iZOMBIE - Rob Thomas

Rob Thomas' fingerprint is all over iZOMBIE: a dark and witty sense of humour, young characters, the CW, the quirky detective who works outside of the law, the nostalgia for an ex-lover, the bad boy, the comic relief best friend, and the slightly-crooked accomplice. All of these characters are present in Veronica Mars, and their reflections echo in iZOMBIE. This isn't a bad thing, per se. Rob Thomas' voice is a lovely one, reminiscent of  a more diverse Joss Whedon (this comparison is furthered by the supernatural elements in iZOMBIE).

But at the same time, this authorial voice steamrolled the creative and compelling mythology of the original iZombie comic. While I'm glad to welcome Rob Thomas back to our television screens, it's a shame that Gwen Dylan, Ellie Stuart and Scott (or even that weird President gang) will never see the light of day. Though the comic was rushed, improperly paced, it was some kind of beautiful in its "throw everything to the wall" approach and I think Thomas could have done it some kind of justice.

Still, I didn't mean to be so down on iZOMBIE. If it wasn't for its alleged similarity to iZombie, I'd probably be in love with it; everything about it I should love. The tightly-structured murder mysteries, an overarching arc with brain-of-the-weeks, the wit. I just can't get past the what-could-have-been for long periods.

I still love it though.

Rating: five stars out of six (extremely good--one star off, just for bulldozing the source material)

Does the Wizarding World have a culture?

Rereading Harry Potter (okay, reading fanfics, you caught me), I noticed that the arts and humanities were near-completely ignored in the Hogwarts curriculum. Magic (DADA, charms, transfiguration, etc.) seems to be close to some sort of science, perhaps a fifth discipline of it (chemistry, physics, biology, geology and magic sounds pretty good). Then there are obviously some forms of magic that fall into other parts of science--potions sounds pretty similar to chemistry, herbology seems like a form of biology, and astronomy is pretty obviously physics.

There are only two first-year classes that are not to do with performing magic: flying--like some sort of physical education--and history--though it is Wizarding World-focused. There seems to be no literature, no art, no music (apart from an extracurricular "Toad Choir"). We are told of fairy tales by Beedle the Bard, and Rowling even wrote them. However, what good are these if they are the only literature available? The wonder of fairy tales is that they can be built upon, not that they are complex works of art at their core (Rowling should understand--every Beedle story is based on a real folk tale).

It's easy to get carried away when writing of magic. But what use is magic when there's nothing to support you?

Analysis of Detail from Guernica by Pablo Picasso

A Week of Stories - 21/06/2015

The Wetsuitman - Dagbladet (Monday)

On February 5, Kripos sent out a so called “Black Notice” through Interpol. It contains a DNA profile and a detailed description of the finding of the body on Lista. They received an answer the next day. 

The Lista body is not the only one that drifted ashore in a grey and black Triboard wetsuit.

That One Time My Brother And I Caused A Race Riot - Culture Club (Tuesday)

At a certain point, I began to believe that because we were in this hyper-exposed era of pro wrestling that all of this really ugly racial behavior was actually leading somewhere great, to a place where we were exorcising centuries-old demons about America’s terrible racial past. I was so wrong.

Why I Answered My Dad's Gay Sex Ad -  Narratively (Tuesday)

It was the mid-‘90s and the Internet was still something you had to access with dial-up and a shrink-wrapped CD from AOL. Any time I’d walk in while he was on the computer he’d immediately turn to face me. 

“Hey there,” he’d say, “how was school?”

I could hear the telltale sound of the mouse clicking to minimize a screen.

Dad had a secret.

5 Weird Realities When Scientologists Run Your School - Cracked (Wednesday)

Catholic school announces itself right there in the title -- if you go to Catholic school and you're surprised by the "Catholic" part of it, you probably really need more of the "school" part. But Scientology schools? Not so much. Renaissance Academy and Mary's School House and Greenfields -- nice names, huh? You'll have to do some research to discover they're affiliated with Scientology, though. At the Delphian School, where I went, you have to dig down about three pages into the "About Us" section of its website before the name L. Ron Hubbard is mentioned at all, and then only as a "philosopher" and "educator."

Take Down the Confederate Flag - The Atlantic (Thursday)

The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree—the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it.

 Disposable Cups, Forming A Permanent Legacy - News-Leader (Friday)

A continuous broad teal brushstroke, topped with a finer purple one. If that doesn't ring a bell, imagine it on disposable cups. Over the past couple decades, the pattern has been mass produced on millions of them, in addition to other products. 

