UNDER THE GUNN - INTERNET HISTORY WILL BITE YOU

UNDER THE GUNN - INTERNET HISTORY WILL BITE YOU

Disney, apparently after two successful Guardians of the Galaxy films, realized it hired the director of Slither - a horror movie about phallic creatures that turn you in to zombies with dildos sticking out of your body, and then promptly fired him. A strange turn of events. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize that their main actor is the fat dumb dude from  Parks and Recs before they recast him.

Okay, it was more than that. It was very poor rape and NAMBLA jokes, which, let's be honest, Jon Stewart was making NAMBLA jokes on the daily show for yours. In fact, calling many of the daily correspondence NAMBLA experts.  Were the jokes in very poor taste... yes. very much so. They were low brow as low brow can get. I'm talking dead baby jokes poor taste. But they were from MANY years ago and, let's be fair, the man is a comedian... soooooo. I dunno. I'm willing to just say you had a long time to sort through this landmine before figuring out it wasn't to brand image.

The lesson you can learn from James Gunn's firing is simple - the internet is the best tool you will ever need, but it is also the means of your own destruction. Anything you have written on here. Anything you will write on here... well, it will come back and bite you in the ass. I'm just waiting for the day till my geocities site devoted to Neon Genesis Evangelion gets revealed and my pipe dream of a writing career comes to a crashing and sudden end.

Kind of funny that after keeping Song of the South locked away for years - while still having a ride based off it in the parks, and editing out the insensitive centaur scene, that they never actually did anything about the other two photos in that meme

I sort of wonder how long it'll be until we are forever marked by our actions in a damaging long lasting way. The whole notion of something going on your permanent record was a constant fear growing up until we realized it was bullshit. Now with the way the internet logs just about everything and never lets you forgot a single thing, it is more important to know what it is that you are leaving in terms of a mark in what you say and do.

Was this an overreaction. I would say yes. Is the subject not appropriate? Of course not. It's stupid jokes from a comedian made a long time ago and Disney had the proper methods and long enough time to vet this stuff. So I'm really surprised that it coming out now, after two very successful films really matters. No one was accusing him of any misconduct towards themselves.

If making snarky comments in your past will doom you from being a productive creator in the future... well, shit. I'm just fucked. Not to mention that a lot of the things you have enjoyed in the past.... made by people with questionable moral character. I have posted a solid 2,600 articles. I have 2,000 yelp reviews... which, I guess I don't give a shit about, but the creative writing I have used in those can basically also be used against me. What I'm saying is that the paper trail on the internet that you leave behind yourself is pretty damning.

Also, I'm beyond fucked because I have left very little in my wake except snarky ass commentary. Hell, whenever someone meets me in person and they know about me online but I don't know about them at all, I usually assume I have insulted them or given them so much shit that it's time to pay long over due check of getting sucker punched.

Look, I just don't think this is a problem with not keeping up with the progressive moral. In fact, this was a targeted attack by a notorious right wing troll who dug up the past and weaponized morality with his legion of fans. It's like, nobody who identifies as progressive called for Gunn to be fired and those who toss around the phrase snowflakes are the ones completely being the offended party here.

The grand take away from all this is you better scrub your post and internet history pretty well, because someone will find it and in an age were we are all connected and the dirt you just don't want to see is stuff you inadvertently posted yourself all that time ago.

AND SO IT ENDS

AND SO IT ENDS

That's it. leave, go home. The lines won't be around for comic con. No, you can't depend on Line Con to be the only thing that causes you to wait. The drive back.. oh, that has its own form of a line in the way of traffic. But yes, now it's the time honored tradition to shake my fist at all the lines that have gone by this week and wonder if I should do it again... a 20 year tradition.

COLLECTORS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

COLLECTORS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Posting from San Diego Comic Con, I can tell you one thing that really sticks out to me more and more these days is how the collectors market and the collectors mentality has completely changed over the last decade.

