Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

All hail the time of the bunny!

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This fight is for everything.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Bark louder, little dog.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Oh, Hey- What Are You All Up To?

Oh, Hey- What Are You All Up To?

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Kinda forgot about the blog today. What’s going on?

I had a moment today when I was walking down the hallway, and Steve was lying partially hidden by the basement doorway with just his front torso and head exposed, Rosie was standing over him, and Thurston was sitting next to Rosie. I wish I had a camera, because I got this icy cold feeling that they were plotting something- “Just keep walking HOOMAN and mind your own business, this doesn’t concern you.”

It was scary.

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  3. 3.

    divF

    It is pouring rain in NorCal today, expecting 3 feet of snow in the mountains by Monday. Yay El Nino !

  6. 6.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    How could we tell? A variation on Baud! above.

    I’m on the mend, but not entirely free of the head cold, so I’m going to bed. Cheerio, night owls.

  10. 10.

    Jade

    I was waiting for your post that the primaries are over and you are pivoting to the general election. All disloyal subjects will be banned.

    Your King
    Markos Mussolini

  15. 15.

    GregB

    I tooled around a gun shop while I was waiting on my brother the other day. No wonder the manufacturers are such amoral monsters, those things are expensive. They must make dough hand over fist.

  17. 17.

    TheMightyTrowel

    Had a travel misadventure on Fri – got stuck in Melbourne airport overnight (hotel voucher though. finally. ca midnight) and spend all Sat (once I got home ca 2pm) lying on the sofa fighting off a migraine. The cats seemed to grok I was NOT HAPPY and spent all afternoon sleeping on me. Super cute, except it’s 35 C here and we don’t have AC. SIGH. SO MUCH HOT CAT and they’re SO RESENTFUL when you move them so you don’t die of heat stroke.

  18. 18.

    p.a.

    Just got back from a Runa show. Saw Buckwheat Zydeco Thurs, Jorma Kaukonen tomorrow. Winter doldrums officially over, despite cold weather. Guess I’ll take down the Xmas winter wreaths tomorrow.

  20. 20.

    Original Lee

    Spent the morning at the local VA home, mostly knitting while talking to one gentleman with short-term memory loss. His son is currently stationed overseas, and he has no other family, so whenever a spare volunteer is available, he gets a visitor. He was perfectly happy to repeat the same five minutes of conversation for two hours, which actually in a weird way matched the pattern repeats in the lace shawl I’m working on, so we both had a good time.

    Quite a big chunk of the rest of the day was spent talking with a friend who is now the only one in his family who does not support Drumpf. He was nearly in tears because even his wife rejects everything he has to say about Drumpf. Makes me sad, but I’ve noticed that his wife has become increasingly less interested in what I would call fact-based thinking over the last five or six years, so I’m not totally surprised. Anticipating more anguished phone calls for the next 9 months or so.

  21. 21.

    misterpuff

    Trump is sinking with HandCockGate. It reveals his venality and banality with his self obscession in a plain way

  23. 23.

    pseudonymous in nc

    They were plotting, then you fed them, and so the plot goes on hold for a day.

    We went to see Hail, Caesar! which is grown-up silly and preposterous.

  25. 25.

    lamh36

    I’m officially getting old…it barely past 10pm here & I’ve been tired as hell since am hr ago, and I need to be in my bed, but I’ll be darned if I let a 5 year old stay up longer than I do..l just not sure how long I am gonna make it

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    Watching the “Mythbusters” reunion. Very sad that it’s ending, but better to go out on a high note.

  27. 27.

    redshirt

    @pseudonymous in nc: I enjoyed Hail, Cesar as well, but was trying to figure out if it had a point. Not sure. There were a lot of doubles in the movie, so maybe something about everything having two sides. Or something. I doubt there’s actually a point, rather than the Coen’s just making a fun movie.

