DC has been milking their properties in animated forms for years, so it's not surprising that they have recently taken to doing animated features. It's also not surprising that these are direct-to-DVD; Hollywood is quite forgiving when it comes to superheroes, but on the whole there are a lot of stories that fans want to see that the rest of America would have trouble shelling out for. But why Justice League: The New Frontier? The first feature effort like this was a re-telling of the early '90's Superman / Doomsday story, and the next one is slated to be Batman-centric. But The New Frontier is a strange story, which uses the Cold War / Red Scare paranoia of the mid '50's as a backdrop for a Silver Age Tale that manages to incorporate and / or name check every important character DC ever published. Why this is important might not be exactly obvious at first: the mid '50's were when these characters were first created and introduced. The writer, Darwyn Cooke, uses the actual creation dates to coincide with the dates these characters began adventuring (rather than ignoring time to account for the characters still being young and in their prime in the here-and-now). With me so far?

That, alone, sort of makes this movie a niche market already, and some of the casting probably relegates it to a specific area of Hollywood marketing: Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) is the voice of Wonder Woman; David Boreanaz (Buffy The Vampire Slayer & Angel) is the voice of Green Lantern; Neil Patrick Harris (Spider-Man: The New Animated Series) is the voice of The Flash. It goes on like that. While the casting is sort of big name, most of the actors are already on the Sci-Fi / Comics Convention circuit, and while Brooke Shields does lend her voice for one character, you would be hard-pressed to say that Carol Ferris (the daughter of the Ferris Aircraft President, Carl Ferris) is, exactly, a "major character" in the DC Universe. (And for those playing at home: five points for those who said, "She's Green Lantern's love interest for much of the initial run of the GL Series.")

I will admit, I'm a Silver Age junkie. While I was initially reared on Comics from the later '70's and early '80's, I contend that the influence of the Silver Age had not yet worn off by the time I started reading, and more to the point, the Silver Age was the foundation of the stories I was obsessed with. Sure, I would start out with a contemporary issue of Green Lantern when I was a kid, but it wasn't long before they start referencing back-issues, and you have to track down these old stories to put the new ones in context. Being a Comics reader is as much research as it is enthusiasm for the characters you currently love, and it wasn't long before I could re-count every origin of any character I cared about, and would go on to detail their adventures (as best as I knew them) up to "present day."

Writers of Comics are aware of this, and there was always an Easter Egg of some kind in any new issue: a reference to a character from another book, or the hint that two characters were someone connected in a way that neither of them were aware of. The Silver Age, more than anything, took the idea of a Shared Universe (introduced with the Justice Society of America in the '40's), and expanded it to a point where every word and image of every issue was laden with a kind of intertextuality that evoked the whole while still being immediately relevant to the story at hand. I would argue that why I loved comics had more to do with the Universe these characters adventured within more than it had to do with individual characters that I knew and loved.

The New Frontier is exactly what people like me love: milking the idea of a Shared Universe in a new way that is simultaneously familiar and completely original. Darwyn Cooke, more than a writer, is clearly a fan. He cares about these characters and these ideas, and when it comes to exploring how the proto-Justice League first formed, he writes with his heart as much as anything else. However, this particular movie moves me in a way that the previous and the proceeding one probably won't, for one simple reason: Green Lantern.

It is no secret that he is, and has been, my favorite character since I started reading Comics, and for most of my teenaged years I not only obsessively read GL stories, but spent hours imagining what happened between stories. There was no aspect of his character I was unfamiliar with, no tale about him that I did not know, and I could drop logic about Hal (or any of the thousands of GLs in the Universe) in a way that probably terrified my family. When I wasn't avoiding chores, thumbing through back-issues, or thinking about girls, I was trying to imagine what it would be like to have a Power Ring, flying through space, on my way to save the Universe. Superman & Batman were cool, sure, but until there was a Green Lantern Movie, nothing in spadex from Hollywood would ever really pique my interest.

Now, at 33, my wish has finally come true. Not only is Green Lantern a founding member of the Justice League, but New Frontier gives so much screen time to the character that we see him fighting in the Korean War, we see him get his first test pilot gig, and (AND!) we get to see his Secret Origin! This is the stuff of my formative years, endlessly imagining how these moments that were crystallized in my mind would come together on Screen. How can this not bring a tear to my eyes?

