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Batgirl the Activist

From a 1974 (?) U.S. Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division public service message:

Weekly Confession: Indoctrination

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. I am indoctrinating my children in the ways of my religion.

It all started, I suppose, when S-Boogie was a baby and I got in the habit of putting on Justice League DVDs while trying to get her to go back to sleep in the middle of the night. That planted the seed. Then when she was two, I dressed her for Halloween as Supergirl. This past year I've brainwashed her with the full canon of our scriptures, starting with the complete series of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited DVDs, then on to Teen Titans and Batman and most recently Superfriends. I have put the icing on the cake of indoctrination, as it were, by buying her her very own idol as a Christmas present:I justify this blatant projection of my own values onto my daughter by reminding myself that just last week, while watching Superfriends, she said of her own free will, "Superman's my favorite." (I later asked, to clarify, whether she liked Superman or Supergirl better; she replied that she liked them both the same. I debated with myself as to whether Supergirl would provide a strong female role model or simply yet another example of a teenaged girl dressing like a skank in order to impress men. Ultimately the comic book shop decided for me by having only Superman figures.)

Obviously her statement of preference is more proof that the brainwashing has already happened than justification for further acts of brainwashing. (Though, truth be told, I like Batman better myself.)

I'll be honest; I have no intention of stopping this rampant brainwashing of the innocents. I will likely continue to watch superhero cartoons with them, buy them superhero toys now and then, and encourage them to read superhero comics when they're older. I will, however, encourage them to explore other faiths as well. And most importantly, as they grow up I will support them in whatever choices they make, even if they decide they like Marvel Comics superheroes better than DC Comics superheroes or (Krypton forbid!) that they don't like superheroes at all.

So I guess I'm not all that sorry for this sin, Blogger. But at least I admit it is one.

The Child from Bizarro World!

As many of you know, my daughter, S-Boogie, was Supergirl for Halloween this year:


I'm beginning to wonder if a more appropriate costume wouldn't have been Bizarro Supergirl:


Besides her naturally pale skin and her backwards logic, there is her handwriting to consider. Take a good look at this picture of Bizarro Superman, then look at the handwriting sample below. Notice, particularly, the "S" in her name.



Keep in mind, folks, this image has not been flipped. That's how she writes her "S"es. There is no possible explanation for this peculiar phenomenon except that she's a spy from Bizarro World. Or she secretly wants to be Z-Boogie. I'm banking on the former, though, as at least that way I'll always be a winner in her eyes.

Green Lantern's Wisdom

"My power ring can't stop those yellow comets, so I'll have to move the Earth out of their way!"

--from the Challenge of the Superfriends episode "Invasion of the Fearians"

Costumes, Candy, and Poop

S-Boogie wore her costume all day. Me too. I was the only one in my metadata class this morning wearing a costume, but that just shows how much cooler I am than everyone else (last year a classmate dressed up as the FRBR model, which I thought was one of the coolest costumes ever). After class I headed over to S-Boogie's preschool to help with pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating. It was a lot of fun to see all the kids' costumes and to see how excited they were to get candy. The school gave parents the option to have our kid's treat bag swapped for a healthy treat bag after the trick-or-treating, and FoxyJ and I decided to take that option since S-Boogie already had a bunch of candy from trunk-or-treating on Saturday and we knew she'd get more tonight. She was suprisingly cool with this, very excited when she got home to eat her bag of "special treats"--fruit leather, apple sauce, carrots, and juice.

After school and snacks, S-Boogie and I went to the comic shop to pick up my comics for this week. I figured that if anyone would appreciate our homemade Supergirl and Bruce Wayne costumes, it would be comic shop people, but no one said anything. I figure it's because they were amazed to the point of speechlessness.

This morning I had wondered if it was a good idea to dress Little Dude in the red turtleneck onesie he needed for his Robin costume this afternoon, but I figured it would be fine. When I got home from the comic shop and opened his bedroom door to find him sitting pantsless in his crib, licking poop off his fingers, I realized that I should have listened to that still small voice of Halloweeny wisdom. FoxyJ gathered up the dirty clothes and bedding and threw it in the washer while I cleaned off the child, then on her way out the door suggested I use LD's red coat for his costume, since it was cold outside and the turtleneck onesie was no longer an option. A poopy disaster turned into a blessing, as the red coat ended up looking even better than the onesie (under the coat he's wearing a red short-sleeve onesie with some car design printed on the front; if I'd had a green onesie under the coat it would have been perfect):


So S-Boogie, LD, and I went trick-or-treating at the shopping center that doubles as our backyard while FoxyJ headed off to teach her class. My only complaint with that experience, besides the crowd, is that everyone was giving out lollipops and Smarties. Where's the chocolate, folks?

The best part of the day, I have to say, came at the end: after sloppy joes and tater tots for dinner, then a quick bath (eliminating the final remnants of poopiness), we turned off the lights, put The Batman vs. Dracula in the DVD player, and ate as much candy as our stomachs could handle. I'm all for encouraging kids to eat healthily, but c'mon, it's Halloween! That's the point! And in my defense as a responsible parent, LD went to bed halfway through the movie and after only one package of Smarties and one lollipop. One-and-a-half-year-olds don't get to decide how much candy their stomachs can handle.

S-Boogie went to bed just a little late, a few minutes after FoxyJ got home from work, and then I lay down in bed and read my comics. The perfect end to a perfect holiday.