  30. 30.

    satby

    I spent the day in semi-zombie mode watching Gran Hotel and dozing a bit when the decongestants made me sleepy. I should feel bad I wasted the day, but I feel like I finally got to lay around being sick, even though I’m almost better. Guess it was needed.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @chopper: In theory, I admire Cole’s light hand with the ban hammer and the fact that he lets so many annoying people pose here

    On the other hand, I think Cole should let me decide who posts here.

  37. 37.

    benw

    Man, the Republican candidates are a vile pit of vipers, but they somehow manage to be each uniquely awful in their own way. It’s uncanny, really.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    Earlier this evening I was watching Sabrina on TCM. Now I’m watching The Bridge On the River Kwai. TCM is showcasing William Holden tonight. (But not the movie I’d really like to see — Stalag 17.)

  39. 39.

    PurpleGirl

    @satby: Yes, you needed a day of rest, just rest. Even if you think you were almost over the cold, you still needed a day of sleep and doing nothing. And since the girls were with your son and DIL, you didn’t have to worry about taking care of them. Enjoy.

  41. 41.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: I’ll catch the reruns of it. One of the kitten cam sponsors who I watch had a litter a few years which he named for the Mythbusters. It turns out that Grant watches the kitten cam too and one day he heard kitten noises and heard John talking and wondered where the sound was coming from. He’d forgotten he had the cam open but minimized. He then mentioned it on the show and all the kitten cam watchers also watched Mythbusters and asked John to name a litter for the show.

  42. 42.

    RandomMonster

    On a ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the rain coming down is apocalyptic (at least from the sound on the roof). Built a fire in the expectation that the power WILL go out at some point.

    Otherwise, yes, your pets are plotting against you. That’s what they do when you’re not looking… always when you’re not looking…

  46. 46.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @redshirt:

    I doubt there’s actually a point, rather than the Coen’s just making a fun movie.

    I liked the argument I saw elsewhere about how the “head and body” line in the Malibu beach house is represented in the film. You don’t see Jesus — there’s a joke right at the end of the credits about that — and you don’t see Caesar, and you don’t see the studio boss. You just see the people midway down the ladder looking after the talent and the talent working for the studios and that’s how it is.

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:

    One of my favorite Billy Wilder movies is showing tomorrow morning — A Foreign Affair, with Jean Arthur and Marlene Dietrich. When I saw it in film school, the professor pointed out that the opening with the airplane flying to Berlin deliberately replicates the opening of Triumph of the Will so Wilder can (symbolically) dance on Hitler’s grave.

  48. 48.

    Tony P.

    Have any of you folks noticed an increasing number of asshole drivers not dousing their high beams when they’re coming at you on a two-lane road?

    Around the Boston area, it’s been getting worse and worse over the last few months. Like since Trump started running, but let’s not get into that.

    –TP

  50. 50.

    SFAW

    @Aaron:

    The ugliness of the hooman’s continues to offend us!

    I’ll send the Grand Nagus over to read you the Rules of Acquisition, to help soothe you.

  52. 52.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    Dude, nothing is better than Hamilton. It turns out that I’m only one degree of separation from Lin-Manuel via several different people at work and am scheming to figure out who would be most likely to let me say “hi.”

    They didn’t cover all of my favorites, but enough. Adam and I share a favorite episode: water heater. Plus their list of celebrity goodbyes was unbeatable.

  54. 54.

    benw

    @efgoldman:

    What do you have against vipers? They have a useful place in nature.

    Vipers are an important part of a healthy and functional ecosystem. UNLESS you place them in a vile pit. Then they become an excellent metaphor for vicious cruelty. Come on, EFG, it’s like you’re not even reading the words I wrote! :)

  57. 57.

    redshirt

    @pseudonymous in nc: Agreed. I also felt there was a conscious metaphor of the studio boss as God and Mannix as Jesus, as he’s helping everyone directly the entire movie while the real boss is an offscreen, vaguely threatening persona.

