Supergirl

On another note, I've decided that I will be dropping DC's new Supergirl series after reading a third of the second issue. I'm sure not many people are curious as to why, but I'll tell you anyway. Pure and simple, the Supergirl series doesn't seem to be about Supergirl. Yes, she shows up, but she does so alongside just about every other character in the DC universe. The first issue had her watching the JSA fight somebody and then getting into a protracted and pointlessly stupid fight with Power Girl. What a great way to introduce a new series; have the first issue feature characters with in-depth backgrounds and continuity and act as though the reader should know who they are.

And the logic (or lack thereof) behind the fight is completely asinine. Apparently, since Supergirl and Power Girl are so similar, and the same matter can't occupy the same space at the same time, contact with Supergirl causes Power Girl to go crazy and try to kill her. Hold on a sec. If the same matter can't occupy the same space at the same time, shouldn't they repel each other? Fighting would bring them into much closer proximity. No, someone at DC editorial probably just said, "We need us a chick fight in the new Supergirl comic. Dudes like those. And dudes love Power Girl because her boobies hang out. Let's get those two in a brawl right away!"

Issue two doesn't fare much better. This time, rather than the JSA, the Teen Titans show up for an extended guest shot. After yet another pointless fight, this time against Superboy, the rest of the Teen Titans appear and begin to fight with Superboy about something that I can only imagine occurred in the pages of the Teen Titans comic. Once again, yet another great way to continue the introductory story arc; bring in characters with their own continuity and expect the reader to know what's going on. "But, Matt," I hear some fanboys whine, "[writer] Jeph Loeb gives you all the information you need to piece together what's going on!" That's really beside the point. I bought a comic book called Supergirl because I expected to read about Supergirl doing super-hero stuff. Instead, I've gotten nothing but other super-hero guest stars and Supergirl fighting them. What, doesn't she have a rogue's gallery? Well, Mr. Loeb, you're a writer. Make some up!

The problem is, I feel that there are two Jeph Loebs, the Good Jeph Loeb and the Evil Jeph Loeb. The Good Jeph Loeb has given us some of the best super-hero comics ever written, in my opinion. The Long Halloween is my second favorite Batman story just after Year One. That's right, I place it above the sacred cow that is The Dark Knight Returns. (Not that far above. Dark Knight is my third favorite Batman story.) Superman for All Seasons is a beautifully written, iconic take on the Man of Steel. The majority of Hush was also written by the Good Jeph Loeb. The Evil Jeph Loeb is writing the current arc in Superman/Batman, which features oh-so "clever" takes on Marvel's The Avengers. And I can't for the life of me figure out just what he's trying to say with these parody versions. At least, he's not saying anything that wasn't already said in Mark Millar's first arc on The Authority.

His reason for doing this seems to be similar to his reason for resurrecting Supergirl; because he can. Loeb doesn't seem to really have any good idea as to what to do with the Girl of Steel and it shows. I imagine he's probably justifying his cavalcade of guest stars by saying something to the effect of it being about her quest to find her place in the DC universe. Yeah, that's all fine and good, but why does she need to interact with every other super-hero? It's almost as though someone doesn't have faith in this revival and feels that she needs to be sent out with training wheels. Unfortunately, all this just serves to undermine the main character of the series.

If someone ever decides to make a series about Supergirl, I might pick it up.

Friends?

I remembered the other things I was going to talk about. The first is something that's been occuring over the past couple days. As many of you can see, I have a profile on My Space. Now, for some odd reason, several people of whom I have never heard before have been inviting me to be friends. I'm a little perplexed by this. What exactly makes them think I would make a good friend? Because we both happen to like one or two of the same bands? (To be quite honest, I can't stand a lot of the fans of the music I like. I often say that Tool was very prescient in naming themselves, understanding that many of the people who would listen to them would be aptly attired when wearing shirts that have the word "Tool" written on them in big letters.) They don't even know me. For all they know, I could be a complete asshole. (And I'm sure there are some people who think I am.)