While it's hard to recommend this to anyone who doesn't know about 50 years of DC Comics Continuity (or, at least, someone who can find a paraphrased version thereof, complete with a character index for easy reference), I can say that it is not just the emotional attachment that is causing me to love it. The animation is really beautiful, the cast (as mentioned above) are professionals that really get into the characters, and the writing is above average for anything related to the Justice League (at least, since the Giffen run that ended in the mid-'90's). Plus: it's fun. Superman wears his old costume, Wonder Woman shows us her dark and creepy side, and we get to see some great Noir-ish moments with The Martian Manhunter as he tries to remain inconspicuous as an average Police Detective in a world constantly looking for scapegoats. In a way, Darwyn foregrounds the real-world influences that led the original writers to creating these characters, and by incorporating those elements into the narratives, he makes the characters richer and our experience as readers much more vivid.

It's amazing, then, that all it takes is a couple of off-hand comments, a casual nose-wrinkling from a member of the opposite sex, and the graded comment, "You take too long to say nothing," can equally make you feel about as useless as a slug in a salt factory.

Long-time readers will remember the ultimate TV-watching experience that I so very long for, in the form of The Sarah Vowell Show mentioned here and here. (To be fair, the show would also star such folks as Allison Hannigan, Exene Cervenka, & Kim Gordon). I was reminded of this idea again when, in the heat of a backyard BBQ, Tristan & I began to discuss the idea of Chess Club Cheerleaders. When I suggested that they would have to consist of all my usual celebrity crushes, I also included the newest addition to my fantasies, Tina Fey.

Now, to be honest, I know virtually nothing about her. Aside from an interesting interview in The Believer, and various appearances on SNL (coupled with one or two episodes of 30Rock), my exposure to her has been very minimal. She seems exactly like the kind of girl I would obsess over: smokin' hot, way more clever than anyone else I can think of, and trying to position herself in the entertainment world in a way that doesn't require positioning herself in other more demeaning ways (which, sadly, is often the fate of many female celebrities). So why have I not picked up on her sooner?

I have, for quite some time, had an uneasy relationship with women who are celebrities, mostly because it is hard to find any that are worth developing crushes on. The fact remains that in our culture, it's very easy to sell a long pair of legs and a rack than it is to sell, well, most other attributes a woman might have. Personally, I have a hard time finding celebrity crushes, and when I do, my relationship to the celebrity is often cerebral. I was in love with Exene & Kim Gordon before I knew what they looked like; reading Radio On created an instantaneous sexual charge in me with regards to the woman who wrote it, well before I had even seen her do a public reading. (An effect that was amplified when I finally heard her on This American Life, again before I'd seen a picture.) I guess part of my interest in women comes from getting inside their heads rather than their pants. All too often I've found myself knocked out by a girl who becomes progressively uglier the longer I talked to her. I often think of Dan Clowes Comic "Ugly Girls," where he makes the point that most of the women he finds attractive do not fall into the conventional standards of beauty in the here-and-now. I have to say, given the people you can choose from in the here and now, I would probably agree.

One of the inherent problems with all of this is that the woman I tend to find attractive are also pigeon-holed into being referred to as "nerdy" or "geeky." This, my friends, is a sticky wicket, because both words are culturally loaded to imply very specific things. If I had my way, these girls would be on the covers of Cosmo and Playboy, and they would be the ones that help set the bar for what we expect from women in media. Maybe I would like porn if it centered around these people? Or maybe it wouldn't matter if we lived in that world, anyway.

One day my friend Tristan and I were walking to get a few drinks with our buddy Quinten, and circumstances led us down 28th. As we walked, suddenly Tristan stopped and started staring into the windows of a strange building we'd walked passed. Further investigation revealed to us that what he was looking at was Portland's very own Velveteria, the world's only Velvet Painting Museum. Tristan just about blew a gasket. To be honest, Quinten & I were a little more interested in Whiskey. We sort of let Tristan have his fun, then skeedadled off to the old Hungry Tiger, R.I.P.

Time passed in it's singularly unusual way, and Tristan would report back to me with news about The Velveteria. First, he stopped in and talked to the owners. Then, he started going in regularly. Eventually, they hired him to work a few shifts now and then. Then he started running the MySpace Page for them. All the while I took an off-hand interest in what was happening. While I can't say I was nearly as excited as he was about the place, I always sounded interested. (In my mind I saw a dilapidated place with Trailer Park aesthetics, run by the kinds of weirdo meth-heads that I associate with Velvet Paintings from my childhood. While I could see a campy interest in something like that, Tristan was taking it to new extremes.)