    I LOVED that near final scene where Clooney is just nailing the speech where he speaks before Jesus, and the music is swelling and even the production crew is feeling it and then… he forgets his last line.

    “Faith”. Right!

  60. 60.

    mike in dc

    @benw:

    Probably more like the Super Friends, sadly. Not sure whether it’s the Wendy and Marvin version or the Wonder Twins version, though.

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    My big activity for the day was enjoying opening day for the new Metro Gold Line extension from Pasadena to Azusa. It was fun to take the new route, but the crowds were crazy. I’m looking forward to it becoming my main commuting route starting this Monday.

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @Tone In DC:

    What a fucking asshole. He thinks that, because he’s happy to fellate Cruz, that it gives him the right to be as big a dickhead as Cruz is, I guess.

    The damn bill would cost (on average) every person in America about 70 cents. Not per day, not per week, nor per month. PER YEAR.

    Zane Grey was right.

  65. 65.

    CaseyL

    @pseudonymous in nc: @redshirt: Just back from seeing Hail Cesaer. Enjoyed it, though it was considerably more low key than I was expecting. I didn’t read any reviews, so I interpreted it as a sort of love letter to Old Hollywood.

    Spent a fair bit wondering which old time Hollywood big names the main characters represented. Esther Williams, Carmen Miranda, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were easy. Clooney may have been Heston. The cowboy was maybe Tom Mix? – I can’t remember if they tried making a “real actor” out of him. Not sure about Brolin: his character was too genuinely virtuous to be any studio exec from that era.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:

    They had two women for a while — Scotty was the other one — but she didn’t like being on camera, so she went back to just working in effects. Grant was her replacement.

    When Tori takes the big spill on the bike, the preceding shot is Scotty saying to Kari, “Let’s egg him on until he hurts himself.”

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Everyone can have their own favorite. There’s plenty to go around.

    My favorite explosion is still the cement truck, in part because that was retired FBI agent Frank Doyle’s first appearance.

  68. 68.

    RaflW

    @divF: Yay El Nino !

    I am really happy for California. I hope more is coming. But we’d like a swipe or two of snow here in the Colorado Rockies again, too. The last 3 systems have petered out, 1″ or maybe 3″ snows a couple times in the past several weeks.

    Past El Ninos have had a dry Feb. But we are in need of a more typical El Nino March now… (after CA has had a good drink of rain, natch)

  71. 71.

    redshirt

    @CaseyL: I’m not versed in old time Hollywood to even speculate. But I found the communist theme to be interesting, especially in the dilemma faced by Mannix over his job offer from Lockheed. We see that he’s consummately skilled at running the day to day of the studio, and yet he lives in what appears to be modest circumstances. Who’s getting the profits of his unending labors? And he’s offered the job at Lockheed which explicitly promises high pay with far easier work, i.e. he’ll become Management in actually, sucking money out of all the harder working people below him. He rejects this, as the Jesus metaphor requires, I suppose.

  72. 72.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @CaseyL:

    Not sure about Brolin: his character was too genuinely virtuous to be any studio exec from that era.

    But there was a real Eddie Mannix.

    I assumed Heston for Clooney. I think the cowboy was just your archetypal singing cowboy. Channing Tatum’s character was probably tipping the hat — though not all the way — to Gene Kelly.

  73. 73.

    benw

    @mike in dc: oh man, if Bernie and Hillary had Wonder Twins powers they’d be unstoppable. “I take the form of Socialist revolution!” “I take the form of incremental progress!”

  76. 76.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus: Of course, but is it specified? Did the dog come from whatever planet the Wonder Twins came from? Were they aliens?

    I could look it up of course, but where’s the fun in that?

  78. 78.

    Mnemosyne

    @RandomMonster:

    I just looked ar WunderMap to see what’s coming our way and HOLY CRAP! That weather system looks like something out of The Day After Tomorrow.

  79. 79.

    Anya

    @CaseyL: I am glad you liked it. I wanted to see it but my friends made fun of me for wanted to see such a corny movie.