The design is called "Jazz," and it has an oddly passionate fan base. You can buy it on T-shirts. It's been spotted on cars. It has a few thousand fans on Facebook.

 Clear Victory: A Deep Dive Into The World’s Most Prestigious Water-Tasting Competition - Buzzfeed (Friday)

We’d been instructed not to react to the water so as not to sway our neighbors’ opinions. We weren’t supposed to look at one another’s forms, either. For the sake of keeping our senses clear, we were to avoid wearing perfumes and colognes

I Made A Linguistics Professor Listen To A Blink-182 Song And Analyze The Accent - Atlas Obscura (Saturday) 

Two decades have passed since pop-punk exploded in the American music scene, yet the quintessentially suburban, teen-centric music still seems to bounce around our collective skulls. Of all the elements of the Clinton-era mutation of punk music that embraced skate and surf culture, mild angst, goofiness, and incredibly hooky, catchy music, it's the vocals that we remember. The very specific accent used in the mega-hits of the genre seems to still have a hold over anyone who was a teenager between 1993 and 2003: On Twitter you’ll see jokes made about the “pop punk voice" used by bands like the Offspring, New Found Glory, Avril Lavigne, and, especially, Blink-182. Their accents are a relic as strong as the Valley Girl voice.

This Woman Led the Latin Kings and Lived 'Orange Is the New Black' - VICE (Saturday)

The women are in a very vulnerable position when they're incarcerated, and some COs are predators. They seek these women out for sexual relationships. I've also seen women who use the guards' sexual predatory nature to get out of prison. But the majority of the time, the women feel that it's going to make them feel like they're not in prison—on the other hand, it's forced. It's not really consensual.

Rescuing Wonderful Shivery Tales - The New York Times (Sunday)

This collection contains many of the most-loved fairy tales in the history of the form: “Little Snow White” (Sneewittchen), with its haunting refrain (“Mirror, mirror…”) and its three steps to deathly unconsciousness (first the stay-laces, then the poisoned comb, then the irresistible red red apple); the Grimms’ chilling and ferocious variant of “Cinderella” in which her sisters cut off their toes and their heels to fit into the glass slipper; “Rapunzel”; “The Robber Bridegroom”; “Fitcher’s Bird”—one could go on and on. The book is a classic, formed like a mosaic of precious small pieces, each one glinting with its own color and character, glassy and crystalline, but somehow hard, unyielding.

And yet much of it is unfamiliar.

Mothers Are OITNB

The first episode of the third season of Orange is the New Black is called "Mother's Day". Not only does it work as a description of the episode, it is a summation of the series' major themes: the inner lives of women. Traditionally, women are defined by their maternal instincts. A woman is either Medea or the virgin Mary. Orange... takes that trope, plays off it, and subverts it.

Inappropriate Kids' Cartoons Adaptations

Source

Most people probably know by now that the only similarities the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic has with the eventual franchise is the character names and the concept. This got me think about what would happen if I applied the concept to a few other unsuitable sources.

My Little Cthulhu

My Little Cthulhu is a touching tale set in the eldritch city of R'yleh. The major characters of My Little Cthulhu has the Deep One Cthulhu and his five friends, fellow Deep One Dagon, the Avatars Hastur and Nyarlathotep, and the Outer Gods Shub-Nigurath and Tsathoggua.

The series will be constructed for five seasons. Of course, the first few seasons will be simple enough, though they will become more unknowable during the course of the series (with the exception of Nyarlathotep, who will grow more knowable). Finally, the series closes with the sinking of R'yleh, and the sextet splits up to save their world from humanity. 

Loony Thrones

Loony Thrones is a slapstick anthology based in the slapstick world of Westeros.

There are three regular segments and countless recurring:

1. The struggle for power in the centre of Westeros. The fighters in this region utilise weapons like anvils and mallets. 
2. The border of Westeros. The humans constantly have their plans backfire onto them!
3. The laboratory of Essos. Two dragons live there, and they try to take over the world. Eventually a girl named Dany joins the cast, but we don't talk about those years. 

The Toxic Crusaders

"Toxic Crusaders is an animated series based on The Toxic Avenger films. It features Toxie, the lead character of the films leading a trio of misfit superheroes who combat pollution."

-Wikipedia

Yes. This was a real thing. It really can't get any worse, so I will leave you with that. 

An Update On Charlie Hebdo

I actually managed to pick up an issue of Charlie Hebdo a few months back (early April). It was blathering on about "les terroristes Islamique" (seemingly every other cartoon was about Muslims). Though this urge is understandable, they seem to have forgotten that one of the three police officers who died in the Charlie Hebdo was a Muslim.