After much cajoling, I finally agreed to stop in one day. I used to be poverty stricken constantly, but in a moment of financial windfall I scraped together some cash and met Tristan down there, who was thankfully hanging out with Carl and Caren, the curators of the Museum. Impressed sort of fails to really capture what I felt when I walked in: unlike the wood-paneled, prefabricated drug-nightmare that I used to imagine, their collection was not only beautiful, but aesthetically much more interesting than the "Vel-vis & Sad-Eye" paintings I was imagining. So much is made of Kitsch & Irony that it often takes on the same internal struggle that Avant-Guarde evokes that was much more elequently summarized by Bill Waterson in an old Calvin & Hobbes cartoon: "You have to know who's putting on who."

In the case of The Velveteria, nobody is putting on anyone. True, there is a camp element to what they have in their collection, but look at that Bandito featured above. How can you not love him? The person who painted it is not bad, or even corny, by any stretch of the imagination. The painter was, even objectively, good at what she does, and painting on velvet is not the easiest thing to do. Their collection immediately impressed me, and suffice it to say I went to their old location several times before they moved.

Occasionally I would see Carl around, either getting a burrito or something, and we traded quips and jokes like the acquaintances we were. I would ask about upcoming events (they often feature a wall with a rotating theme: "Clowntacular" or "Poodletopia") or recent interviews, and we'd talk shop about '60's rock bands we both loved. I found it unsettling that Tristan and Carl were so much alike, to the point that they even had a few familial resemblances that were somewhat uncanny. And, since Carl was essentially a 20-some-years-older version of Tristan, he and I got along great. Similar sense of humor and interests can go a long way toward cementing a friendship.

Still, it was rather surprising when Caren called me one day and asked if I was interested in working for them, one or two shifts a week, with an increase once summer is in full swing. I mean, I'd talked to them both and had become rather friendly with them, and Carl had even started coming to some of our parties. (We tend to party with a lot f people older than us, that way we don't feel so lame when we crap out at midnight.) But we had never discussed work, and it was just too strange, the circumstances too contrived to really be happening. You don't just get a job at a weird and hip place like this by hanging out all the time, and when you do, it's like High Fidelity, where you sort of get a job, but you don't get paid. The odds of actually getting some bread out of something like that is astronomical. More to the point: while definitely a fan, there were people who were probably there more often that me.

When Caren handed me that first handful of cash the other day, it seemed so dreamlike that it's no wonder I promptly spent it on The Dickies Stukas Over Disneyland, itself a record I've been trying to find for 14 years. I haven't worked on the sly since the days of getting paid in Comics by my mom when I ran the counter at her bookstore when I was in High School, and both Carl & Caren have parental qualities that I can easily identify when I hang out with them. Carl is goofy and is always trying to make sure people are having a good time, while Caren is industrious and has an air of keeping things from falling apart. In a way, spending that first day behind the counter with them made me feel incredibly homesick, despite the fact that Carl & Caren have no kids, and more to the point, my parents have been divorced longer than they were ever married.

No matter how you slice it, I love the idea that Homer, who was singing in a Hip-Hop / R&B group with Lenny, Carl & Lou (who else would he be singing with?), becomes so depressed over Marge that he is unable to, "sing along with this harmony laden R&B, not in this cruel world." Shades of reality, of course, considering that it was Grunge that dethroned groups like Boys II Men from the pop charts in those dark days in 1991. When "Marvin Cobain" calls his cousin on the pay-phone to play for him the "new sound" of Homer's band, it's not only a joke that speaks to my generation (raised on movies like Back To The Future), but speaks to the nature of the Grunge movement anyway (while Nirvana might have popularized it, a confluence of bands and musical ideas in the years prior led not only to their band specifically, but their ability to become famous so quickly in an apathetic and bored culture at large). Even Marge's college experiences resonate with me so much more, which are informed more by the culture of the last 20 years rather than that of the previous 20 (Homer & Marge are seen as having been teens in the late '70's in the first few seasons of the show, and are portrayed with an '80's teenagedness only 5 years ago).

Yesterday I was sitting at work, and this friend of mine I used to work with sent me an e-mail. He works on the Brains Zine, an all-zombie fiction 'zine that has out two great issues, and a third on the horizon. We chat here and there, mostly about zombies and lame bands from Eugene, because we both spent a lot of time there. Generally, we can stump each other, because something a lot of people don't know is that Eugene had (and probably still has) a ridiculous amount of terrible, terrible bands. I should know, I played in a lot of them.