It used to be that you would save your movie ticket stubs for whatever film you went to or concert you happen to be sharing a moment about. Now a days, that's not the case. You seldom even have a paper receipt to remember your time. It's all done digitally. Nothing more to frame up or put in that memorabilia book  - Hell, all that is kept online in the cloud anyway. We have a digital shadow these days. No longer do we have things that are tangible to hold on to.

So walking through the floor of the convention, It struck me that there's still a lot of things hold on to hold for that consumer purchase in the world collectors market. But the point for them has long since past. Posters and even variant covers to comics just seem pointless. You can do a simple right click and save as to keep that special art in your hard drive forever without even paying to frame it.

Folks have digital music now a days. I still like to collect LP's and play them in a more hands on approach than just clicking on an icon in a tablet. But I do see the ease of all that. But it's true and ironic that CD's did not kill the record. And while I bought a lot of art books at Comic Con, a lot of artist sketch books and what not, it's more to show support for them and their work. I know a lot of which I could just find online and enjoy. But there is a huge aspect to supporting the creative arts behind it all. 

Recently while trying to organize all the stuff I have around in boxes that I haven't seen in years, I have been thinking about this. The mentality of the collectors view has completely changed. Sure, there's still limited bullshit trinkets that you see folks chasing, but there's a lot of questions as to why even do that chase. I don't see the point of buying a lot of things here at comic con because I don't want to carry it the mile or so down to my hotel room. I'll just pay the little extra on ebay or wherever after the show and it'll get shipped to me. But I still question on if I even need that shit. It's a tough one to answer when I really think about it.

Because the reality is... I don't.

You can't take it with you when you're dead. And I am certainly getting up there in age. Sure, not to the point of my demise, but I'm starting to really reevaluate how much I buy of whatever and what use I actually have of it.

Just like I look at my stacks of hard drives and wonder when the hell am I ever going to tackle that series of 1's and 0's. The amount of music, movies, shows, programs and books in those hard drives basically puts the Library of Alexandria to shame. We have come to the point were we could fit the mass of world knowledge in a suitcase. It's really crazy when you think about it and now a days we don't even value all that knowledge like we really should.

I'm going off the rails here. My point is that collecting shit has come to a new reality and they're just trying to scrape by any stupid excuse as to what to term as collectors items to sell to you and make a buck. The whole term collectors is just a stupid excuse to make you buy shit and we should probably stop encouraging it altogether.

I know I buy my fair share of crap, but in reality, you're just leaving a mess behind for your loved ones when you die. I have tons and tons of boxes from my Uncle who basically died almost twenty years ago that I still have no idea what to do with. Yeah, some neat stuff in there, but in the end, it's all just junk that means nothing and you are better off collecting memories and experiences and growing bonds with people than just buying shit you won't use and will be someone else's problem.

So maybe I won't buy those Bob's Burgers plastic toys. I mean... I really want them but......

ADAM WEST WAS A STRANGE MAN

ADAM WEST WAS A STRANGE MAN 

I mean, did I really have to break that shocking news to you? Clearly not. But during this Comic Con weekend, I figure that while I'm nerding it up with a fuck ton of other sweaty, crop dusting mother fuckers in the San Diego heat, I would leave you a little piece that was very strange to me, even knowing full well that 60's Batman was just one strange fucker. May he rest in peace... cause who the fuck gets kicked out of an orgy with the Riddler?

What’s your favorite memory of Frank Gorshin? He defined that role so well.

Well, I think one of my favorite memories is that Frank and I were invited to a party one night and we decided to go, a Hollywood party we didn’t know anything about. We were kind of laughing and having a few beers and said, "Let’s go over there." We walked in ... and it was an orgy. So I immediately went into the Batman character, and Frank went into the Riddler character, because we were getting the big giggles. It was so funny to us, what we walked into. And we were kicked out. We were expelled from the orgy.

Yup, Hollywood is a strange strange place. I mean, it probably was a given that Batman's utility belt had Bat-condomes. What else would you use a utility belt for? Then again, it was the 60's, who the fuck used condoms back in the 60's?