Since I last reported on it, Charlie Hebdo has received a PEN award. This is an implicit approval of its incredibly racist content. There is no way around it: Charlie Hebdo is a racist publication, and it has been approved by the biggest cartooning awards.

And again, France is not the bastion of free speech it was painted as after the Hebdo attacks.

Related:

• In the Mideast, as in France, satire is a weapon against extremists
• No, we’re not all Charlie Hebdo, nor should we be
• Why Charlie Hebdo attack is not about Islam
• This Attack Was Nothing To Do With Free Speech — It Was About War
• Why I'm Protesting PEN's Award For Charlie Hebdo
• Everything the Hooded Utilitarian wrote on Hebdo
• The Aesthetic Failure of 'Charlie Hebdo'

A Message From Lee Brewster

While researching a new essay, I found this anecdote:

We died in 1973, the fourth anniversary of Stonewall. That’s when we were told we were a threat and an embarrassment to women because lesbians felt offended by our attire, us wearing makeup. It came down to a brutal battle on the stage that year at Washington Square Park, between me and people I considered my comrades and friends. This was at pride. 

It was the year Bette Midler came to sing “Happy Birthday” for us. It was happy for the mainstream community, but it was not happy for us. They tried to stop drag queen entertainers from performing. It was angry because I had been scheduled for many months to speak at that rally. So I’m stubborn, and I wasn’t going to have it. Because for four years we were the vanguard of the gay movement, and all of a sudden it was being taken away. 

We were being pushed out of something we helped create. I remember this man telling me, a straight man who was my boss at the time, when I was working in Jersey - he said, “Ray, the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Be careful. Watch it.” And I saw it. And I still see it. I literally had to fight my way up onto that stage. I was beat. I got to speak. I said my piece. And I basically left the movement for many years. I didn’t come back into view until the 20th anniversary. And that was with David Isay’s Remembering Stonewall. 

He found me where I was in Tarrytown. I was living and working there. And then along came Martin Duberman and Stonewall. But I was really hurt in 1974. I tried to kill myself. I had 60 stitches on this arm after that incident. And I wasn’t ever going to come back to the movement. But you know who held fast to her word was Lee Brewster. When she got up and spoke after I did, she took off her tiara, threw it into the crowd and said, “Fuck gay liberation!” 

What people fail to remember is, here’s another drag queen who has not been recognized as a hero in our community. She put a majority of the money up for the first march in 1970. Lee Brewster changed the drinking laws for gay men to be able to be served in public at a regular bar instead of an afterhours club. She did this. Lee Brewster, with her own money, changed the laws on the books in New York against criminal impersonation that was held over drag queens’ heads.

There's not much about Lee Brewster online, so I think I'm going to go on another hunt for citations once I've finished this essay.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.

The Vocabulary of ASOUE

I have a theory that Lemony Snicket's adjectives slowly get more complicated. So, let's test this theory out:

1. The Bad Beginning (2)
2. The Reptile Room (8)
3. The Wide Window (1)
4. The Miserable Mill (4)
5. The Austere Academy (10)
6. The Ersatz Elevator (11)
7. The Vile Village (6)
8. The Hostile Hospital (3)
9. The Carnivorous Carnival (12)
10. The Slippery Slope (7)
11. The Grim Grotto (5)
12. The Pentultimate Peril (9)
13. The End

Data was based in how commonly a word was used in English, found through Google Ngram. I disagree with a few of these, but I haven't tampered. 

As the Bauldelaires' journey becomes more uncertain, so does the vocabulary Snicket uses. We are as mystified as the siblings.

Despite this, there are outliers. There's a brief rise in complexity at books 5 and 6. These two books are where the mystery of VFD kicks off, and are quite plot-heavy. This makes them very oblique (though fascinating). With The End, Snicket forgoes use of an adjective. This signifies that, like the Baudelaires, we have no hope of knowing what is happening.  

This Week in T-POP! News: 17/05/2015

Well, I said it was semi regular.

Tromeo and Juliet - Lloyd Kaufman

There's a scene early on in Tromeo & Juliet while Juliet dreams. For a few, fleeting seconds, it seems as if it could come out of a Swedish sauna porno. But this is a Troma production, and sex is never without meaning; in this case, Juliet's fear of heterosexual intercourse is the meaning. Juliet reaches to an anonymous man's penis, and pulls it out. Not content to be a regular penis, it must be about a foot--and worse, it has a mouth. This was the moment I knew I loved Tromeo & Juliet. (The moment I knew I liked it was earlier--at the reimagining of the "'Do you bite your thumb at me?' 'I bite my thumb, sir!'" scene. You know the one.)

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect

This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

"Just the same Tip": Gender Fluidity in Baum's Oz

L. Frank Baum's mother-in-law was a radical feminist, and she influenced his work greatly (if you're interested more on this particular aspect, Sally Roesch Wagner has a book on this called The Wonderful Mother of Oz). This contributed to the gender fluidity of his work.

Sad Puppies, Sad Days: An Appendix

Things I couldn't include in my last post.

Sad Puppies, Sad Days: Reactionary Views in Nerd Culture

Nerd culture has taken a swing for the reactionary recently. First it was Gamergate (praise be to Our Lady Sarkeesian), then it was God Gave Comicsgate To You, Shirtstorm, Metalgate (which thankfully never took off), God Gave Comicsgate To You II, a myriad of minor controversies with the suffix -gate mixed in between, and now the Scandal of the Sad Puppies. The Sad Puppies are a group of conservative science-fiction enthusiasts who want science fiction to go back to how it "used to be" and stop being so goddamn progressive. They are willing to do whatever it takes to take the world of sci-fi back-and they have formed a voting bloc in this year's Hugo Awards.

Guts - Chuck Palahniuk

Awful. Just really awful.

Seconds - Bryan Lee O'Malley

Seconds is a delicious treat that left me wanting seconds. If Bryan Lee O'Malley continues in this direction, he has a dedicated fan in me. The book's vivid depictions of food left me ravenous, and what's more, the restaurants were a perfect metaphor for the unrest in Katie's life.

Discworld & Narrative Causality

In Discworld, "stories are important" (Witches Abroad). They wrap themselves around people, play riddles with them, and shape their lives. A witch in a gingerbread house always has an unfortunate ending, a girl skipping through a forest in a red coat always meets. Nowhere is this more evident than in Witches Abroad, a tale of two powerful women fighting each other through stories. An evil queen forces people to obey the narrative, on threat of death.

The Importance of Weird in Discworld

Let's get this straight: to me, weird is a genre that encompasses anything that could not happen in our world (it's straight-up weird that mixes genres). Terry Pratchett used weird in one of the best ways I've seen.

Comic Book Superheroines

What comic book superheroes do you think are overly-sexualised? The one that's thrown out a lot is Dick Grayson-discounting his costume, which shows less skin than pretty much every female superhero ever, the first covers of latest efforts (by creative team) for Grayson and Wonder Woman are so different.

Source 1: Wonder Woman #36

Source 2: Grayson #1

Some TV Show Recommendations

Though The Last Man On Earth only aired last night, it was a revelation. It came bursting through the television screen full of promise. Kristen Schaal has always been one of my favourite comic actors (her stand-up is grotesquely sweet), and it's great to see her in a regular live-action role again. More than this, Last Man came with its own sense of humour unlike anything else on right now. Here are some other shows with their own humour:

Pop Culture & Class

James McAvoy's anxiety "about a society that doesn't give opportunities to everybody from every walk of life" reminded me of a few other recent comments about art and class: Julie Walter's and Judi Dench's in particular. This was only further compounded by a thinktank's analysis of Grammy wins over the last few decades: the study concluded that music was the whitest it had been in over thirty years (while not all white people are privileged, they are more likely to be a higher class than minorities).

This week in T-POP! News: 9/02/2015

I went to a concert. Pretty cool. I also started three essays. Also pretty cool. Didn't finish them. Not cool at all.

This week in T-POP! News:

[T-POP! News is a new semi-weekly feature I will be running from here on out. T-POP!, of course, stands for The-Person of Porlock, which is semi-similar to the name of this blog, that I run.]

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - Isao Takahata

The whole film is in this style, as an example. I think this is just a screengrab they decided would make a good poster. They were right.

From the moment it bursts onto screen, Princess Kaguya has a fairy tale sensibility. The visuals look like they jumped straight out of a story book, and the narration only compounds this. And despite it being visible to these Western eyes, it still felt very Japanese. The art is similar to that of the classic Japanese paintings (does anyone know what that's called?), and it was based on the first written Japanese story (extant, anyway).

Selma (On Historical Inaccuracies and Race)

I haven't yet seen Selma, but I know of the fuss raised by two aides to President Johnson (also the custodians to his library?? Why is that a thing). So obviously, they have no potential bias about this. In basic form, the two aides believe that Selma portrayed President Johnson unfairly (I guess saying that the FBI bugged King, Johnson was more interested in Vietnam than civil rights and the Selma-Montgomery march was King's, not Johnson's, idea-all true, by the by-is unfair now).

