Saturday, May 11, 2019
CHAPTER 675: IN WHICH I FIX ENDGAME WITH SOME STINGERS
< SPOILERS AHEAD >
Credits roll. People stick around because, like Pavlov's dogs, they're conditioned to wait at the end of Marvel movies now. Lo and Behold, here's your stinger:
As the funeral ends, a group gathers at the shore and watches Tony's flowers drift away.
The camera pans around to reveal that the crowd consists of Bucky, Vanessa from Deadpool, Elektra, Frank Castle, two regular Gwen Staceys, Gwenpool, Spider-Gwen, an old guy with a name tag that says Uncle Ben, Red Skull, 2014 Gamora, Colossus, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Madeline Pryor, Stan Lee, Groot, Elvis and Grand Moff Tarkin for some reason.
BUCKY: So, what do we give him? Three years, tops?
Everybody laughs for an awkwardly long time.
........
Star wipe to the revolving doors in front of Stark Tower. Mistress Death and Deadpool are hanging out next to the door.
DEATH: Wait for it....
DEADPOOL: Are we being too obvious here?
Cue Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper".
DEATH: What ever would make you say that?
Wolverine comes through the door holding a bag of money and contract with mouse ears on it.
DEADPOOL: Oooh! A hidden Mickey!
WOLVERINE: What's up Spider-man?
DEADPOOL: Close enough.
Death, Deadpool and Wolverine skip off through Manhattan, pausing to look at the Latverian embassy.
DEATH: Now we're being too obvious.
......
Cut to the Sanctum Solarium. Wong and Dr. Strange are eating sandwiches on the front steps.
WONG: So, in all those millions of possible outcomes, how many ended with us actually getting sandwiches?
DR. STRANGE: Only one. Actually, most outcomes ended with everyone surviving and Thanos just tripling the amount of resoruces in the universe instead of killing everyone, but I hate Tony Stark.
Both men laugh.
.........
Death, Deadpool and Wolverine continue skipping through a cemetery, pausing to dance a circle around Jack Kirby's headstone.
They run into Rhodey Rhodes, who looks a little depressed.
WOLVERINE: Why the long face, bub?
RHODEY: I put up with Tony Stark's bullshit for over a decade, you guys. And all I have to show for it is that I didn't die a horrible trope.
DEATH and DEADPOOL: Like Nat, Vanessa and Thor's mom!
RHODEY: I mean, that fucking raccoon got his space family and tree friend back. Thor got Absolved of responsibilities and can be the pudgy space Lewbowski he apparently always wanted to be. Hulk is having to invent new forms of birth control for himself now that he has discovered adjectives. Antman and the serial killer got their families back. Nebula got her sister back. Valkyrie is now Queen of Asgard. Pretty sure Wong got that sandwich he wanted...
Death snaps her fingers. Rhodes's clothes transform into Buck Swope's red western apparel, and Stan Bush's "You've Got the Touch" plays. She Hulk rides by on roller skates motioning him to follow her.
RHODES: Wow! Thanks death!
......
Magneto, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel are sitting on a nearby park bench.
MAGNETO: My dear daughter who I have not seen in a very long time and could not assist due to complicated legal issues, please explain to me why the Wakandans coudln't just fix him now that the stone is removed, baring in mind that he is an android?
WANDA: Apparently because I don't have a white or green penis.
CAPTAIN MARVEL: Oh snap!
Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch high five, then sigh and glare at the camera.
MAGNETO: Doesn't Vision have a green....
VISION: I sure do!
CAPTAIN MARVEL: I didn't need to know that!
VISION: And I brought Captain Marve a Cookie Puss!
CAPTAIN MARVEL: Wow! My life is now complete!
......
Black Widow and 2018 Gamora are just standing around on Voromir, looking annoyed.
GAMORA They're still making a solo movie about you, right?
BLACK WIDOW: Yes...?
Monday, February 4, 2019
Yes, Virginia...
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam needs to take responsibility, own up to his failure to address his racist past until it was exposed, and set an example by stepping down. Yes, people can change and his heart may be in the right place now, but he needs to see the bigger context - that this is a symptom of a bigger societal problem.