    On the topic of the night, I just saw snippets of Donald Trump’s ‘speech’ or press conference. Whoever described Donald Trump as what it would be like “if a Comments Section ran for office” was on the mark.

  83. 83.

    redshirt

    @Anya: If you like Coen brothers movies I don’t see how you can skip one, unless it’s simply to watch it at home instead of the theater. They’re all of superior quality.

  85. 85.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Roger Moore:

    My big activity for the day was enjoying opening day for the new Metro Gold Line extension from Pasadena to Azusa.

    Roger,

    If you are in this neighborhood please give this a consideration. Most Wednesday’s. Awesome talent.

    Wine and Song

    7:00 PM to 9:45 PM (PST)
    Arroyo Seco Golf Course
    1055 Lohman Lane
    South Pasadena, CA 91030

  86. 86.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Interesting thing about the Louisiana primary is that the totals are more or less equal on both sides at ~300k, which hasn’t been the case so far in some states that are blueish purple as opposed to reddish purple. I mean, Hillary got nearly as many votes as Drumpf and Backpfeifengesicht Cruz put together.

  89. 89.

    MomSense

    I slept through all the election coverage so I want to check in. Did I dream that Rubio voters seemed to move to Cruz tonight?

    Is the Republican race really down to two of the all time creepiest humans?

  90. 90.

    Tone In DC

    SFAW:

    Maybe some enterprising journalist (or blogger) can make Mr. Lee’s sentiment known to a larger number of people, like what happened to Mittbot3000 back in 2012. I figure at least 47% of the US needs to know what a waste of space Lee is.

  91. 91.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Easy, watching Jamie being giddy about being in the White House and meeting Obummer. Then there’s the one where Adam got his tongue pierced. Oh hell, anyone where Adam hurts himself.

  92. 92.

    KlareCole

    Been gone a year from BJ. Today handsome hubby and I slipped out to the truck stop to wreck our health. But a chili cheese dog cured my arythmia better than a week of veggies. Watching the returns while doing laundry. Totally freaked my cat yelling at trump saying that he will change military law so we are ALLOWED to do more than water boarding. So we can COMPETE with Mid-eastern countries who chop off heads. Like centuries of effort to civilize our barbaric selves are quite beyond his ken. Like being STRONG is being more beastly. My cat knows better.

  93. 93.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I had the giant size, as in the 3 foot tall, Justice League of America SuperFriends comic book based on the cartoon. Actually, I still have it in storage with the rest of the comic books.

    As an interesting aside regarding the Marvin character, if you’ve got a copy of Kingdom Come by Waid and Ross, if you look carefully in the second chapter, during the bar/bar fight scene, the loudmouth drunk that instigates it is a badly aged Marvin.

  95. 95.

    redshirt

    @Anya: I saw it with my Dad and he supplied a lot of the Hollywood backstories for me. It was nice.

    I also saw it in the nicest movie theater I’ve ever been too. Reserved seats, full lazyboys that reclined nearly horizontally, and a button in the armrest to summon the waitstaff. It felt super-decadent.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    I think that’s a category in itself: “Favorite Episode Where Adam Hurts Himself.”

    I can’t decide if I’d go with the spectacular falling off the treadmill while drunk or the classic, “Am I missing an eyebrow?”

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I bought both. Marvel was the Hulk, X-Men and various other assorted X titles, Daredevil (off and on), the Defenders (off and on), and She Hulk. DC was Detective Comics and Batman, Action Comics and Superman, Justice League, Legion of Superheroes, Flash, and Green Lantern. When the JSA would be on a run, including All Star Squadron and Infinity Inc, I’d get those too as I’m a big Justice Society fan. When Geoff Johns reconstituted them and they were in the same continuity as the Justice League I was a very happy camper.

  102. 102.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman: Wait, I bought the entire Sandman run, so I have in fact bought a DC comic.

