Obviously a Sherwood

I gave a professional development the other day and filmed it for review purposes. I've been growing a beard this time of year as a means of interacting with the kids: I let them vote on how to shave (I've had a "Chester A. Arthur" the last two years in a row...).

Anyway, when checking out the footage I was shocked to see one of the frames. I captured it and carved it up for this forum specifically:

I thought it was Uncle Matt at first. He and Auntie Laura came by and visited before we left Austin, and the resemblance is uncanny.

Obviously Sherwoods...

An Illusion or...Dang!

We were at Roberta Parker's the other Sunday, and, first let me say: holy cow! The 30+ miles it is from our place to Bobbi's sure seems further than, er, 30+ miles:

I guess that's an illusion on the urban scale.

The other illusion is the photo that Bobbi took of me holding the Boy:

He looks friggin' yooge! I know he's a baby and all, but he's just a hair under my vitals that mom sent out---only Cass is five months old where I was eleven months old at time of said vitals.

Dang!

Western Views

Corrie and I were hanging out the other night, perusing our few local free channels on the tube, and came across an old western, one that looked pretty good, and pretty quick I could tell which one it was: Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen were recruiting a super-young Jimmy Coburn to be on their team.

Ooh! It's the "Seven Samurai" remake, "The Magnificent Seven":

I hadn't seen it before, and it being late on a Friday, we decided to keep an eye on it until a commercial break.

It turns out it was on one of our PBS channels, and we watched probably the last hour of it, interruption free.

I'd forgotten how Russkie Yul Brenner looks, and the Toshiro Mifune character---the young, hot-head seventh from the title---is a dude named Horst in real life, a Kraut if ever there were one.

Anywho, the ending spawned a conversation about the ending of the Wild Bunch, the more fatalistic look at the end of the "wild west era."

Kurosawa is influenced by American westerns, makes samurai films like "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo" that are essentially Japanese westerns, and these films in turn influence American westerns. "Magnificent Seven" and "A Fistful of Dollars" (as well as the Bruce Willis prohibition-era vehicle "Last Man Standing") are direct remakes, respectively.

Magnificent Seven seems like the connection of the earlier, John Wayne-era westerns with the Peckinpah-era blood-letting westerns, mostly starring Clint Eastwood.

That's when I remembered I hadn't ever seen Eastwood's "Unforgiven."

I was under the impression that this was a different storyline. Or different and novel plotlines. Or something.

I found a list calling itself the "30 Greatest Westerns" online, and was disappointed at best. "Unforgiven" was ranked quite high, and so we stuck it in the instant queue and trudged it out later that weekend.

At this point I'm not sure what my previous misconception about it was...maybe I thought Clint's Will Munney was, like, a librarian or professor or in someway not really connected to the "cowboy life."

Nope. I guess Eastwood held onto the script for a decade until he felt he was old enough to star in it.

I thought the opening and closing silent prologue and epilogue were hackish, but thought the bumbling Will Munney was a pretty decent frontier-era doofus. That worked well. This guy was so crazy and mean that he inspired what?

I thought some scenes went on and on and on, past the point of they were trying to prove, but I did like the chilling conversation between Morgan Freeman's Ned and Eastwood's Will that went something like this:

"Remember [some character I can't remember]?"

"You shouldn't waste time thinking about him."

"His teeth were blown through the back of his head." (Silence) "In the morning I couldn't remember what reason I had for doing that." (Silence) "I get to thinking about him sometimes."

"You shouldn't waste time thinking about him."

Those little terrifying and heartbreaking moments made the movie for me.

I didn't realize it's essentially the same as most other Eastwood westerns, only made from the perspective of age, wisdom and regret. Gene Hackman plays "Gene Hackman the Badguy", and his bullying scenes are what he does well. Even when they drag on. I guess the whores coming up with the bounty money is novel; I found it striking no one ever uses the N-word or anything in that vein; my favorite line may be Eastwood telling that kid, "Well, you sure killed the hell out of that guy."

The end was pretty satisfying.

But I wouldn't rank it ahead of plenty of the movies of which it was ranked ahead.

The ending of "The Wild Bunch" is like crossing Unforgiven's with The Magnificent Seven and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's.

I watched the ending of that one when I was laid up on the couch when I heard news that Ernest Borgnine had died. The first time I saw the movie was in high school when I went on a "classic" movie watching bender. Still one of my favorites, and the ending definitely doesn't fuck around:

These conversations Corrie and I were having over the course of this specific weekend led me to reflect a little on other westerns I had really enjoyed growing up. None of them starred either Jimmy Stewart or the Duke. That probably says more about me and my age group and our visual sensibilities than it does the quality of those films.