Just think, when the vibrator died during those orgies and Batman turned to Robin to fetch him some Batteries, do you think Robin would just stare at him and ask him what a "Teries" is? Okay, that was fairly dumb. I'll admit to that, but come on, this article is about Batman getting it on in orgies and then getting kicked out.

Part of me just wants to assume that they made the bit up about being thrown out so they don't look like assholes in an article and come off as gentlemen when in reality they probably pounded ass all night. On top of that. if you go over the character a bit more.... Bruce Wayne is a billionaire who dresses as a Bat to beat up people. I mean, if you think about it for less than a second, it makes perfect sense that Batman would be in to some strange sex shit. It's just West trying to keep in character if you want to see it that way.

The Batman craze int he swinging 60's just seemed like something you had to see to believe. Like the time he had sex with 8 women in one night. GREAT SCOTT!

"When I entered Batman as a naive 20-year-old who had only dated a couple of girls, I met Adam West, who immediately introduced me to the wildest sexual debauchery that you can imagine," Ward once said.

"Holy hairy Pussies, Batman, I didn't know you could get BOTH fists in there!" 
"Yes Robin, this Basking Beaver has me in its Clutches!"

Then again, he did probably start that sort of sexual revolution....   

"If you look at our show, you'll see that we always stood with our legs open, our fists on hips and our bat bulges forward, which had a profound effect on women."

 And it's true! A huge problem in the early first season was that costuming hadn't figured out proper crotch smoothing just yet. So enough 60's husbands had called and wrote the station to complain about how the faint outline of Adam West's dick was obscenely getting their wives horny. Can you imagine that shit? Complaining about of all things that your wife wanted to fuck you? Talk about the fragile male ego. So the network actually put a crack team of censors on the case to ensure an end to this bulge lewdness.

I'm pretty sure that Adam West's ego was inflated to the size of the moon after being told that his junk making a dent in his costume had to be completely smoothed out because women were getting too wet from it.  Eventually costuming sorted the whole mess out and so Batman would then look like a Ken doll with the whole smooth crotch feature for the future to not enjoy as much.

My final take away is really acceptance. Because who among us HASN'T been kicked out of an orgy while pretending to be Batman? Come on, it's okay to just accept the reality of the situation.

Final note with a fun fact.  Cesar Romero used to pay young stage hands to throw orange wedges at his bare gaping asshole. Let's see all you new Jokers try to ever live up to that expectation and interpretation of the Clown Prince. Fuck you, You can't! That is just too crazy and regardless of how method Joaquin Phoenix is, I bet he won't even come close to that level of nuts.

ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER - BLOCK BUSTER

ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER - BLOCK BUSTER

And that's exactly how many Blockbuster Video stores are now in existence since the last two Blockbuster stores in Alaska are shutting their doors. So the only remaining reminder of this once video rental giant will be in Bend, Oregon.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. This comes after John Oliver and Last Week Tonight gave the Anchorage store Russell Crowe movie memorabilia - namely a loin cloth form Cinderella Man. This is some time coming since Dish Network started closing them down in 2013. It only made sense that a place so isolated and so spotty in terms of internet coverage would still depend on video rentals from a brick and mortar store. But I guess that's in the past.

I guess my big question is what will happen to the jockstrap of Russell Crowe in this situation. I mean, who will give it a good home?  I'm trying to figure out what the "This is part of my childhood that is now gone" sort of memory that I or anyone else will have about this. And I'm not really feeling it. In fact, I'm more along the lines of good riddance. This shit should have been shuttered a long time ago.

Full disclosure, I worked at Blockbuster. It wasn't the whole awesome experience. Then again, you wouldn't expect it to. I had to deal with a lot of bullshit excuses for late rentals and pissed off folks when they find out they have a $2 late fee. Which, I guess if you're renting a $5 movie, should you really want to argue for 10 minutes about a stupid small fee. I never understood that and I wasn't getting any pay incentive for collecting on late fees. 9 times out of 10, if they were cool with me or even just acted like a human being with me, I would just press the magic buttons in the computer and erase whatever stupid late fees there was.

