Of Strong Women

Saw this little number at the movie theater a couple days ago. I like to think the rider and I were star-crossed lovers who just narrowly avoided meeting during our showing of X-Men: First Class.




My compatriots wet straight to the gay jokes about the bike, but I immediately thought of the rider. This was ablest I wanted to meet and then shortly thereafter bed. I mean I've had a thing for strong women since Jessica Alba was all cute-and-deadly (and kid of a catgirl) in "Dark Angel." then it was Buffy and Summer Glau's River Tam/Terminator hot-killer-girl-in-boots duo of awesome. What can I say? I've hot a thing for small women who can kick my ass. Ask my high school buddies.

The "Legion of Doom" gang logo just kind of cinched it for me. I want this bike's rider.

Fuck. Unless it was this guy.

X-Men First Class is Matthew Vaughn's Love Letter to Nerds

For those too wired on the prospect of having a 'cool' mutant movie to see again, and for the earnestly stupid, let me make the following perfectly clear:

MOTHERFUCKING *SPOILERS* AHEAD.

Ahem. Right.

X-Men: First Class is by far the best X-Men film in the franchise. When I say that, I'm including the original good two, the horrible third, and even the canon defacing Wolverine, though that last one doesn't actually make my earlier claim any stronger. This installment takes all the best parts of the characters we're familiar with, but so as to not officially mess with any of the prior installments, says, "Hey, let's just set the whole thing in 1962."

Of course, this means we get young and ambulatory Charles Xavier and young, bloodthirsty Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto), but this also means Cyclops, Angel, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Storm, Toad, Blob, and pretty much every other A- through D-lister is too young to be in the movie. There are no original mutants, just vintage characters.

Creative Fixes:

Cyclops is replaced with Alex "Havok" Summers; some kind of relation (possibly an older brother by a cool fifteen years), Havok shoots energy blasts from his body, but as they are uncontrolled, he requires a prosthesis–er, basically it's a stereo's woofer–to direct the effect.

"Angel" (Warren Worthington III) is swapped for Angel Salvadore, similar to DC's Wasp, but she was written first and can also spit fireballs. (She's also Hispanic instead of black and has 4 wings instead of two, but both switch allegiances and no one really cares what color they are with asses like that.)

Mystique ages at half the human rate, so she's biologically the same age as Prof. X, which is established very early on. Emma Frost fills in as adult, lead henchwoman.

Nightcrawler is replaced by … Azazel. Nightcrawler's demon dad. Who is essentially a 'baddie' version of Nightcrawler, just red instead of blue. Also, he has a killer goatee to heighten the devil-look. He still teleports, but he also wields crazy swords and wears suits.

Storm is replaced by a wind-based weather witch henchman, Riptide.

Banshee and Dr. Hank "Beat" McCoy round out the "First Class" since they are older mutants in regular continuity anyway, along with an old comics-based character "Darwin."

"Did someone call me? I thought I heard my name.
"Does anybody remember why I came in here?"

Geek-Out Moments:

Charles picks up a woman in an Oxford bar, likening her heterochromea (mis-matched eye colors [which I totally have so yay me]) to the evolutionary mutation which brought mankind out of the water to become the "dominant reproductive species on the planet."

Upon being called "Professor" for the first time after graduating, Charles finds it distasteful, as he doesn't yet have a faculty position and because he still has hair. (A joke he reprises towards the end of the film.)

Chuck also demonstrates his telepathy at a CIA chief named "Striker" and asks about his son "William." This character is officially credited as William Striker Sr.

Hank McCoy/Beast is played by Nicholas Holt, who despite anything he does for the rest of his career, will probably be best remembered for originating the roll of Tony on the BBC original series "Skins." So now I–and now you–have to think of Beast, all blue and furry, going down on his gay buddy during a school trip abroad because he's young and in another country and wanting to try weird shit, and then getting called out for doing it poorly.

Don't bite down.

Upon meeting government scientist and young genius Hank for the first time, Prof. X immediately outs him as a mutant in front of his boss, who has just been spending his entire career searching for mutants. Job security for the win.

Unlike in his admittedly wonderful portrayal by Kelsey Grammer, this Beast gets to go back to his real mutation of simply being a genius with large, prehensile feet. The blue and the fur and the cat-features come from exacerbating his mutation while trying a serum to cure it. This is especially awesome, as if you watch the news report on television in the bar at which Wolverine is drinking in X-Men, you'll see mutant rights advocate Hank McCoy sans-fur, even though by X3 he had fur and was "cured" of his mutation by proximity to the character Leach. (Actually my biggest problem with The Last Stand, aside from how generally awful it was in both plot and execution.)