I loved "Silverado" as a kid, and doesn't follow the same story arc that many of the Eastwood westerns follow, the same ones as Seven Samurai and it's copies...

Eh...maybe it does follow the same arc...my memory is fuzzy.

Are these all the same movie?

I saw "Tombstone" in the theater on a movie-hopping afternoon and loved it ever since. Even as a young person I tried to understand why it was so much better received than Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp from that same time period. Maybe because of the laser focus of Tombstone, Val Kilmer, and a running time under three hours.

I remember the "shootout" scene at the OK Corral happens mostly by accident, and it wasn't until later in the movie that I learned this was the famous shootout from the OK Corral that's been burned into our collective consciousness, and it made me love the movie even more---it was an accident and downplayed and acted as a precursor.

More recently there was the movie-for-grown-ups that was also a western starring Brad Pitt as Jesse James:

I read about it while we lived in New York. It was well received by critic but not well attended by audiences, and I never saw it. A year later in Texas I found the DVD in a dollar bin (or some facsimile thereof) and bought it. If it sucked, whatever.

I really liked it. It was mostly plodding, but deliberate. Jesse James isn't the heroic figure Rob Lowe played in the "Frank and Jesse" HBO movie upon which I've based my entire knowledge of the crew. Brad Pitt plays him probably how he would had been: a violent and abusive asshole, damaged by many awful things that happened to most people back in those days. Casey Affleck is also pretty good.

One reason this movie surfaced is because of a recent conversation with Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan, two film buffs whose opinions I respect and seek. They hated it. I tried to quickly rattle off the things I liked about it, but was too slow, and pretty much the subject was changed without me able to make my case.

And I don't even know what that case would be. I posted about back in 2010, but still...

And the Rambler Award goes to...!

What're your favorite westerns?

Yankees Become VERY Interesting

Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin---back to back jacks in the FIRST MAJOR LEAGUE AT-BATS!

First time that's ever happened. Since then Judge has gone on to become the first Yankee to hit extra-base hits in each of is first three games. Do we have our own 6'7", 275 pound transcendent star? Are good things coming?

Well, maybe frames are coming (in the mail):

Three generations...

A Page Turns in Baseball

>><<A-Rod, Tex Announce Retirements; Ichiro Gets to 3000>><<

Oddball couple of weeks for our Yankees, there dad.

Soon I'll put a few pictures from your visit up, but until then...

YANKEES!

So we started the rebuild in earnest, selling off Chapman, Miller, Beltran, and Nova, three of our best players and a pitcher we all rooted for. Then Texeira announces that this year will be his last. For the Yanks, I always figured for sure, but as a career? Kinda makes me lament all those times I doubted your game, Tex.

A consummate teammate and all-world defensive first basemen, his 400+ homers/400+ doubles/5 Gold Gloves will get him plenty of attention in Hall of Fame conversations. If not right away, then eventually. Is he a first balloter? Am I whacky for not just saying it?

Why is it that all I can remember from his time in pinstripes, aside from the Ring in his first year, is him hitting like ass until July, getting white-hot until September, and then getting hurt, and being a shell of himself until the next season, then repeating the process.

See what a bubble we live in out here on the edge of the continent, so far from the Bronx?

Then A-Rod, mostly pushed out.

I never had a hat-on for the guy, always kinda liked him in Seattle, never hated him when he went to Texas, but found it amusing that he created so much animosity. When the Yankees traded Soriano for him before the 2004 season, like us rare level-headed Yankee fans, I sorta smiled and shook my head in disbelief.

This is why everybody hates us, we all collectively nodded to each other.

I was at games where fan jeered him for hitting a home run. "Hit it when it matters!" she hollered. I just laughed. What can a guy do?

Then I read the A-Rod bio, the one he bitched about even though he never sued the author for slander. It claimed he was doing steroids while in high school. It paints a very unflattering picture of a tragic figure who was profoundly affected by the absence of his father.

Whatever. A-Rod doesn't get the steroid pass that Bartolo Colon and David Ortiz get. Sometimes life is just like that.

But now the game will fully belong to the Trouts and Harpers and Machados and Kershaws of the world.

ICHIRO!

I always liked Ichiro, and getting to read about him a lot as he approached 3000 hits has been a pleasure. Congrats to the elder statesmen from Japan, and eventually the first Japanese born Hall of Famer.

But with Ichiro getting to 3000, A-Rod getting ousted, Tex making his announcement, and the Yankees embracing the rebuild, a page feels like it has turned.