    I always appreciated the foibles and frailties of the Marvel comics heroes to the god like heroes in the DC universe, though I’m sure that’s not entirely accurate. Spiderman was the first and the last for me, and I can’t think of a more human super hero from the DC side.

  103. 103.

    divF

    @Adam L Silverman: You have comic books stored away ? The more we learn about ALS, man of mystery…

    One of the more obscure pieces of comic book lore is Will Eisner’s PS Magazine, the Preventive Maintenance Monthly, that he put out from the 1951-1972. This was a comic book format done under contract to DoD to train soldiers about the value of taking seriously the maintenance of their equipment. I ran across a copy the summer after high school when a friend of mine brought it back from work (he was working for the Defense Printing Service in the Pentagon basement). I didn’t quite believe what I was seeing – stunningly drawn, funny (albeit a bit on the sexist side) morality tales about topics such as the proper care of your M-16.

  107. 107.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman: Oh, yes, I’ve watched Outrageous Acts of Science. It’s had some good presenters and I like the mix of scientists too.

  109. 109.

    SFAW

    @Punchy:

    Any thoughts on a Hill VP choice?

    Handsome Joe? (Because why not)
    Andy Cuomo? (To stop him from fucking over NY, although there’s that Constitution problem)
    Charlie Crist? (To keep him from letting Rick Scott get elected again)

    But I agree that one of the Castro brothers would be a good (or at least interesting) pick.

  114. 114.

    redshirt

    @efgoldman: Same up here in northern NE, though I do have about 3 inches of snow on the ground right now, but it will be gone by Monday I assume.

    This was the second warmest winter on record in Portland, ME for the period December through February.

  116. 116.

    Emerald

    @pseudonymous in nc: @pseudonymous in nc: If Clooney was Heston, they really took a lovely swipe at Heston by making the character susceptible to communism.

    So yeah, Clooney probably was Heston. (except that heston wasn’t nearly as good an actor as clooney–or the character)

    I thought the cowboy star came close to stealing the movie. Great job!

  117. 117.

    PurpleGirl

    @SFAW: I’d prefer a Castro brother. It’s time they climbed nationally.

    Never Andrew Cuomo. Never, never, never. He’s not a true liberal or a true progressive. He’s more an opportunist. Don’t be mislead by things he’s done. He’s pulled stuff with state workers’ pensions (just as his father did). He’s played with taxes. The only reason I’ve voted for him was I couldn’t take the chance a Republican opponent would win — either Carl Paladino or Rob Astorino.

  118. 118.

    WarMunchkin

    @redshirt: DC is nearly always about gods, but I highly recommend Young Justice for diverse, relatable and unique characters.

  119. 119.

    redshirt

    @Emerald: One of the cutest scenes in the movie is the cowboy’s forced date with the Carmen Miranda character and how much fun each of them seemingly has on it.

  120. 120.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: Depends on where you are in continuity. She’s basically the daughter of Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons of Themyscara and the first Wonder Woman herself. Diana, the current Wonder Woman, was formed of clay by her mother who asked the Greek gods to breathe life into her. Normally she’s considered a demi-goddess, but in the current run she’s actually assumed the mantle of Ares and is the goddess of War.

  121. 121.

    WarMunchkin

    @PurpleGirl: Hear hear. If Como tries to do a third term, I will not rest until the Democratic challenger wipes him off the map. Also, do you know what we do for party building in NY? When does general election voter registration start?

  123. 123.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: The one who isn’t in the House of Representatives. You don’t want to vacate a House seat that you control if you don’t have to.

  124. 124.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman: Is there ever any consideration given to the DC general populace what it means to have Gods walking among them?

    On the Marvel side, for example, you’d think it would cause quite the stir to know for a fact that Thor and Odin and the entire Norse pantheon is real – what would that do to Christianity?

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I highly recommend Waid and Ross’s Kingdom Come. Both for the art and the story. I’d also recommend Ross’s Justice, which was his grown up take on Challenge of the Superfriends. You can get them for kindle. The stories are excellent and his art is magnificent.