Hank builds the prototype Blackbird, the team's Kevlar flight suits, Havok's chest piece and an early Cerebro unit so Xavier can locate potential teammates. During his first vision of mutants all around the world, he sees a little black girl with ice-white hair who is obviously Storm. There's also a chubby kid reading comics, but it might be kind of hopeful to think him Blob.

"La la la … totally not an orphaned African pick-pocket la la la."

Charles and Erik have a nice montage right after this, recruiting mutants for their strike force. The last of these potentials, exactly as rumored on the internet, is Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, albeit slightly younger, sitting at a bar with a glass of rotgut and a fat stogie. After hearing only their names and without turning around, he replies to both, "Go fuck yourself." It was masterful. [A guy I was with thought it odd both Prof. and Magneto immediately turn around and walk out without another word, but based on chronology, I posit that this was Wolverine pre-Weapon X. So he's about 80 years old with bone claws, an insane, murderous brother and a whole mess o' Canadian angst up in his noggin. I like to think Prof. X. took a closer look and turned tail.]

Best. Cameo. Ever.

The night before battle, Mystique–about 25 but looking about 20–surprises Erik in his bed, to which he tells her, "Maybe in a few years." She then immediately transforms into Rebecca Romijn (formerly Stamos).

It's not really a spoiler or surprise that, at the end of the film, Erik bails on the good guys to form a more militant 'Brotherhood' for mutant liberation, or that Mystique goes with him. However he also snags Azazel in the process. This combined with Mystique's slow aging makes it entirely possible that some time later they couple and birth Nightcrawler just as they do in the comics, combining Mystique's blue-and-yellow skin/eyes with Az's teleportation.

There is no post-credits scene trying to set up a second movie, despite the house lights staying dimmed the entire time because APPARENTLY I LIVE IN COMMUNIST RUSSIA AND WE CAN'T AFFORD LIGHT JUST FOR THE SAKE OF SAYING, "YES, IT'S REALLY OVER; YOU CAN LEAVE."

Matthew Vaughn has said, however, that if he gets to do a second movie (and how could they not let him now?), he thinks it would be a fun idea to open the movie with the Kennedy assassination, Magneto controlling the "magic bullet" explaining the weird physics at play there. All because he'd be pissed the government covered up mutant involvement and took credit for averting the Cuban Missile Crisis. How baller would that be? Hell, I'd by a DVD of just that scene to watch at the end of this movie's credits.

Also take a look for the half-dozen or so character actors playing minor roles. Oliver Platt is credited only as "The Man in Black" despite having a good deal of lines and positive character interaction, and a Russian general is actually Rade Sherbedgia, who has had a crazy career but whom I remember fondly as Tibor, the "Miami Wice" guy in Eurotrip.

"Ey, man! X-Men First Class iz numbah one new show!"

Hovertly

Hovertly - adv. Blatantly and with great whorishness. 'Overtly whorish.'

1. "JWoww's  outfit that evening was hovertly designed to attract the attention of gorilla juiceheads and paparazzi."

2. "While celebrities like Vanessa Hudgens and Rihanna are often caught sending nude photographs to lovers, they are frequently tasteful and sometimes unkempt, post-shower scenes; Blake Lively's meanwhile are tawdry, MySpace-esque, vanity shots, and thus hovertly pathetic."

Dear Ms. Lively,
It would not be Gossip, Girl
to say you have been Accepted
into the Sisterhood of the Traveling
Oh-Fuck-I'm-Not-Wearing-Any-Pants.
… Green Lantern.

On Parenting

Yikes, sorry for the massive delay in blogging. I was busy last night and then … forgot.

Gomen nasai.

Preorders: Like Credit Cards, But Backwards

Really, this time. We swear.

I'm told credit cards are a display of trust, on the part of the credit companies. They trust that I'll be able to pay them back later for fronting me some cash.

They also trust that if I'm even a little late, that they can surcharge and fine the hell out of me, up to the point where I have to declare bankruptcy and can't ever again get a credit card with anything resembling a interest decent rate. That's called getting "black-balled," kids and kidettes.

Really, it's a lot like loan-sharking; or, I more accurately suspect, loan-sharking is a lot like credit companies, insofar as it's closer to the original, dirty, pound-of-flesh, Jew-run industry/sin of simony. I think the only difference is that loan sharks retain the right to physically assault you, instead of just ruining you with an endless loop of financial miasma.

Suffice it to say a loan shark will help you pay off a legitimate hospital bill, and a credit card might pay off the hospital bill for not paying your loan shark, but neither will loan you money to pay the bill they send you. (Except those little checks credit companies send asking you to transfer balances.)

Something needs to balance out this social policy. Even money says it's internet preorders.