Afternoon Commute with NPR

Three Decades Ago in Comics

Part Two

Click here for Part One.

I was heading to some errands the other day after work and listening to NPR. The conversation during our Arts segment was about DC Comic's release of a new Comic universe re-alignment. Every few years the major companies streamline their titles in an attempt to draw attention and fix continuity. Comic-book universe-based movies are big business in these parts, so NPR goes to the story.

But Rebirth on NPR? What is happening?

DC, and it's parent Warner Brothers, has been playing underdog and catch-up to Marvel and its comics and their Disney-funded movie universe. Back in 2011, the comics section of DC started a new initiative, "The New 52", after a Flash-sponsored reshuffling that changed many of the normal continuities.

Dating back to 1986's Crisis on Infinity Earths, Flash always seems to be at the center of various reshufflings. In my own experience in 1994 the reshuffling was called Zero Hour. This year, it's being called Rebirth.

The company man was saying the idea was to go back to the basics, go back to the heritage. I don't really know what that means because I don't read the books enough to know how far from those basics they've gone.

Far enough, apparently.

Anyway, the buzz about this Rebirth comic has been about the ending..."Don't skip to the last page," the warnings said, "don't read a spoiler."

Well, here's the SPOILER:

The story is ending here, after 70 + pages yet, and the visuals have shifted to Batman scraping some shit in the Batcave. The narration remains a conversation between Flashes Barry Allen and Wally West. Batman discovers, as the narration announces "We're being watched," the Comedian's blood-spattered badge somehow in the caverock, This is one of the enduring symbols of the Watchmen.

The characters from the Watchmen were not part of the DC universe before that above image. The Watchmen is a story about superheroes, not exactly a story of them.

This connection is meant to pull Dr. Manhattan, the blue god-powered character from the Watchmen, and his all powerful-ness into the greater DCU,

It was also a pretty good shock. I was reading the book and was genuinely surprised at the reveal. It helped I didn't really care enough about it all to have made any guess as to what Batman was up to, so when it's the Comedian's button appears I was bemused.

One thing about the entire "comic event" is that Alan Moore has remained cranky about these characters, this universe, DC's use of the material, DC's use of his other material, as well as the direction of superhero comics in general...and yet here we are.

Moore may have become too cranky and reliant on sexual assault as a trope, and may have eroded just enough public support to make this move possible.

The conversation on NPR was about a lot of things, much of it the desire by this (DC) and all companies these days to employ a wide swath of the American experience. Good for them. Nerds are everywhere.

The last 23 or so words of the epilogue after the Batcave we get a verbatim rendition of the following scene:

We call that "driving it home".

The Prestige of a Savior, thirty years in the making. 

Validated by NPR.

Post 100: Goose Gossage Hates Swag, Bat-Flips, Fun, Seatbelts, Bullet Proof Vests...

What happens when Goose Gossage tries to imagine what Honus Wagner would say about strength training? How about amphetamines?

Does Goose remember Dock Ellis, a contemporary of his? Dock and that whole "We Are Family" Pirates were the prototype swagger team, a team Goose played on in '77.

Is the premise that anything new that makes things more fun and/or safer are automatically bad? 

The disgrace! The disgrace being brought upon the hallowed game of steroid users hitting the shit out a ball baseball by players...expressing themselves?

Was it just me, or when you read the initial quotes did it sound like Goose was drunk? Like he's your drunken neighbor who won't shut up about Trump? 

The heart of the matter is this: 1) Are player celebrations essentially bad sportsmanship? and 2) Does this kind of sportsmanship signify the downfall of society?

Collectible Value: Intrinsic or Extrinsic?

I'm all over the place right now, so I'm not sure where I came across this information, but I thought a discussion, or reportage, would be a worthy use of time.

I have been plotting out, for years now, a series of pieces about comic books. Possible snooze-fest alert. Anyway, something struck me with the new Ryan Reynolds "Deadpool" movie that is finding success currently.

As far as collectible comic books go, for a character like Deadpool the first appearance of the character would most likely be the most sought after, and hence, the most valuable. I will illustrate this topic using both Deadpool and another culturally beloved character that followed this pattern. This other character had his first full appearance in "The Incredible Hulk" #181:

Wolverine showed up for one panel in issue 180, but the one above, 181, saw the first full brawl-mode of the popular anti-hero, and is considered the more valuable product by today's standards.