  129. 129.

    Emerald

    @redshirt: Yeah, I loved that scene. With the spaghetti lasso.

    BTW, my local movie shoppe also has lovely reclining seats with nifty little school tables on them, and reserved seats, every one of which has an unobstructed view.

    But shoot, we don’t have little buttons to call the wait staff!

  130. 130.

    Amir Khalid

    I’ve been watching some videos on The Young Turks YouTube channel. I notice the presenters (especially the beefy dude with the Turkish name, Cenk Uygur) have a noticeable bias towards Bernie in their Democratic primary coverage. For example, Uygur says in a pre-Super Tuesday clip that if Bernie loses Massachusetts he’s toast. Bernie loses Massachusetts; post-Super Tuesday, Uygur says Bernie “did what he needed to do”. Huh?

  132. 132.

    PurpleGirl

    @WarMunchkin: I haven’t checked with the Board of Elections but I need to. I know the Conservative Party had it’s convention in Buffalo this weekend.

  134. 134.

    PurpleGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: You mean the HUD Secretary, forget which Castro it is, though. I could live with that, I understand about not wanting to lose the House seat.

  136. 136.

    DivF

    @efgoldman: Mad magazine, The Spirit, inventor of the graphic novel – Eisner was a legend in his own time and was active for more than 60 years.

  138. 138.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: The closest things they have to gods walking among them are the Kryptonians – Superman, Supergirl, Powergirl; the Amazons – specifically Wonder Woman, Donna Troy/Troya, and Wonder Girl II/Cassie Widmark; the New Gods – both those of New Genesis and those of Apokalips (these were Jack Kirby creations); and the Oans – the Guardians of the Universe who created the Green Lantern Corps, and maybe Shazam (previously d/b/a Captain Marvel). Everyone else is either a human – Batman, Nightwing/Dick Grayson, Red Robin/Tim Drake, Red Hood/Jason Todd, Batgirl/Barbara Gordon, Batwoman Kate Kane, Huntress/Helena Wayne, The Question, Green Arrow, Arsenal, Speedy, Artemis or they are metahumans, which is DC’s term for what Marvel calls mutants and mutates. These would include the Flash; Aquaman (who is actually Atlantean); Hawkman and Hawkwoman; the Atom; etc. And you’ve got magic users: Dr. Fate, Zantanna, Tarot, Hawk and Dove, Constantine, etc. The actual Green Lanterns are somewhere in the middle as they power rings give them incredible powers, but they themselves have no powers without them. And finally you’ve got aliens who aren’t Kryptonians such as J’onn J’onz the Martian Manhunter.

    You have Dream and Death from Gaiman’s Sandman series, but they’re not always considered to be in regular continuity.

  141. 141.

    SFAW

    @PurpleGirl:

    Calm down. I was kidding about Andy. Anyway, he’d be better suited to running with The Donald – both major-league assholes – but there’s that Constitution thing, anyway. (For both Hillary and Drumpf.)

  142. 142.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I’ve never met him. We’ve corresponded by email off and on since 2007 or so. So we’re acquainted. He’s a sharp guy and we’re on good terms (as far as I know). Last time we emailed was last year right around when he retired.

  144. 144.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Wasn’t Hawkman an alien? (It’s been 45+ years since I read DC, so my memory might be rusty.) Outside of that, great analysis.

    ETA: Never mind – I Googled it, saw that my memories were, in fact, wrong. Senility sucks.

  145. 145.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I was a Marvel reader as an adolescent, but only a few select titles. Mainly the New Mutants, but some X-Men, and Longshot, and anything with Mojo Lifebringer in it. Then the Liefeld Years happened, and everything I liked about Marvel Comics was destroyed. My favorite characters were killed – in one case because Liefeld found him boring to draw – or altered out of recognition. Come to think of it, those characters were mostly girls, and the changes blatantly reflected the misogyny taking over the company. I dropped superhero comics and did not look back.

    It is deeply disturbing to me to see the latest X-Men movie based on the Apocalypse plot line, which was where it all started going bad.

    @redshirt:
    Marvel made a point of addressing the god thing immediately. Thor thinks he’s a god. Legends of Thor might even be based on him, maybe. But as far as the human race is concerned, he’s just one more powerful alien with delusions of grandeur.

  146. 146.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SFAW: Depends on the continuity. In the Golden Age he wasn’t – he was archeologist Carter Hall and Hawkgirl was his wife Shiera. In the Silver Age they were Thanagarians. Since they were brought back with Geoff Johns’ run on Justice Society they are the reincarnations of Prince Khufu of Egypt and Princess/Priestess Shayara/Shiera. Murdered by an evil courtier and doomed to reincarnate, find each other, fall in love, and eventually watch each other die over and over and over again. This included a reincarnation as Katar and Shayera Hol of Thanagar. During the Blackest Night series they were able to find their original bones, which supposedly broke the curse. But then DC redid its continuity again with Flashpoint. DC is currently, apparently, redoing its continuity again, so there’s no telling what may happen.

    Johns’ run with the characters in the Justice Society was really interesting. They moved Hawkgirl to the Justice League, as in the story arc she had been reincarnated but didn’t remember her past lives – so she was trying to get away from Hawkman. She had an affair with team mate Red Arrow/Roy Harper (the original Speedy sidekick to Green Arrow). Johns has flat out stated that he was doing the Montagues and the Capulets with the story run and the crossovers. And they did a lot of JSA/JLA crossovers team ups, which is why those two runs are some of my favorite Justice Society and Justice League comics. That and the artists they had working on both books were amazing.

  147. 147.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman: I meant God in more than just the classic sense. For example, in many of his depictions, Batman might as well be a God. Superman is a God, but in actually he’s just an alien. Etc.

    Dream and Death and Destiny and the rest might as well be literal Gods, given the nature of their powers.

  149. 149.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I understood where you’re going, but Batman really isn’t portrayed that way. If you want to argue that DC’s default, especially for their big characters, is archetypal, than I’m with you all the way.

  150. 150.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman: Archetypal is a better way of putting it, as opposed to Marvel’s more “realistic” portrayal of these super powered beings. Wolverine is God like when you consider his powers, but he’s certainly never portrayed as such.

  151. 151.

    mclaren

    Economist Umair Haque has a devastating article up about the forces that produced Trump’s candidacy:

    The average Trump voters are the losers of meta-modernity. They’re the ones who’ve lost the most from globalization, financialization, and technology. Their incomes have been stuck for decades, their net worths have evaporated, their middle class careers have turned into working class subsistence McJobs. This issues, being the losers of meta-modernity is at the heart of their rage. In short: the economic pie is shrinking. The rich are getting mega-richer. But in real terms, everyone else is treading water, or like the losers of meta-modernity, getting poorer.

    That explains Trump’s rise. The losers of meta-modernity are voting for Trump en masse because he (and he alone) acknowledges, recognizes that the pie is shrinking — and promises to stop it.

    Here’s the dirty secret. He won’t — and can’t. Trump’s economic policies aren’t going to fix the economy. Sorry, it’s magical thinking. (..)

    Source: The Road to Ruin, Umair Haque’s blog, 3 March 2016.

    And in another essay, Haque points out the source of that anger among the electorate, the anger that’s generating both Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and Donald Tump’s demagoguery:

    For too long, the “establishment” (I’ll use Trump’s own terminology — not to praise him, but to explain him) has shouted the following line from every Olympian mountaintop: the economy, they say, is recovering. True. But it is truer to say that the recovery is a largely meaningless one. The rich are mega-richer, the banks are mega-bigger. But it has not meaningfully benefited the average person — it has left many, perhaps the majority, worse off than they were before it. Their incomes have not recovered. They enjoy fewer and worse public goods, whether libraries, schools, parks, decrepit infrastructure, or poisoned water. The jobs that have been created during the recovery offer lower wages, less security, and fewer opportunities than those before it. The economy is, in a very real sense, replacing not just good jobs with bad ones, but the promise of good lives — middle class ones, resonant with prosperity and confident in stability — with poor ones.