I pay a company some money up-front, and I trust them to deliver the product when they say they will. Duke Nukem Forever aside, this generally tends to hold up. I even get a discount for agreeing to buy so early. It's like I get to charge them for unreasonably withholding from me something currently unavailable. (Or they're banking that the product will be over-produced and hit the SALE aisle within a month.)

The few times things just die, you also generally get your money back. Hell, the website KickStarter has risen to prominence recently because its whole purpose is to take donations/preorders for projects and then only charge buyers' accounts if a set minimum for funding is reached within the originally allotted timespan. It's like preordering charity.

But here's the magic:

As much as you dread getting that credit card bill come January, bits of tinsel and wrapping paper still cloistered in the far corners of your living room, the potato-y taste of latkes still on your breath weeks hence, internet preorders are just as wonderful an experience.

I preordered the complete Star Wars Saga blu-ray collection six months ago. With the discount, I think I paid like 38% of the retail price. It was glorious. More glorious because back in January I had money. I could afford to spend $80 on a 9-disc collection of six movies I've already bought trice-over. Now? Not so much? But back then I was rolling in it. And I knew this was something I was going to inevitably buy, so I might have well have gotten the best deal I could.

Then I forgot about it.

I honestly forget about it every few months, until another brief geekery news site makes brief mention that it's still forthcoming. And for one split second I worry about affording it–since I still know I need to have it–until that glorious moment I remember the deed is done.

I swear to god, it's like Christmas morning, mixed with Christmas morning with the Red Rider BB Gun from A Christmas Story, mixed with three other Christmases and that spooky-but-awesome feeling of saving the day through time travel magic at the end of every Bill and Ted movie.

I trusted somebody enough to give them a lot of money half a year ago, and in another five months, my favorite thing in the universe is going to simply arrive on my doorstep as if by some kind of Jedi mind trick. It could even arrive early thanks to shipping miscalculation.

And I even put it on my credit card to improve my credit score.

Chinese Boy Sells Kidney For iPad 2

"Thaaaaaat not gonna end well, Lady."

Some 17 year old Chinese boy, obviously about 12 years retired from working at the Foxcon plant, so desperately wanted an iPad 2 that, when contacted by a black market organ broker, he sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan. Or about $3,000 US. So like an iPad and an iPhone and maybe a MacBook Pro. [EDIT: He totally bought a laptop too.]

Thoughts:

• Thank god they didn't just take both kidneys and leave him covered in ice in a Chinese bathtub.
• Do they have bathtubs in China? It'd take a lot of ice to fill a Japanese-style bath. Maybe they'd dump him in one of those low-rent portable barrel-on-a-hotplate baths.
• There should really be a black market for non-essential organs. Like appendices and tonsils and the like. Maybe if we gave someone four appendices we'd be able to watch what happens to him and figure out what the hell that little pink meat sac does.
• How pissed is the supposedly communist government of China over this? That was their kidney that boy sold off.
• Did his mom really think she could find the broker and just ask nicely for him to return her son's organ that he just paid good money to take out and sell to some rich Westerner on dialysis?
• Do they not have Law & Order in China?
• If only he could have waited for the iPhone 4S….

A Red-Letter Day in the Twittersphere

So apparently hilarious singer-lady/hot-stuff Amanda Palmer is supporting the hashtag "FuckPlanB." It has something to do with being proud of our dreams and following through, or at least not getting bogged down with the sad truth that most of us likely won't live out our original Plan A life.

Actually, fuck you guys. My childhood Plan A was a lawyer or a particle physicist until I learned I liked thinking and arguing, but not–you know–math or legal procedures. Now I'm a professional writer and I'm way more badass than 98% of the accountants out there. (Actuaries are kind of hardcore, actually.)

Anyway … I've dug Ms. Palmer since I heard "Do You Swear to Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth?" It's also the only song of hers I've heard, but it's awesome and there's like three song names in that one title, so I consider it a full EP, at least. I also this year found out that she is married to writer Neil Gaiman, which completely explains why he's just 'randomly' in her short film homage to epic muppet movie The Labyrinth.

Well, I don't follow either of these cool kids on the Twitters. Actually, I follow hemi-nocturnal nerds who draw comics and frequently have no idea what's going on in other counter-circles. Questionable Content's Jeph Jacques, for example.

This was kind of a double-win win for me. How'd I manage the D-W on this? First, I got the reply tweet by someone more famous than myself. Then I nailed the response from one of my favorite artists. I already got a couple from Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots, but Jeph was kind of the one to usher me into webcomics outside Penny Arcade and Megatokyo.

Then I got a Triple-Win(!) when some dude retweeted me and called me "Genius," so that was nice. Guess I gotta find a new favorite famous person to get tweeted at, but that's a downside I'm pretty happy to have to deal with.