In the late 1980s and very early in the 1990s people who had been teens in the 1970s began to notice that after the 1986 publication of "The Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns", comics were beginning to be taken a bit more seriously as an artform. The characters they grew up with were now getting cartoons and other licensing properties, and a new generational audience. They started to look back to their roots, and tried to fill out their collections.

But in the 1970s comic books were seen as children's toys and not something that may have high levels of value assigned to them, and the majority of the issues people were seeking had been destroyed or were very worse for the wear.

The scarcity of good product drove the price of those back issues up. So, if you were to want to purchase a very nice copy of Hulk 181, it will set you back somewhere in the thousands. But, by the late 80s, early 90s, it was still hundreds, but the writing was on the wall: first appearances were going to turn profitable.

It's too bad the writing was misread.

This is the speculator bubble that caused the ruckus of the 90s. Companies started producing high levels of "first appearance" issues for a whole slew of characters. The big one at the end of the 1989 that arrived (cover date March 1990) was the first appearance of Cable (a character that has turned into the symbol of all that was wrong in the industry at the time) in "New Mutants" #87:

I still remember this book occupying one of the hot-spots in my Wizard Comic Guide's back-issue top-ten lists during my early 90s collecting period.

I didn't read Marvel at the time and mostly resented the X-Men, for reasons that at this time I can't explain. An issue of the New Mutants that came out a year later I remember holding in my hands as I briefly picked it up, and put it back, shaking my head. They're copying Spiderman and making him a mutant?

That is issue 98 of the same series, only this time they're introducing Gideon, Domino, and what I took to be the Spiderman rip-off, Deadpool. He does really resemble Spiderman, right?

Now, since the Cable sold so well, each new round of "first appearances" was printed in huge numbers, so everyone could get in on the future earning action. But wait, whoops, this ignores the truth behind those old-school high-price back issues: THEY FETCHED HIGH PRICES BECAUSE THEY WERE SO SCARCE. Who will pay a lot of money for something that everyone has ten copies of? (Cue bubble bursting sound effect.)

That leads to: why is Deadpool's first appearance in New Mutants 98 garnering upwards of $300 on eBay and other selling depots?

There are probably no less than 100,000 copies in fully mint condition, and this estimate may be low by a magnitude of 3 or 4.

I don't know enough about the character Deadpool to know his deal, like why he's so popular, or cool...maybe the irreverence? Maybe he's Marvel's inside joke character?

Really, any collectible is only as valuable as someone is willing to pay. So, does the value come from what's inside or how difficult it is to obtain? It seems appropriate to say that it's shades of both...

Anyway: friends don't let friends spend too much on New Mutants 98!

On a side note: Issue 87, the Cable issue, is the first of the Rob Liefeld issues. He was one of the three major superstar artists that demanded some stake in the characters they created (like Cable and Deadpool), were rubuffed, and so left Marvel and created Image Comics, a publisher that retained no character rights. Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane were the other superstars that defected, although seven or eight artists all gambled on themselves at that time.

I could go on and on...and on...(snooze alert)...

From the "Seriously?" Files

Upon some deep-web searching, I came across little toys called "Minimates." They are tiny action figures that resemble Lego figurines. They have licensed very, very, many universes from which to cull characters.

A quick viewing of the Diamond Toy Distributor's website tells us Marvel, DC Comics, and Valiant all have minimates, The X-Files, Dr. Who, Back to the Future, Predator, and Alien also round out some of the more obvious minimate examples.

And then I found these:

In case you can't tell, and I'm sure you can't, these are figurines from Desperately Seeking Susan. This company has licensed---on the super-cheap, I'm guessing---Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, and the skull bag all from the movie. Check out the pose, just like the poster:

Good Ol' Channel 13.2, or, Ruminations on Tom Poston

We have a digital antenna on our television and here in the Southland we get over a hundred channels. Only half are in English; other major language channel collections include Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Armenian.

Anyway, late one night, I found on local channel 13.2, call name BUZZR, a channel that plays old game shows, showing a fifties era show. On it, I saw a young-but-familiar face:

Heeeere's Johnny!

Johnny Carson on an old show...makes it make sense that he was well-known enough to get the Tonight Show from the first host. 

Among the panel of celebrities that were the stars of this particular show was even more familiar:

Betty White sighting!

Also on the show---actually the alpha star---was Tom Poston. I didn't get a picture with my camera, but here's a picture from that era, because you're likely to recognize him like I did:

He was on Bob Newhart's, but I was sure I knew him from somewhere else. As my brain connected him as Kitty's dad from "That 70s Show", he was telling his story.

This guy was on the beach in Normandy on D-Day. 

Here he is reunited with Betty White, who played Kitty's mom: