Sometimes, it’s best to start at the beginning. That’s what I decided while trying to figure out which of my prospective wife candidates I should meet first. So, when the first submission I received was from a woman named Pattie, who described herself as forty-two, blonde, 5’8”, and 121 lbs, I agreed to meet her at a local watering hole of her choice, called “Betcho‘s”.
Although I wasn‘t even a moment late, I could see no one that I could suspect of being Pattie. I killed some time examining what must have been hundreds of collectible dinner plates affixed to the walls. I wondered at the wisdom of displaying these delicate possessions in such a rowdy place, but all seemed to be clean and intact. Someone was clearly invested in their upkeep. This was in stark contrast to the stripper stage in the corner, where a lonely girl danced unnoticed under dim and burned out lights. When I ran out of plates to look at, I just sat and waited.
Half way into my third beer later, a woman, who not at all matched the description I’d been given, threw open the door and made her way to my table. This one was more like 5’4”, 140 lbs, and closer to fifty-five than forty-two. I hoped that this would somehow not turn out to be Pattie.
“Hi, I’m Pattie.” she said, setting her giant purse on the table.
I then proceeded learn all about Pattie for the next hour and a half. How she loved to talk about herself. Which was fine, because the more I learned, the less I was interested in sharing anything about myself. I mean, I did try, but whenever I told a joke, she seemed confused. Other times, when I tried to share mundane thoughts or genuine interests, that’s when she would laugh. She didn’t even seem interested in talking about going to Mars. That’s pretty much where I gave up, and just bided my time until I could inoffensively suggest it might be time to pack it in.
Just as I was working up the nerve, Pattie goes and spoils it by slamming down her empty glass and saying “Let’s go back to my place.”
Those are kind of the magic words for me. I was ready to call it quits, and I certainly had no intentions of inviting Pattie over to my place. I don’t actually like to have any women over to my place. Maybe it's just me, but I see it like this.
Once you get used to being alone, being alone isn’t so bad. That is, it doesn’t seem so bad, as long as you can’t remember what it’s like to not be alone. Once I have a girl over, she’s not coming back. I’m not going to ask her to come back because I know she’s probably hoping I don’t. Figuring out whether or not this is some form of unconscious self sabotage is best left to the scientists.
So if I have a lady come to my place one night, the next night I’ll still be able to see her, exactly as she was, exactly where she was, and remember every touch and taste and smell. Everything in the room will be exactly as it was, only now there’s no one there. It’s like having a ghost in your bed. It goes away, in time, but for awhile, it’s rather distressing.
That’s why it’s better to go to the girl’s place. Every part of it exists only as a memory. All the ghosts are far away. It’s almost like it never happened, which it probably shouldn’t have.
So we get back to Pattie’s small apartment. There’s not much there besides a weirdly high and sloped couch, an entertainment center, and a massive stereo system. A small stand of glass and steel, containing wine bottles and glasses, rested against the wall separating kitchen from dining room. The bedroom was filled to the brim with boxes of who knows what.
Pattie set her enormous purse on the ground and opened it, allowing a live cat to leap out. Then she tells me to get undressed and lay on the couch, and not to argue, because she is in charge. These instructions were pretty much in synch with the amount of effort I wanted to put into this encounter. So I did what I was told.
While I'm laying there with my head on a pillow, she dances to old songs, which mainly consists of her swinging her hips around like she was inside an imaginary hula hoop. In between dances, she regales me with poetry she claimed to have written. I didn’t have any reason to disbelieve her, other than the fact it was really quite good. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I may have been moved to tears at one point. In any case, it was far superior to the chocolate wine she served. Wretched stuff. Avoid at all costs.
Eventually, she finally gets out of her clothes, and I wondered, not for the first or last time, if I’d made a huge mistake. Beneath that loose fitting sweater was a whole lot of loose fitting flesh. She had a body like a half empty potato sack.
So, she gets on top of me and almost immediately goes into some kind of trance. She starts muttering something that sounded like the black language of Mordor. Her arm snaps out, almost convulsively, and snatches a painting off the wall. I watch as she flings it across the room. All the while, she’s just chanting with her eyes closed. I guess I thought it was nice that she seemed to be enjoying herself. At least I didn't actually have to do anything.
Seconds later, she has a heavy looking vase in her hand, raised high over head. She’s still muttering in tongues, only now she’s staring right at me with a glazed look in her eyes. I panicked. I thought she was going to smash me in the face with it.