Mr. Fob, Costume Designer

As you can imagine, it makes me quite the proud father to hear my four-year-old daughter tell me she wants to be Supergirl for Halloween. We actually made the cape and shield for Halloween two years ago, when the costume was more my idea than hers, but this time we managed to get a more traditional Supergirl look with a blue shirt from the Gap and a red holiday skirt from Children's Place. We probably could have tracked down red boots instead of getting another pair of sparkly red Target shoes, as rain boots are much easier to find in Seattle than in Orem, but she already has a pair of rain boots so we decided the sparkly shoes were not only cheaper but more practical.


Little Dude's Robin costume, which I admit was more my idea than his, is not quite so true to the source material, but Robin's costume has varied so much over the years that I felt justified in going with a more liberal interpretation that takes elements from all of them. We tried to find green tights, but ended up settling for black, which made everyone think he was one of the Incredibles. Oh well. I think he makes a pretty good Robin.

My costume is a variation of the costume I've used almost every year for the last five or six years--in the past I've been Clark Kent, so this year I decided to be Bruce Wayne. It gave me an excuse to buy a really cool Bat-symbol t-shirt, and like the Clark Kent costume it has the advantage of being a little subtler than a full-on superhero costume. A touch I added this year--a clever touch, if I do say so myself--is the cape hanging out the back of Bruce Wayne's shirt. No one ever gets it, to be honest; they tend to think I'm just too embarrassed to take off my normal clothes and show off my costume, or they don't notice it at all. That's okay, though. I like it.

Common Justice

The Hollywood Reporter reports that casting has begun for the new Justice League of America movie. Director George Miller is looking for young actors who can grow into the (super)heroic roles over the course of several movies, so the list of auditioners includes actors from shows like The O.C., Sky High, and Running With Scissors. Oh, and also Common, the rapper. You'd think that the prospect of combining one of my favorite rappers with one of my favorite superhero teams would excite me, but mostly I'm just wondering what role he's auditioning for.

(NOTE: Not an actual photo.)

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?

Flashing Into the Present

For eight years during the nineties--the years when I was most immersed in the world of superheroes--the monthly adventures of the Flash were written by Mark Waid. Waid had taken over the title in 1992, six years after the previous Flash had died and then been replaced by his teenage protege, Wally West. Since donning the Flash identity, Wally West had been portrayed mostly as a womanizing, junk food-eating, cocky twenty-year-old kid. Six years later fans still clamored for the return of his predecessor, who was generally considered the One True Flash. In Waid's eight years on the character, Wally grew up, settled into a responsible adult relationship, and accepted his role as the Flash. Not coincidentally, fans also began to accept him in the role.

One of Waid's running motifs during his run on The Flash was the opening line of each issue, which was always some variation of "My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash, the fastest man alive." Each issue was then narrated by Wally, with caption boxes revealing his thoughts as he battled supervillains and rescued innocents at superspeed. The concept was that Wally's thoughts moved at such speeds that he could have a two-page interior monologue in the two milliseconds it took him to run across town. I don't know how that concept works scientifically, but as a character and story concept, it worked quite well. So well, in fact, that this narrative device became associated with the character and Waid's successors continued to use it until Wally disappeared in 2006 and was replaced by his teenage protege, Bart Allen.

Now, a year later, Bart has been killed and Wally is back. Wally's return to the role of the Flash corresponds with Mark Waid's return, after seven years away, to the writing credits of The Flash. As Waid's Flash was consistently one of my favorite comics when I was growing up, I was happy to hear of his return. The news was, in fact, one of the motivations behind my recent return to weekly trips to the comic book shop. Alongside the excitement of seeing one of my favorite writers writing one of his favorite characters again, though, was a bit of fear, an acknowledgment that as fun as nostalgia is, you can't go back in time. If Waid is going to attempt to recreate his glory days and bring us back to the Flash of the nineties, I'm afraid it would feel too much like running backwards.

So I picked up All-Flash #1 last month with this mix of excitement and fear. The issue started out with the familiar "My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash, the fastest man alive," and I was brought back immediately to the nineties. Wally sped through the issue, tracking down the villain responsible for his successor's death, narrating the journey along the way, and I was a fifteen-year-old again, lost in a fantasy world of superpowers, tights, and creative rewriting of the laws of physics. Then towards the end of the story, Wally is talking to his aunt, his thoughts running parallel to their conversation, and she says, "Stop it. Stop with the interior monologue, Wally. I know you're thinking of a million other things while you're talking to me. If you're going to be the husband and father your wife and children need, you're going to have to learn to be present with the people you're talking to."* And with that, the interior monologue stops.

I love that Waid did this. Assuming he follows through in future issues, this is a bold move: removing one of the most recognizable characteristics of his previous stint as writer of The Flash, arguably one of the things that made the series great. It needs to happen, though, if he's going to move forward and not simply relive the nineties. I also think it's a great moment in terms of character development. As his aunt points out, Wally is now a husband and father. Such relationships require, above all, presence and mindfulness.

Now, if only Mark Waid would write the interior monologues out of my life, I'd be set.



*Dialogue liberally paraphrased because I don't have the comic with me at the moment.

Where Do You Buy Your Running Boots?

You've heard of the Flash, right? His superpower is that he runs really fast. Wouldn't it make more sense, then, for him to wear, oh, I don't know, running shoes? I mean, have you ever seen an Olympic athlete running in boots?

At least the current Flash's boots (and the rest of his costume, for that matter) look more aerodynamic than the original Flash's:


But then, everyone knows that putting wings on your boots makes you run faster.