Basically, I decided a while ago that in order to be added to my friends list, the person must be someone that I have at least met in person. While this may be defeating the intended purpose of an online networking database, something just feels dishonest to me about saying someone you hardly know is your friend. I make allowances for the fact that having an "acquaintance list" just wouldn't sound right, but when you've maybe only exchanged a couple messages with someone, are they even an acquaintance? They'd be even less so if you haven't even made any sort of contact with the person when you invite them. I suspect that many of the people who do this are basically just trying to collect people. They invite anyone and everyone so they can pad their list. Is it to make themselves seem more important? I have no idea.

All I'm really trying to say here is that, if you've never had the slightest contact with me, you can be damn sure your friend request will be denied. Just remember, it's nothing personal. Your friend request doesn't even seem personal, so how can my denial?

Construction, CDs and Mamet

Today's post will be a bit of a collection of things. None of them were really enough to warrant giving any of them their own post, so I'll just kind of mention them all briefly. (Of course, I find that when I attempt brief, it usually ends up not being that.)

Last night, I went to a meeting for Cleveland-area bloggers with my new friend Jaclyn (introduced to me by friend/former coworker Gail; Jaclyn's blog is linked in the righthand column of other people's blogs). The meeting itself was fairly informative, and the people there seem very nice. I'm not sure if I'll be instituting many of the techniques talked about during the meeting, since I'm fairly lazy and only at a novice level when it comes to tech stuff. (I would like to get a site meter, though. I'm always curious as to who's actually reading my site.) I hope no one found it too terribly rude that I decided not to join the rest of the group at the after-meeting gathering, but to be quite honest, I'm just not into bars. Aside from that, I hadn't eaten dinner yet and Taco Bell was calling my name. (I know it was a bad idea to get Taco Bell after having had half a can of Pringles and four cookies for lunch that day. Perhaps if the Healthy Choice dinner had been either A) filling or B) good, I wouldn't have had to resort to heavy snacking. But someone had mentioned Taco Bell the other day, and I was in the mood for it.)

As I tried to find my way back to I-90, I went back more or less the way I had come. The street I had taken to get there from I-90, West 41st, was one-way, so I knew I would have to take West 44th to get back. A block away from the I-90 westbound entrance, I saw a sign for a detour of some sort. Unfortunately, I saw it a little too late and went straight through the intersection. I soon found out that the detour sign was not put up just for the hell of it, as the entrance for 90 west was completely closed for construction. It took me several minutes to get back to where the detour sign had told me to go, thanks to all the stupid one-way streets. (I mean, really, what's the point of those?) I eventually got back on track and began to follow the signs which were presumably leading me to another entrance to I-90. And as I reached the entrance ramp the signs were leading me to, what did I find? Another closed entrance with a detour sign that seemed to be directing me to go back the way I came. I began to wonder if perhaps it was some cruel joke being played on less intelligent drivers. They would follow these detour signs and go in circles all day and all night, wondering why they couldn't get onto the interstate. Well, damn their game! thought I. I got onto 90 eastbound, got off on West 25th St. and immediately got back on in the opposite direction.

And then I had me a double decker taco and a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Man, that was tasty.

Lucky for me that, during this whole thing, I had the new Coheed and Cambria album to keep me company. To those who haven't heard the title yet, allow me to educate you. It's called Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume I: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness. In case you couldn't tell, Coheed and Cambria is a progressive rock band. But they're not just any kind of progressive rock band; they're a progressive emo band. Normally, I'm not that into emo. I've enjoyed stuff by Thursday and At the Drive-In, but it's a subgenre in which I find myself more or less disinterested. In fact, it was this element, exemplified by songs like "Blood Red Summer" and "Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow)," that initially turned me off to C&C (no, not Clivilles and Cole). What brought me back were the extended epic songs like "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" and "The Crowing." (The latter of the two has a really great use of counter-melody at the end of the song. I'm always a sucker for a well-executed counter-melody.) After a while, I even learned to like the more emo-sounding material. (Maybe it's the fact that a title like the above-mentioned "Three Evils..." is so prog it's not even funny.)