I’ve seen a number of people ask if they should be taken to task for things they did in their youth that could be construed as racist later in life. The answer is yes, you should at least acknowledge it, do some soul searching and confront yourself over what led you to assume that was an okay thing to do. If you can’t do that, you’re either an emotionally stunted jackoff or just okay with being a racist asshole. And yes, before anyone brings it up, I am pretty embarrassed by and ashamed of being paraded around in a paper bag vest and headdress while holding an oatmeal tom-tom in kindergarten. Well-meaning or not, it is something that I understand to be hurtful to my friends who are Native American.
With that in mind, Ralph Northam was 24 when the offending photo was attached to the page dedicated to him in his medical school yearbook. That’s about fifteen years beyond any possible too-young-to-know-any-better mark, if you want to open that can of worms.
The photo isn’t of a little kid in well intentioned but ill-advised blackface doing an in-character oral report on the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. It shows an adult man in full minstrel show attire leaning in to an adult klansman. This is a joke to those two men - mocking and terrorizing the descendants of slaves. There is no context in which this could have occurred that this could ever be innocent in the mid 80s. What the photo depicts are two white, southern, racist douchebags reveling in being white, racist, southern douchebags.
This kind of shit still goes on all the time on college campuses. I guarantee you, some stupid frat somewhere started taking notes the moment the news broke and we will see recreations of the photo. There needs to be consequences, otherwise the message to those assholes is going to be that one can be a racist shitbird in college and remain in office when exposed.
Oh, but Ralph now claims that he isn’t even in the photo. He thought it was a different one of him in blackface as Michael Jackson until he saw it just the other day. That still isn’t excusable at 24, and shows that he was still totally okay with the afore mentioned white, racist, southern douchebagggery being associated with his academic career for 35 years. Also, that same yearbook also refers to a nickname of his that I will not repeat here.
Ralph says he wants to turn this into a learning moment. He has only been in politics since 2007 and it wasn’t okay then. If he wanted a learning moment, he should have addressed a problematic history when he first entered the fray twelve years ago.
But hey, Ralph, let's have a learning moment. Virginia is the state that hanged John Brown for the abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry a year and a half prior to the Civil War. Brown was a traitor in his time, but he was also a rebel underdog who died fighting for the liberty and freedom of others. The Virginia General Assembly doesn’t acknowledge Brown, but they did make national news for celebrating the legacy of Robert E. Lee while Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax - an African American - sat out alone in protest just two fucking weeks ago. Lee was a traitor to our republic who fought to preserve a status quo that relied on and celebrated the kidnapping, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of others to attain that “gentler way of life” that the Cracker Barrel set like to talk about when pressed on the matter. If you didn't call for a learning moment then, don't call for one now.
I’ve seen a number of people ask if they should be taken to task for things they did in their youth that could be construed as racist later in life. The answer is yes, you should at least acknowledge it, do some soul searching and confront yourself over what led you to assume that was an okay thing to do. If you can’t do that, you’re either an emotionally stunted jackoff or just okay with being a racist asshole. And yes, before anyone brings it up, I am pretty embarrassed by and ashamed of being paraded around in a paper bag vest and headdress while holding an oatmeal tom-tom in kindergarten. Well-meaning or not, it is something that I understand to be hurtful to my friends who are Native American.
With that in mind, Ralph Northam was 24 when the offending photo was attached to the page dedicated to him in his medical school yearbook. That’s about fifteen years beyond any possible too-young-to-know-any-better mark, if you want to open that can of worms.
The photo isn’t of a little kid in well intentioned but ill-advised blackface doing an in-character oral report on the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. It shows an adult man in full minstrel show attire leaning in to an adult klansman. This is a joke to those two men - mocking and terrorizing the descendants of slaves. There is no context in which this could have occurred that this could ever be innocent in the mid 80s. What the photo depicts are two white, southern, racist douchebags reveling in being white, racist, southern douchebags.
This kind of shit still goes on all the time on college campuses. I guarantee you, some stupid frat somewhere started taking notes the moment the news broke and we will see recreations of the photo. There needs to be consequences, otherwise the message to those assholes is going to be that one can be a racist shitbird in college and remain in office when exposed.