Boyhood - Richard Linklater

According to Salon, Boyhood "isn’t quite like anything else in the history of cinema". I disagree. Like, a lot. There was one part of Boyhood that I felt I hadn't seen before (sure, a lot of it in Skins&nbspand teen movies, but what makes them any lesser than Boyhood?), and I'll get onto that in a while.

Oscars Challenge 2K15

I'm trying to watch every Best Picture nominee (and a few others) this year before the Oscars happen on... the 22nd of February. Wish me luck!

My Muppet Show (or, A Fantasy Reboot)

Dear whoever (or should I say whatever? In case you're Gonzo. Or a gonzo journalist),

Obviously, you're rebooting the Muppet Show. How could you not? A vaudevellian-variety-talk-something show full of "frogs and dogs and bears and... whatever" is ripe property for rebooting, even if a movie was only made last year. So, in some sort of order, I have a list of demands for you:

Dreams of Sleeping Past (Midday): On Superhero Movies

Superhero movies bore me. That's not to say they're unworthy of being Art or Culture or whatever the term is today (god knows I don't judge on that-in my pantheon of good stuff, an obscure children's fantasy rubs shoulders with Pale Fire, a dramedy-musical with Wes Anderson): I've just never watched a superhero movie without falling asleep.

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nakobov

Before I start, I'm going to admit it: reviewing Pale Fire makes me feel like a fool. What do my prettied words mean when the whole book was against prettied words?

Rating: six stars

We Are the Best! - Lukas Moodysson

We Are the Best! is very much like finding a new type of comfort food. It's nothing that challenges you (too much), but you instantly love it. It doesn't aim to start a revolution, but it does aim to be satisfying.

"Je suis Charlie": The Artistic Value of Charlie Hebdo

Source 1: NSFW. Captions read "Mohammed: A star is born!" "The film which shook the Muslim World". Mohammed's speech bubble reads"And my ass? You like my ass?"

Before we start, let's get one thing out of the way. France is not the final bastion of free speech: Charlie Hebdo's predecessor was shut down due to a joke about Charles de Gaulle's death (that kind of thing would be legal today, in case you were wondering, though I don't know if the French would be as quick to play that card).

Source 2: Text reads "Tragic dance in Colombey. One Dead."

"I don't know if I should take a husband or a wife": Krazy Kat and Gender

I received Fantagraphics' first collection of Krazy Kat recently and, flipping through it, I was struck by how modern the notions of gender are. At one point, Krazy complains that they "don't know if I should take a husband or a wife" (October 1915). Despite the heteronormative ideals clearly present in that statement, it strikes me as similar to the new genderfluid movement - a movement that aims to free people from the gender binary.

Medium Snobs! & Other Musings Too Unpolished To Put Into A Seperate Blogpost

We all know that there is a contingent among those who consider themselves cultured who believe that certain styles, genres, mediums and the like are somehow 'less worthy' of being literary (I'm talking specifically about the narrative form right now-I have even less expertise in the fine arts than I do in the narrative form!). There has, however, been a kickback recently against this snobbery, to the point that Slate's Music Club declared "bragging about omnivorousness has become its own kind of snobbery". Honestly, I find this snobbery (if it can even be called that) far preferable to the old kind of snobbery, which I feel was based in classist assumptions of low and high culture.

I forgot to mention this at the time, but my New Year's Resolution is to post 100 blogposts this year, which is both over 5x more than I did last year, and me posting every 3.65 days. So expect far more posts this year!

Does anyone else find the rapey-ness of Alan Moor's work disturbing? I actually had to abort my reading of Watchmen due to finding it too problematic - not that I was overly enjoying it anyway-I was finding it a slog and, essentially, un-fun. I know it's important and such, but good god To Kill A Mockingbird was much more culturally important and  fun. In case anyone doesn't like my criteria of media having to be fun, I find enjoyment is critical to my enjoyment of media.

And now, I leave you with the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "write your own ending".

Superheroes' Superpesonality

The title of my post is a lie. Superheroes do not have well-defined personalities, and that's part, or most, of their appeal. Their blankness allows them to be placed in any sort of situation-like how a Wonder Woman comic can be anything from a myth-themed epic to a "hip" '60s adventure set in Greenwich Village. They adapt. Wonder Woman's a particularly good example for this, because she isn't static (not even her origin story, unlike Batman or Spiderman).

God Help the Girl - Stuart Murdoch

God Help the Girl aims to be a complex reflection on the creation of music, mental illness and eating disorders. For the most part, I felt it succeeded. It's a twee little thing, but it works well (I do seem to have a fondness for twee, so take your tolerance for it into account).