I had been afraid that their new album would be a disappointment, not because of anything I'd heard from it. On the contrary, both "The Suffering" and especially "Welcome Home" sounded like the band at the top of their game. Instead, it was because there had been two albums released this year that I had been anticipating highly that had both been big disappointments.


The first of these was Mudvayne's Lost and Found. The math metal quartet played it safe on that album, eschewing complex rhythms and challenging lyrics for more radio-friendly tunes that featured angsty, whiny lyrics. Any successful band that still complains about how much their lives suck just comes across to me as a bunch of guys play-acting at being miserable.

The second actually came out the same day as Good Apollo..., and that was the new Disturbed album, Ten Thousand Fists. Had Fists come out in between The Sickness and Believe, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. Instead, it just sounded like a major step back from the previous album. Believe showed a band that was trying to evolve, incorporating more melodic and even progressive influences into their songs. (In short, there was more music in their music.*) I was hoping for a similar evolution on the new album, and "Stricken," the first single, while still not up to the level of "Prayer," didn't seem to contradict this hypothesis. Unfortunately, the rest of the album did. Many of these songs are very simple and don't contain a lot of variation. It's especially maddening in the lyric department, as several songs consist only of one verse that is repeated two or three times. Others follow the third-verse-same-as-the-first pattern. (There are a couple songs like that on Believe, but for some reason, I don't find them as grating.) Okay, maybe I should give lead singer and lyric writer David Draiman the benefit of the doubt. After all, I'm sure there are only so many synonyms for "pissed off," but I guess that's maybe a sign that one should start varying the content of his songs. Angry lyrics seem to have become just as trite as those for your average pop radio love song. And his over-reliance on the grunting noises? I dont' feel as though I really need to go into that.

This isn't to say the album is without merit. The title track is one of the best songs they've recorded, as is "Stricken." On top of that, I think their cover of Genesis's "Land of Confusion" is as good as if not better than their cover of Tears For Fears's "Shout" ("Shout 2000" from The Sickness). (Of course, I'm a bit biased. The classic lineup of Genesis is my all-time favorite band, and I even love a lot of the post-Gabriel music as well.) It's just that the rest of the tracks sound like filler material. In short, it's just another Disturbed album. It certainly won't be staying in my car stereo for months to come the way Believe did.

That said, Good Apollo... is probably my second favorite album to be released this year, right after Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta. It builds on the incredibly dorky mythology of the previous albums, Second Stage Turbine Blade and In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. A lot of the emo influences have been better incorporated with the prog influences. (On In Keeping Secrets..., you could go song by song and say, "This is an emo song. This is a prog song." It's not quite as cut and dry on this one.) It even features a song that, had I heard it completely out of context (and without knowing what the band's music normally sounds like), I would have thought of as the crappiest pop tune this side of Savage Garden. Somehow, it works. (It makes me wonder, would I have liked "I Knew I Loved You" had Savage Garden not been a shitty, shitty band?)

Is Good Apollo... a better album than In Keeping Secrets...? That will probably take some more listens to figure out. At this point, I'd say it's just as good, but the best way to discover that sort of thing is to wait until the newness wears off. All I know is that I'm relieved that it didn't turn out to be a disappointment, since people always say that bad things come in threes. (Not that the other two albums are bad; the fact that they're disappointments is bad.) Unfortunately, it makes me fear that Tool might release a new album soon and that it will suck.

In other news, I read David Mamet's op-ed piece from the L.A. Times, and I have to say I find it to be more or less on target. Mamet is a very insightful writer, and that makes me very eager to see his upcoming TV series The Unit. (I'm sure conservative commentators have already started calling the show Anti-American propaganda.) I must admit, though, that this is in spite of the fact that I've heard rumors that Amy Acker was fired from the show. Dammit, you don't do that! Not to Ms. Acker and not to those of us who have liked her since she became a regular on Angel! But it's Mamet (and Shield creator/former Angel producer Shawn Ryan), so I have to watch it.