So in the e-mail, there's a link to a MySpace page. I deleted mine recently, so when I followed the link I have to say I was shocked: someone, somewhere, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make a page for Icky's Teahouse.

For those of you who never lived in Eugene, Icky's was an all-ages "Teahouse" that was run by hippies, punks, and anyone not so high that they could actually keep the place open, run by a guy who went by the name of Sunshine. I used to live behind Icky's in a basement; I could go into the yard and judge if I wanted to check out the bands that night based on what the sounded like from there. Pretty much all the punky weird kids in town when to Icky's shows, not because the place was great (it wasn't), but because we were all bored, which happened all the time. There were good shows there, and great bands did play regularly. However, shitty bands played there too, like Cathead.

We had a near monthly gig there from September of 1994 until we broke up in 1996, and we hung out there a lot too. I could tell you all about Cathead shows there; regarding Icky's, however, my memory is fuzzy. I didn't know any of the volunteers or staff, my interactions were with Sunshine and / or his "promoter," who made the calendar and was at most of the shows. Aside from that, it was mostly our friends there. The fact that someone other than me still cares about any of this, years and years later, is somewhat baffling. I've tried several times over the years to revive interest in Cathead, for various reasons, only to be told over an over again that NO ONE CARES. Clearly, in some strange and tangentially connected way, someone else does.

So much so that, when I convinced Tristan to log into the page, I found that they actually put up pictures of Cathead in their "bands" photo album. AND, they put a whole bunch of our fliers up there, too. A while back I scanned and organized everything I still had on my Flickr page, mostly for me and the band. Apparently, someone out there found it, and preserved it in some way too.

As pictured, I was The Prisoner for Halloween 2007, which was a lot of fun. I love the show, the costume, etc., and wore the jacket for a week or so afterward. Nobody recognized it. Or, if they did, they didn't say anything. I became so good at giving a capsule summary of the show that I started to get sort of sick of it. How was it that nobody else had ever heard of a show this good? I eventually took off the jacket, and put it in the closet, with the button, and decided to leave it be. Clearly, just like Number Six, I am trapped in a world I never made.

Flash-forward: while I'm packing to go to Gainesville, I decide that I should pack my Prisoner jacket, figuring that if anyone is going to appreciate this, it's the folks I would meet at an academic comic book conference. And I was right: nearly everyone at the conference recognized it. Phoebe Gloeckner even accused me of actually being the new Number Two, who was parading as Number Six to screw with people. It was a great joke, even if it was a little too obscure for most people to get, and even if it did creep me out just a little.

However, it didn't stop there. As I was wandering around Gainesville, people on the street would stop me to talk about The Prisoner. "Is there a Prisoner Convention in town?" "Sweet jacket, dude!" And, of course hundreds and hundreds of "Be Seeing You!" comments from the peanut gallery. I was starting to feel a little freaked out. Maybe I was on the Island? Maybe this was a new mind game? How was it that, in a small town in Florida, everyone knows about The Prisoner, and yet in Portland - a much larger town ostensibly full of hipsters soaked in cultural obscurity - I never get a single comment? What's happening to me!?

On the last night I was in Gainesville, I figured it all out; as I was talking to a couple, who had both been to PDX several times too, they informed me that their local PBS channel actually still runs the show. It simultaneously made sense AND blew my mind. I would LOVE to live in a town where it's still on TV, where that many people (just on the street) all know what the fuck I'm talking about. In a way, it would finally make my bizarre, unconditional love for a silly show that only ran for 17 episodes somewhat more palatable. At least I wouldn't be alone anymore.

It just goes to prove that, yet again, the only way I can justify my own existence is to move to a small town where I don't know anyone that's nearly 3000 miles away. Trapped in a world I never made, indeed.

Lastly: I find this Slashdot article about solving a Rubik's Cube in only 25 moves extremely awesome. I love Rubik's Cubes, but cannot solve one without the help of my cheat-book that I inherited from my dad. I mean, I can solve one face easily, and can get the sides of that face to line up. But I can't remember the patterns of the moves that allow you to solve the bottom two-thirds of the cube, and I have to look them up every time. And I think it takes me about 25 moves to get that far, anyway. When I first got a Rubik's Cube, you could have never convinced me that a computer could work out a solution, nor that the solution would only take 25 moves. Knowing that we can spend tons of money to make our computers complete extremely arbitrary and unnecesary tasks is just one more example of the wonder and beauty that the 21st Century can (and will) deliver unto us.