I also created about 50 different fake Blockbuster accounts. The moment they tossed me in to that situation of creating accounts, I just had too much fun. I must have made a ton of comic book character accounts that I would eventually just toss and see what magic those accounts got into, trouble wise, over the years.

The worst thing about working there was the upper level management who took the job way to fucking seriously. It was a shitty job with shitty pay. No one is going to care as long as the ship was sort of running some what smoothly, which it really wasn't that difficult. Acceptance of the fact that on a Friday or Saturday night, the shelves were going to be complete and utter shit. Staffing up to clean up and prepare for the onslaught of the next day was key and it was something they could never get right, or they just didn't give a shit to get right.

One closing manager was the goddamn worst because.. well, she always would want to play one of two films. To catch you up, after we closed the doors and started cleaning, it would only make sense to toss something in to the VHS and have it play on all the screens. Well, this one manager loved the shit out of Eddie Murphy stand up comedy and they would only want to see either Raw or Delirious. At first it was great, but after several weeks of watching it, I'm pretty sure I can still recite the whole routine by heart. It got to the point that I and other workers would just hide the video somewhere in the store and claim that the tape was lost or rented out. She would check the system and it would create an hour extra of work in her looking for it.

I'll also touch on the stereotype of the art house/indie movie watcher working there that you'll never meet up to their expectation of cinema. I can tell you that working at blockbuster would crush those sort of starry eyed notions in a heart beat. It just didn't last. Not like you find in those independent rental stores that seem to exist for some reason - that reason is they rent out porn and more importantly, ignore your sick habits in a way only a doctor or a shrink in terms of keeping your secrets.

I do find it funny that Blockbuster went under. Their huge stance to just fuck you on late fees whenever possible was nothing short of worthy of some karmic justice. Those years I worked there were pretty rough on me. I used to drink a 2liter of Pepsi to deal with the hassle of the customers. It was retail work and no one should really complain about it, I guess. But yeah. That was fucking awful. Finding purpose in your work during those days was tough. Just the lack of concern and not giving a fuck was huge because of how corporate handled the workers and handled the customers.

So I guess what I'm saying is, shed no tear for this final lonely Blockbuster. It deserves the fate it is seeing.

Good riddance.

DC COMICS MAKING A COME BACK

DC COMICS MAKING A COME BACK 

Okay, maybe not really.

With DC Entertainment being apart of the Time Warner family that just got the shit bought out of them by AT&T a few weeks back, it's time for AT&T to try to make some cash back. Yes, I'm talking about comic books. Something I haven't done for a long time now. But here I am. Back. And how fitting that this topic comes up around Comic Con in San Diego. A time when we remember that this convention was all about comic books. Go figure.

Anyhow, it seems that  DC is bringing comic books back to big chains and I wonder how the little comic shops will react. Probably with a huge amount of fear. It's bad enough owning a shop in the age of digital, though, to be honest, nerds will always gravitate towards having something you can collect in your hand. It allows them to think that they have something of value that they can some day retire on. It's like how Boomers pretend that the home they own is an investment property when in reality no modern day generation that came after them can even dream of having home ownership with crushing student debt.

So now DC comics will be bringing their comic books back to the mass market distribution channels that they had when I was a kid. Finding comic books all battered and bent on the shelves of grocery stores was something I fondly remember as a kid. I also remember fondly that my mother told me they weren't going to spend that buck or two on a comic. Which makes me wonder how any parent in today's economy will even dream of allowing little billy to toss in that comic book in to the purchases since they're now climbing towards the $5 mark for a single comic.

I don't think of Walmart for much, but to suddenly have 3,000 Walmarts suddenly carrying comic books for a comic line that the film adaptations haven't been very good seems like it'll just sit there.  Not to mention the anxiety that the 1200+ independent comic retailers who are hard at work slinging these books themselves, now they got a huge competition that has already taken out plenty other mom and pop shops all across America.