I bolted upright with enough speed and force to knock her aside against the back of the couch. Momentum had me in it’s clutches, however, and kept carrying me forward, right off the couch and face first into the wine stand. I wasn’t cut at all, but even now, a dark pink line across my forehead still shows where I connected with the glass shelf.
Bottles were scattered across the floor. Luckily, nothing was broken, and I started gathering them up. Pattie told me to leave them, and get back on the couch. I had some reservations about that idea now, but I did it anyway.
Things resumed much as before. Even the vase returned to it’s place in her hand, menacingly raised high in the air.
“Hey, Pattie.” I said.
The glazed look in her eyes cleared away.
“Are you… Is everything all right up there?” I asked.
“Everything’s great. Why wouldn’t be?” she said.
I pointed out the vase in her hand. She looked at it like she was seeing it for the first time, and looked embarrassed. After a moment, she explained.
“Sometimes I go to the place where the shadow people take control.”
“The..? The 'shadow people'?”
“They stand behind you so you can’t ever see them. They have mouths on their fingers and, when you let your guard down, they stick them in your ears and tell you what to do. If you’re not careful, you can’t tell when it’s happening. Even when I know, and I try to fight them, it’s still kind of a crapshoot who will win.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. The only thing that seemed certain was that this was not a good time to do or say the wrong thing.
“Well, how about we try this, instead?” I said, taking the vase from her hand and replacing it with my pillow.
Things went fine after that. I wasn’t even terrified or anything.
Later, as I was thinking up an explanation as to why I should leave immediately, Pattie saved me the effort by indicating she had to get an early start that morning. She gave me her phone number, though, and said she hoped we would get together again soon. I said we would and left.
As soon as her apartment building was out of sight, I crumpled up the paper with her number on it, and tossed it under a parked car. As you know, with only one exception that I had to pay for, I have never slept with any woman more than once. If I am ever going to break that streak, it is not going to begin like this.
Sorry, Pattie. My quest must go on.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Obituary
The world of old people is a sad and depressing place. It is a place of disease and infirmity. Has there ever been another demographic that breaks so easily?
I can’t help but be reminded of that old issue of JSA, where Jay Garrick, also known as the Flash, is about to chase down the villainous Vandal Savage. Instead, he slips on some ice. Savage just shakes his head and strolls away, and all Jay can do is lay there with a broken hip. Stargirl shows up and calls an ambulance while Garrick cries out “Curse these old bones of mine!“
Now the elderly community sends word of a new tragedy. There is one less of them in the world. Normally, I go the Vandal Savage route, and just shrug at their misfortune. This time the latest development struck a bit closer to home than I‘m used to. On Wednesday morning, my Uncle Gerry, 73, passed away quietly in front of a speeding bus. I was pretty fond of him, so I hope you’ll indulge me just a little while I wax eloquent in his memory.
Reginald Hamilton Luxton II was born to Jamie S. Luxton the First, and Adeline Bosephone Luxton (nee Constantine), on August 31, 1939 in a shallow depression on the banks of the river Thames in London, England. Named after his grandfather, “Reg” became known as “Ger” due to his mother’s dyslexia.
When he was only one day old, the second world war broke out. In later life, he would claim to have tried to enlist, but was disqualified by the recruitment officer for being “too young”. Whether there is any truth to this unverifiable hearsay is lost to the ages. However, My grandmother Adeline did tell me that, at that age, my uncle was quite literally a "cry baby". One night, as they squatted in the burned out ruins of the tenement that was once their home, Uncle Gerry kicked up such a fit that it woke the entire family. Fortunately, this was just in time to hear the familiar sound of an incoming V-1 “Doodlebug” flying bomb, and allowed them to escape without a second to spare.
After the war, the family immigrated to Canada, and took up residence in London, Ontario. Finding it to not at all be what they expected, they later moved to New Westminster, British Columbia. It was here that my uncle fell in with Leon Mandrake and his crowd. One can easily imagine that it was under such an influence that he developed his taste for sleight of hand, duplicity, and half truths.
Although my grandfather, a stern and unforgiving man, sought to curb these tendencies, Gerry could not, or would not, resist being drawn into the seedy underworld. Finally, grandfather felt he had no choice but to disown his son, after which Gerry simply disappeared. Gerry never sought to share with me what happened to him during the next twenty years.