Ever since the very first real job I had (working in a Croissant Factory, boxing frozen pastry for shipping), I have been prone to working with hand-trucks. It must be some sort of left over element of phrenology at play, because bosses often take one look at me, make a quick deduction, and then say, "What I want you to do is grab that hand-truck..." Every single time.

Using a hand-truck to get work done is actually not that bad, and I've gotten used to it over the years. But using one has put me in a position where I have to use a lot of elevators and wheelchair ramps, and thus, interact with people who use both. Here's the problem: if you are not handicapped, or driving a hand-truck, why are you using either? Unless the building is more than four stories tall, there is no reason why you can't just use the stairs. And walking up or down a ramp is just stupid when there's stairs next to you. What if someone needs to use the ramp legitimately, but can't because you're in the way? Sure, you think it never happens. I see it all the time.

Here is the bottom line: when I have my hand-truck, I can't take the stairs, so I have to ride in elevators and look for ramps. I'm not saying this gives me sudden insight into the world of the handicapped, but there is nothing more frustrating than being denied a ride up on an elevator because a bunch of people who could just as easily walk are instead clogging up the ride. Same goes for ramps; why are there always perfectly healthy people talking up a ramp when there are stairs right next to it? This is totally baffling. I would take my hand-truck up and down stairs if I could, just because I'm so embarrassed to be so lazy. Because that's exactly what it is: laziness. You can't be bothered to use the stairs because it takes too long and you exert too much energy. I call bullshit.

Perhaps this sounds silly to most people, but I think this is a huge issue that really needs to be addressed. Elevators and ramps make it possible for employees and handicapped people to actually get to all the same places we can easily climb to on our own, and it's rather lame that they have to wait 10 more minutes for the box to go up, and then back down, just because seven office drones were feeling lazy on their coffee break. Well, guess what: now we're 10 minutes late getting back to pick up the next load of paper and toner, and I generally try to avoid pissing off my boss, who has the power to fire my ass (it's a weird little neurosis I've developed that I just can't seem to break). And, to top it off, you've earned the ire of the guy in the wheelchair next to me, who's also late for an appointment, too. What kind of prick are you? Have you no shame?

The Southern Conundrum: I don't know why, but whenever I visit a town that is, ostensibly, in "The South," I have this built in expectation that it will, "Be Different," than what I'm used to. I don't know where I get this idea from; perhaps it's ingrained in my understanding of Reconstruction. Hard to say. Now, in their defense, the three cities I've been to (Richmond VA, Austin TX & Gainesville FL) are only barely "Southern," and more to the point, are only so in terms of actual locality. Culturally, they're fairly homogenized; everyone pretty much looks like they do everywhere else, and the regional differences sort of melt away in a sea of Starbucks, Pop Music, and links to YouTube videos. I heard only a few people talk with any kind of accent, and most of the regionality that might have been there before seems to have faded into a FOX/WB/CW version of nearly everywhere else. What a bummer, man.

The City Of Gainesville: For the most part, Gainesville is just like any other college town. On Thursday, SpaceOctopus wanted to work on her presentation, so I decided to venture into the town and see what's goin' on. This was the only real adventuring I did, as the Conference kept us pretty busy for the most part. Sadly, there wasn't much to see: Gainesville is sort of like Eugene, in that if you got rid of the school, it would be REALLY small. The weather sort of reminded me of Redding CA, and had a humidity that wasn't that bad, but wasn't great. Liquor Stores were open much later, which amused me to no end. Prices were about the same as I was used to. I found a weird little Record Store - the name escapes me - where I found a great Halloween Record Spike Jones In Stereo: A Spooktacular In Screaming Sound. It was one of those moments that caused me to go from knowledge of the item to complete desire and need of it in mere seconds, and I couldn't pass it up. (Halloween Music I didn't know about? How can be?) The food in Gainesville was unimpressive (on the whole). Pizza by the slice was probably my favorite food there, but the restaurant that served Singapore and Thai food was quite good, even if it was expensive. The campus is huge, and the library was awesome! I could see slugging it out for a few years if I needed to, but I wouldn't choose to live there if I didn't have to.