So I'm thinking that there was something else I had planned to write about, but I find myself at a loss to think of what it could have been. I guess I'll just have to make it a separate post if I remember what was so damned important.


*That phrase was inspired by a line from Say Anything..., when Joan Cusack's character scolds her brother (John Cusack) on his eating habits, saying, "There's no food in your food." Back

How do you make two grown men scream like girls?

Why, introduce a flying rodent into their domicile, of course.

So, I'm sitting at my computer, checking my e-mail or browsing through the IMDb or looking at pictures of hot chicks or whatever the hell I do when I'm on the computer when I notice some movement out of the corner of my eye. The movement originated from the darkened living room, which is more or less a common area with the "dining room" (which is in quotes because we never actually eat there), and at first, my thought was, "Man, that was a huge moth." I stand up to get a better look, when I realize that it wasn't a moth at all. John, who was sitting in the same room and playing Kingdom Hearts, jerked his head around as I said, "Holy shit!" and sees what I see, a winged creature of some sort fluttering around the living room. We take off like a collective shot into the kitchen, away from whatever it is. "That's a bat!" I cry.

John, however, is in total denial. "That's not a bat; that's a bird." Whatever it is, John recommends grabbing a broom and trying to shoo it out the door to the balcony, as it's the only door in our apartment that leads directly to the outside (and not to a stairway). So he grabs a broom and we proceed to creep back into the dining room so as to get a better look into the living room. It's not visible at first. Then I look at the couch and see it crawling around on the floor.

"Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch! Couch!" I exclaim, pointing. As we stand there, unsure what to do, it takes wing yet again and comes towards us. John bravely swings at it with the broom, causing it to turn and head back out into the living room. At that point we lose it, until I think I see a shape on the door. I turn on the light and, sure enough, there's our little friend clinging to the top latch. It has become a standoff as John and I stare at the tiny invader.

I get the idea to go out through the back door and around to the front to open the door and shut it quickly in order to cause it to take flight. John agrees that this is a decent idea, so I go out the back and down the stairs. On the way out, I bump into Mike, who is sitting on the back steps, chilling out. I quickly inform him of our situation just before I go around and up the stairs.

As I get to the door, I yell to John, "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," he replies. So I open the door and immediately slam it shut. I hear John react, and I ask him what's going on. Soon, I hear him say, "He's down!" I walk in and come to find it laying on the dining room floor. John tells me that he bopped it one with the broom. He didn't think it was hard enough to hurt it, but he apparently doesn't know his own strength. At this point, however, we still don't know what to do. Neither of us has any desire to kill the poor thing. After all, this particular bat is kind of cute.

I run to the bathroom and grab the small wastepaper basket we use to store magazines for toilet reading (or littérature de toilette as the French call it) and go back out to the dining room, where it still lies on the floor. I put the overturned basket over the creature and ask John to grab a record album to slide underneath. As I do this, Mike comes in to watch me attempt this daring feat. During my first try, I hear the poor thing freak out as the dust jacket comes into contact with him. (I don't know. Maybe he just doesn't like The Moody Blues. I haven't listened to Long Distance Voyager, the album in queston, all the way through but it's got to be better than The Other Side of Life.) On my second try, I raise the trash can up a little bit and, in doing so, start to push the bat out from underneath the trash can. I freak out and run away like the coward I am.

Mike, like a man, decides to take the initiative and scoops it into the wastepaper basket and then proceeds to walk out onto the balcony and dump it onto the railing. John and I marvel over how Mike does this without seeming even slightly uncomfortable. Then, we watch the bat on the railing, looking as though it's not going to move for quite some time. In fact, it's still there as I type this. It's moved a little since then, but not too much.

The worst part about the whole thing is the fact that we can't say for certain how it even got into our apartment. It's quite possible that it came in through the fireplace, as the flue was open a crack. But of course, my imagination tells me it somehow got in through my bedroom, and its family will soon be following.

At no point during this whole ordeal did I feel inspired to put on a costume and fight crime.