Apparently, he wasn’t seen by any of my family until just after I was born. Even then, after inspecting the newest member of the family, and borrowing some money, he disappeared again. I was twelve before I met my uncle under circumstances I can remember.
I was lodged somewhere in the branches of our cherry tree, when a man who looked like a fatter, more intelligent, version of my father came out of our house and approached me.
“Nephew! We have met before. Do you know me?” He said.
“No.” I replied.
“I’m your uncle. Should have clued in when I called you ‘nephew’.”
“What of it?”
“Nephew, I have come to give you some advice. Don’t grow up to be like your uncle. Or your father. Or your grandfather. Or your mother or your grandmother. Or your aunt, for that matter.”
“Didn’t know I had an aunt.” I said.
“Fair enough.” he said.
“Who shall I grow up to be like, then?” I asked. He considered his response carefully.
“Bruce Springsteen.” he answered finally.
Even at that early age, I saw the wisdom of this, and I wondered what other truths he may have to share. For a few years, I became his protege. He took me places and showed me things that not a lot of other kids my age went to or saw. He became sort of a surrogate father to me, especially whenever my real dad was in jail. During these times, my mom would also say that Uncle Gerry was quite good at filling dad’s place. I didn‘t know what she meant by this, and I didn‘t care, either. All I knew is that any night he was over, I was encouraged to have the TV on really loud.
By the time I was fifteen, and it was clear I was not following in the footsteps of “The Boss“, he became disenchanted with me, and swiftly faded out of my life.
A decade went by before I started to notice an old man tooling around town in his Rascal scooter. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got lots of guys like that around here. But this one always made me think “He sure looks a lot like my Uncle Gerry.”
It wasn’t until one day I was walking down the street and he pulled up beside me and said “Hey, Nephew!” that I realised how right I was.
We spent the next fifteen minutes catching up on the past ten years. He told me how he’d stumbled onto an incredible niche market of selling OxyContin to the retirees of the old folk’s homes. OxyContin is a powerful painkiller that goes for $20 a pill and, if you know what you‘re doing, gets you wicked high. It also has a host of side effects and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
All he had to do was visit a few retirement homes once a week, which he was going to do anyway. That’s where all his friends were living. Then it was just a matter of meeting up with a particular nurse, or whoever, and exchange cash for goods. The nurse took care of the rest. This allowed Uncle Gerry to take home over $3000 a month doing almost nothing he wouldn’t have been doing anyway.
I was equally repulsed and impressed. I wasn‘t sure why he was telling me this, though. I asked him if he wanted me to help him. He looked at his watch and said he had to go.
I never really spoke to him again. I saw him scooting around all the time, and he’d wave at me as he sped past. He waved and shouting greetings at everybody. He never stopped to converse to me, though.
The last time I saw him was just last Monday night. I was standing at a crosswalk when a voice called out to me.
“Hey, nephew! Check out these sweet moves!”
I looked over to see my uncle waving at me, in his scooter, going around and around in circles. Then he peeled out of there and, though I didn’t know it at the time, out of my life.
The funeral is today. I don’t know what to expect, exactly. I don’t know if I will have to say something or even if I want to say something.
This is what I can tell you about my uncle... I didn’t exactly dislike him.
In my family, that’s high praise. Maybe I’m saying this because I’m overwhelmed with emotion. Maybe it’s just too early to speak ill of dead. Maybe later, I’ll have more to say about him.
For now, it's probably best to leave it at that.
I can’t help but be reminded of that old issue of JSA, where Jay Garrick, also known as the Flash, is about to chase down the villainous Vandal Savage. Instead, he slips on some ice. Savage just shakes his head and strolls away, and all Jay can do is lay there with a broken hip. Stargirl shows up and calls an ambulance while Garrick cries out “Curse these old bones of mine!“
Now the elderly community sends word of a new tragedy. There is one less of them in the world. Normally, I go the Vandal Savage route, and just shrug at their misfortune. This time the latest development struck a bit closer to home than I‘m used to. On Wednesday morning, my Uncle Gerry, 73, passed away quietly in front of a speeding bus. I was pretty fond of him, so I hope you’ll indulge me just a little while I wax eloquent in his memory.
Reginald Hamilton Luxton II was born to Jamie S. Luxton the First, and Adeline Bosephone Luxton (nee Constantine), on August 31, 1939 in a shallow depression on the banks of the river Thames in London, England. Named after his grandfather, “Reg” became known as “Ger” due to his mother’s dyslexia.