On top of that, these will be exclusive versions for Walmart. Which is to say that they will be special edition versions of the comics that have a lot more content. It'll be a 100 page format with a main story in the front and in true recycling power, the back story will be something from the last two decades. Now, I stopped really following DC comics in the 2000's. I loved the stories of Green Lantern and Justice League and what not. But felt that they became to "event heavy" over the last few years and I got fatigued right the fuck out of that scene. So it's decent to see that besides the crap they're trying to throw against the wall to see if it sticks in the newer stories, the older stuff will be tossed in to the spotlight to show how much better it was.

So you'll get Superman Giant, Justice League Giant, Batman Giant, Teen Titans Giant.. etc. etc.  It''s interesting to see this movie again because when I was a kid, your local thrifty or whatever pharmacy would have a rack just for the comics as well. In fact, this is why when you think of Silver and Gold age comics as being valued in the hundreds of thousands, it's because that was a time when the mothers would throw out the books of their stupid kids when they moved away to college or the fact that they were just magazines you frivolously bought at the market and the conditions that they were kept in meant that so many copies were lost to time.

So what does the future hold for actual comic shops? They're going to have to find other means to get customers. I know the whole variant cover scene has been happening for a while now, but I pray that folks have wised up to that bullshit since you can easily just download an image online of whatever variant cover you want. There's no real value in it for the future. So just stop trying to make it a thing already, please.

But other collectible items will have to take the heavy lifting that these will take away. Ultimately, the comic shop has survived this long and while these bumps in the road will constantly continue, it'll still find some means to stay alive. Either that or the whole scene can just go digital already because fuck if all I know as to where this sucker is heading in the next five to ten years.

SDCC: THE DEALS ARE DEAD

SDCC:  THE DEALS ARE DEAD

There's this one thing that I keep on hearing whenever someone is asking for advice about San Diego Comic Con - and this applies to all conventions these days - that you should save your purchases for the last day because the mentality is that these vendors don't want to take it back home with them. So they'll blow out the prices just to get rid of this collectible trash people love buying.

THIS.
IS.
WRONG.

Let's just get rid of this myth already. Whatever non mega booth that isn't owned by a company selling "exclusives" and is potentially a little shop hacking wares already has a store front that they could just take it back and sell it at the regular, if not higher price. So this notion that it's some yard sale situation where they desperately  want to get rid of shit is just off and wrong entirely.

Also, Sunday is just a regular goddamn day at con now. It used to be the sort of getaway day where folks were eager to leave by midday. Not anymore. It's full on business hours per usual. The thing that folks should realize about SDCC is that it's no longer the little guy. In fact, for years it has had a struggle that even big comic shops couldn't get spaces there since they were being used up by the big companies promoting shit left and right. The old basement of a hotel convention that comic con once was is a pipe dream to never happen in San Diego again.

I mean, what it turned in to was just a promotional tool for studios to tout out their new tv projects and films that had Pop culture attachment to it. The whole notion of comic con as a means for comic books is now the way of the dinosaur as well. There's no one that thinks that anymore anyway.

It's a pop culture convention with hints of E3 Lite as well as whatever movie and television show platform they would like to promote for the upcoming year. You need to embrace it for what it is now. Because if you do, then you'd at least have some fun. Tons of promotions of pointless crap out in the streets. A large amount of people dressed, some very impressively and some with as little effort as humanly possible - as characters you will recognize and many of ones you will not.

Though, in hindsight, the cosplay on Sunday is pretty light since folks have been bringing their A game to it the other days and just want to enjoy the convention for a day instead of having to be in a sweaty outfit all day getting stopped for pictures every five minutes.

The one given though for Sunday is you're not going to find any fucking deals. You're also going to be shit out of luck because a lot of the stuff you waited on buying sold out long ago. You missed your chance, you idiot. This is why you don't wait for Sunday's potential deals and I know I'll overhear at least two dozen people walking the floor try to tell their buddy this sound advice about waiting for Sunday to get those killer deals. It makes me want to slap you more than I already do for having to smell your awful body odor and crop dusting.