    Do you think I overstate my case? Perhaps you are a firm believer in the “recovery”. Very well. Consider two damning statistics. The majority of public school children in the US are now, for the first time in modern history — utterly unheard of amongst rich countries — are in poverty. The vast majority of the fastest growing jobs in the “new”, post-crisis economy are dead-end minimum wage McJobs: food preparation, retail, hospitality, cleaners.

    Pause and reflect for a moment. What do the indisputable facts above really mean?

    In essence, the class structure of the American economy changed radically, historically, profoundly — and for the worse. From a healthy one, composed of middle class prosperity, with rich and poor at the margins, to an unhealthy one, composed of an imploded middle class, with ultra wealthy and new poor in the main. Establishment pundits and economists and politicians proudly trumpeted “recovery”. But reality for many, particularly the former middle, was a descent into a new world of insecurity, instability, exploitation, and anxiety — a voyage into the abyss unparalleled in modern history, and utterly unique amongst the fraternity of rich countries. The triumphal exceptionalist rhetoric of crisis and recovery did not match up with reality — and so grew a bitter distrust amongst politicians and people.

    Source: How this generation of leaders failed leadership (or, the social combustion of demagoguery), Umair Haque’s blog, 25 February 2016.

  153. 153.

    redshirt

    @Mnemosyne: True. They’re primordial whereas the Gods are just figureheads, in that mythology.

    I hope Sandman comes to the big screen (though I read today that Joseph Gordon Levitt just backed out of the production which seems like a big deal to me) simply so we can see Odin, Thor, and Loki interact in a manner completely different than the Marvel version.

    But then, American Gods is happening too, so, much the same thing.

  154. 154.

    Tony P.

    @efgoldman: When I flash MY high beams back at them (and honk the horn, conditions permitting) about one in three diims theirs. So I suspect it’s not a question of inherently brighter low beams in modern cars.

    I buy a new car every twenty years or so, whether I need it or not,. Last time was eleven years ago. So I’m not up to date on the latest features, I have wondered if maybe late-model cars purport to have self-dimming high beams, which don’t work reliably — and maybe their drivers are merely oblivious, rather than assholes.

    –TP

  155. 155.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I hate him not because he’s a (spectacularly, hilariously) bad artist, but because he spearheaded a writing style change that destroyed the character focus that Marvel tried to cultivate, replacing it with a desperate, stupid, archtypically 90s attempt to be cool and edgy. And he, personally, took a big part in destroying my favorite comics and characters.

  158. 158.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    The same Will Eisner that was a mainstay at Mad?

    Will Eisner was a busy, busy fella. When I was reading Spirit reprints in the 70s, I saw him referred to as ‘the Picasso of comix’ for his orginality & versatility:

    … In 1936, high-school friend and fellow cartoonist Bob Kane, of future Batman fame, suggested that the 19-year-old Eisner try selling cartoons to the new comic book Wow, What A Magazine! “Comic books” at the time were tabloid-sized collections of comic strip reprints in color…

    His last graphic novel, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an account of the making of the anti-semitic hoax The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was completed shortly before his death and published in 2005…

  160. 160.

    J R in WV

    @efgoldman:

    vipers? They have a useful place in nature.

    Yes, natural ones do. Republican Vipers, on the other hand, have no natural place anywhere, which is why they spend so much time on marble floors. With no niche in nature, they try to steal space from human beings, often successfully, and can ruin lives with such shadowy activity.

    Imagine rolling over to find one in bed with you!?!?

    “How did – you get in here?”
    or
    “AAARRRGGGHHH~!~!~!”

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