When he was only one day old, the second world war broke out. In later life, he would claim to have tried to enlist, but was disqualified by the recruitment officer for being “too young”. Whether there is any truth to this unverifiable hearsay is lost to the ages. However, My grandmother Adeline did tell me that, at that age, my uncle was quite literally a "cry baby". One night, as they squatted in the burned out ruins of the tenement that was once their home, Uncle Gerry kicked up such a fit that it woke the entire family. Fortunately, this was just in time to hear the familiar sound of an incoming V-1 “Doodlebug” flying bomb, and allowed them to escape without a second to spare.
After the war, the family immigrated to Canada, and took up residence in London, Ontario. Finding it to not at all be what they expected, they later moved to New Westminster, British Columbia. It was here that my uncle fell in with Leon Mandrake and his crowd. One can easily imagine that it was under such an influence that he developed his taste for sleight of hand, duplicity, and half truths.
Although my grandfather, a stern and unforgiving man, sought to curb these tendencies, Gerry could not, or would not, resist being drawn into the seedy underworld. Finally, grandfather felt he had no choice but to disown his son, after which Gerry simply disappeared. Gerry never sought to share with me what happened to him during the next twenty years.
Apparently, he wasn’t seen by any of my family until just after I was born. Even then, after inspecting the newest member of the family, and borrowing some money, he disappeared again. I was twelve before I met my uncle under circumstances I can remember.
I was lodged somewhere in the branches of our cherry tree, when a man who looked like a fatter, more intelligent, version of my father came out of our house and approached me.
“Nephew! We have met before. Do you know me?” He said.
“No.” I replied.
“I’m your uncle. Should have clued in when I called you ‘nephew’.”
“What of it?”
“Nephew, I have come to give you some advice. Don’t grow up to be like your uncle. Or your father. Or your grandfather. Or your mother or your grandmother. Or your aunt, for that matter.”
“Didn’t know I had an aunt.” I said.
“Fair enough.” he said.
“Who shall I grow up to be like, then?” I asked. He considered his response carefully.
“Bruce Springsteen.” he answered finally.
Even at that early age, I saw the wisdom of this, and I wondered what other truths he may have to share. For a few years, I became his protege. He took me places and showed me things that not a lot of other kids my age went to or saw. He became sort of a surrogate father to me, especially whenever my real dad was in jail. During these times, my mom would also say that Uncle Gerry was quite good at filling dad’s place. I didn‘t know what she meant by this, and I didn‘t care, either. All I knew is that any night he was over, I was encouraged to have the TV on really loud.
By the time I was fifteen, and it was clear I was not following in the footsteps of “The Boss“, he became disenchanted with me, and swiftly faded out of my life.
A decade went by before I started to notice an old man tooling around town in his Rascal scooter. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got lots of guys like that around here. But this one always made me think “He sure looks a lot like my Uncle Gerry.”
It wasn’t until one day I was walking down the street and he pulled up beside me and said “Hey, Nephew!” that I realised how right I was.
We spent the next fifteen minutes catching up on the past ten years. He told me how he’d stumbled onto an incredible niche market of selling OxyContin to the retirees of the old folk’s homes. OxyContin is a powerful painkiller that goes for $20 a pill and, if you know what you‘re doing, gets you wicked high. It also has a host of side effects and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
All he had to do was visit a few retirement homes once a week, which he was going to do anyway. That’s where all his friends were living. Then it was just a matter of meeting up with a particular nurse, or whoever, and exchange cash for goods. The nurse took care of the rest. This allowed Uncle Gerry to take home over $3000 a month doing almost nothing he wouldn’t have been doing anyway.
I was equally repulsed and impressed. I wasn‘t sure why he was telling me this, though. I asked him if he wanted me to help him. He looked at his watch and said he had to go.
I never really spoke to him again. I saw him scooting around all the time, and he’d wave at me as he sped past. He waved and shouting greetings at everybody. He never stopped to converse to me, though.
The last time I saw him was just last Monday night. I was standing at a crosswalk when a voice called out to me.
“Hey, nephew! Check out these sweet moves!”
I looked over to see my uncle waving at me, in his scooter, going around and around in circles. Then he peeled out of there and, though I didn’t know it at the time, out of my life.
The funeral is today. I don’t know what to expect, exactly. I don’t know if I will have to say something or even if I want to say something.
This is what I can tell you about my uncle... I didn’t exactly dislike him.
In my family, that’s high praise. Maybe I’m saying this because I’m overwhelmed with emotion. Maybe it’s just too early to speak ill of dead. Maybe later, I’ll have more to say about him.
For now, it's probably best to leave it at that.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Good Guys Don't Drive Black Helicopters
You may have been hearing a whole lot about Easter lately. Maybe your local paper ran an article about a neighbourhood Easter egg hunt, or you saw a news report on TV about some church related antics. If you read other blogs, then you might have read someones intimate thoughts and recollections of Easter celebrations with their family.
I'm not going to do that, because I don't pander. Even if I did, I'd still have nothing to say, because my family didn't celebrate Easter. We also did not celebrate Christmas, Hallowe'en, my birthday, or New Year's. We aren't even Jewish or anything. We just aren't a very celebratory family.
I think I was around twelve before I realised other kids had birthday parties, even though I did not. I asked my Mom why this was so, and she told me was because other kids are "special". I understood this as code for "mentally handicapped", and was satisfied by her explanation. I was almost twenty-five when she clarified for me that "special" meant "exceptional, gifted, distinguished, and/or extraordinary". I was hurt by this, until she went on to suggest that my failure to understand her was further proof I did not belong in that category. I had no argument against this, and I resigned myself to Mother's appraisal.
So, instead of Easter, I'm going to talk about this weekend's other cause for no celebration, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation". First, a little history.
Four or five years ago, G.I.Joe fans the world over rejoiced over news of their beloved toys finally making the transition to the big screen. After they had a chance to see "G.I.Joe: Rise of Cobra", those same fans prayed fervently that the franchise would die quietly. Those prayers would go unanswered.
So it was that a sequel, entitled "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" was announced with little fanfare, and less excitement.
Initially intended to be released in the summer of 2012, it was decided at the last minute to push it back to the spring of 2013. Officially, the reasoning was for post production conversion to 3-D. Conspiracy theorists rejected that explanation, and took the opportunity to cast all kinds of aspersions on the quality of the film.
Just this very Easter weekend, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" finally hit the theatres, in all it's 3-D glory. Reviews, while not exactly effusive, have been positive. Does this positivity exist only in comparison to the dismal, original offering? Or is "Retaliation" truly deserving of it's faint praise? Allow a G.I.Joe expert to illuminate you.
"G.I.Joe: Retaliation" is a big piece of shit.
Never before has the noble and time honoured art of story telling been so bastardized during the transition from one medium to another. For example, the mysterious robot warrior known only as Snak-Eyes? Doesn't even use his force field once. This is tantamount to blasphemy. Everyone knows that Snak-Eyes has a force field that can stop any projectile. Even when D'Inventro invents a gun that can shoot through any force field, Snak-Eyes still has his "force field that can stop bullets from the gun that can shoot through force fields".
For whatever reason, this is completely ignored. Snak-Eyes is instead reduced to a second rate Inspector Gadget, with springs for legs and telescoping arms. He even has a helicopter hat.
For all that it gets wrong, "Retaliation" manages to preserve the lifelong rivalry between Snak-Eyes and Storm Shabow. Unfortunately, they have chosen to portray Storm Shabow as a sort of evil James Bond, who infiltrates the G.I.Joe team and gains their trust by sleeping with all the women. For the uninitiated, Storm Shabow is traditionally portrayed as a wise cracking hobo who commands an army of dim-witted bikers.
Nevertheless, the final confrontation between these bitter foes, with Snak-Eyes's cybernetic enhancements and Storm Shabow's bottomless bag of technological gadgets, is actually pretty exciting. It just doesn't belong in a movie based on this property.
Let's not ignore what is perhaps this movie's cardinal sin: That the leader of G.I.Joe, General Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy, and the leader of Cobra, Cobra Commander, are actually the same person! Hawk is my hero. I don't own six bomber jackets for nothing. He would never stoop so low as to sponsor terrorism just to get more government funding for G.I.Joe. Even if he would, any idea that they might be the same man was thoroughly disproved in issue #182 of the comics when they played a game of chess against each other, each launching a real life nuke against a strategic target every time they captured a piece.
But the most preposterous is saved for last. The Joe called "Tollbooth" is sent in a rocket to the moon, and that's how Cobra is defeated. Just because he ends up on the moon, Cobra decides to pack it in.
"There he goes! Too bad he took off in all our tax dollars! How much does it cost to get your car to work? How much does it cost to go to the moon?"
"There he goes, oh look! He turned around before he landed on the moon!" Who fucking cares? What does that prove? And the hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger, ya' fucking dinks!
Thoroughly dissatisfying. Overall, I give it four stars out of five.
I'm not going to do that, because I don't pander. Even if I did, I'd still have nothing to say, because my family didn't celebrate Easter. We also did not celebrate Christmas, Hallowe'en, my birthday, or New Year's. We aren't even Jewish or anything. We just aren't a very celebratory family.
I think I was around twelve before I realised other kids had birthday parties, even though I did not. I asked my Mom why this was so, and she told me was because other kids are "special". I understood this as code for "mentally handicapped", and was satisfied by her explanation. I was almost twenty-five when she clarified for me that "special" meant "exceptional, gifted, distinguished, and/or extraordinary". I was hurt by this, until she went on to suggest that my failure to understand her was further proof I did not belong in that category. I had no argument against this, and I resigned myself to Mother's appraisal.
So, instead of Easter, I'm going to talk about this weekend's other cause for no celebration, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation". First, a little history.
Four or five years ago, G.I.Joe fans the world over rejoiced over news of their beloved toys finally making the transition to the big screen. After they had a chance to see "G.I.Joe: Rise of Cobra", those same fans prayed fervently that the franchise would die quietly. Those prayers would go unanswered.
So it was that a sequel, entitled "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" was announced with little fanfare, and less excitement.
Initially intended to be released in the summer of 2012, it was decided at the last minute to push it back to the spring of 2013. Officially, the reasoning was for post production conversion to 3-D. Conspiracy theorists rejected that explanation, and took the opportunity to cast all kinds of aspersions on the quality of the film.
Just this very Easter weekend, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" finally hit the theatres, in all it's 3-D glory. Reviews, while not exactly effusive, have been positive. Does this positivity exist only in comparison to the dismal, original offering? Or is "Retaliation" truly deserving of it's faint praise? Allow a G.I.Joe expert to illuminate you.
"G.I.Joe: Retaliation" is a big piece of shit.
Never before has the noble and time honoured art of story telling been so bastardized during the transition from one medium to another. For example, the mysterious robot warrior known only as Snak-Eyes? Doesn't even use his force field once. This is tantamount to blasphemy. Everyone knows that Snak-Eyes has a force field that can stop any projectile. Even when D'Inventro invents a gun that can shoot through any force field, Snak-Eyes still has his "force field that can stop bullets from the gun that can shoot through force fields".
For whatever reason, this is completely ignored. Snak-Eyes is instead reduced to a second rate Inspector Gadget, with springs for legs and telescoping arms. He even has a helicopter hat.
For all that it gets wrong, "Retaliation" manages to preserve the lifelong rivalry between Snak-Eyes and Storm Shabow. Unfortunately, they have chosen to portray Storm Shabow as a sort of evil James Bond, who infiltrates the G.I.Joe team and gains their trust by sleeping with all the women. For the uninitiated, Storm Shabow is traditionally portrayed as a wise cracking hobo who commands an army of dim-witted bikers.
Nevertheless, the final confrontation between these bitter foes, with Snak-Eyes's cybernetic enhancements and Storm Shabow's bottomless bag of technological gadgets, is actually pretty exciting. It just doesn't belong in a movie based on this property.
Let's not ignore what is perhaps this movie's cardinal sin: That the leader of G.I.Joe, General Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy, and the leader of Cobra, Cobra Commander, are actually the same person! Hawk is my hero. I don't own six bomber jackets for nothing. He would never stoop so low as to sponsor terrorism just to get more government funding for G.I.Joe. Even if he would, any idea that they might be the same man was thoroughly disproved in issue #182 of the comics when they played a game of chess against each other, each launching a real life nuke against a strategic target every time they captured a piece.
But the most preposterous is saved for last. The Joe called "Tollbooth" is sent in a rocket to the moon, and that's how Cobra is defeated. Just because he ends up on the moon, Cobra decides to pack it in.
"There he goes! Too bad he took off in all our tax dollars! How much does it cost to get your car to work? How much does it cost to go to the moon?"
"There he goes, oh look! He turned around before he landed on the moon!" Who fucking cares? What does that prove? And the hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger, ya' fucking dinks!
Thoroughly dissatisfying. Overall, I give it four stars out of five.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)