Oh, but Ralph now claims that he isn’t even in the photo. He thought it was a different one of him in blackface as Michael Jackson until he saw it just the other day. That still isn’t excusable at 24, and shows that he was still totally okay with the afore mentioned white, racist, southern douchebagggery being associated with his academic career for 35 years. Also, that same yearbook also refers to a nickname of his that I will not repeat here.
Ralph says he wants to turn this into a learning moment. He has only been in politics since 2007 and it wasn’t okay then. If he wanted a learning moment, he should have addressed a problematic history when he first entered the fray twelve years ago.
But hey, Ralph, let's have a learning moment. Virginia is the state that hanged John Brown for the abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry a year and a half prior to the Civil War. Brown was a traitor in his time, but he was also a rebel underdog who died fighting for the liberty and freedom of others. The Virginia General Assembly doesn’t acknowledge Brown, but they did make national news for celebrating the legacy of Robert E. Lee while Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax - an African American - sat out alone in protest just two fucking weeks ago. Lee was a traitor to our republic who fought to preserve a status quo that relied on and celebrated the kidnapping, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of others to attain that “gentler way of life” that the Cracker Barrel set like to talk about when pressed on the matter. If you didn't call for a learning moment then, don't call for one now.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Blogness 1/14/19
1/14/19
Sunday morning, I swung by Bull Moose in Scarborough while getting new wipers and shoe laces in the area.
Two years later, it still feels a little weird going in there. I have to stop myself from organizing and being nitpicky when I'm in there, which is why I do most of my shopping at the Mill Creek store now. It's not my job anymore, I respect the current management, and understand possibly better than anyone the challenges they face.
While there, I ordered the new Flesh Eaters album, "I Used to be Pretty", which comes out on Friday.
The Flesh Eaters are an old LA punk band that features members of X (John Doe, DJ Bonebreak) and the Blasters (Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman) and frequently played with X, The Gun Club and the Cramps. I guess you could call them a supergroup, though the band formed with this line up in the late 70s around singer Chris D., before any of the other bands were especially big. In terms of sound, think a mix of Fear's aggressive vocal abrasiveness, The Gun Club's poetry and The Violent Femme's creative percussion. Their album Forever Came Today is one of my favorite forgotten gems of the old-school LA punk scene and their song "My Life To Live" in particular is one of my all-time favorite punk songs.
*****
I've been meaning to post a Best of 2018 list, but I've been busy and get stuck writing up blurbs about the music. The TLDR version (wghich may be all you get) is:
New Stuff:
Death Valley Girls - Darkness Rains
Sleep - the Sciences
Turbonegro - Rocknroll Machine
Dog Party - Hit and Run
Zeke - Hellbender
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Joe Strummer - Joe Strummer 101
Tiger Army - Dark Paradise EP
Distillers - Blood in Gutters/Man vs. Magnet single
Old Stuff:
Hawkwind - In Search of Space, Space Ritual, Doremi Laso fatido, Warrior at the Edge of Time (AKA - the Lemmy stuff)
Massive Attack - Protection, Mezzanine
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Joe Strumner - Earthquake Weather
Big Audio Dynamite - Big Audio Dynamite, 10 Upping Street
Looking forward to:
Flesh Eaters - I Used To be Pretty (Jan. 18th)
Giuda - E.V.A. (april 2019)
Distillers - new album (in studio now - title, date TBD)
Sunday morning, I swung by Bull Moose in Scarborough while getting new wipers and shoe laces in the area.
Two years later, it still feels a little weird going in there. I have to stop myself from organizing and being nitpicky when I'm in there, which is why I do most of my shopping at the Mill Creek store now. It's not my job anymore, I respect the current management, and understand possibly better than anyone the challenges they face.
While there, I ordered the new Flesh Eaters album, "I Used to be Pretty", which comes out on Friday.
The Flesh Eaters are an old LA punk band that features members of X (John Doe, DJ Bonebreak) and the Blasters (Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman) and frequently played with X, The Gun Club and the Cramps. I guess you could call them a supergroup, though the band formed with this line up in the late 70s around singer Chris D., before any of the other bands were especially big. In terms of sound, think a mix of Fear's aggressive vocal abrasiveness, The Gun Club's poetry and The Violent Femme's creative percussion. Their album Forever Came Today is one of my favorite forgotten gems of the old-school LA punk scene and their song "My Life To Live" in particular is one of my all-time favorite punk songs.
*****
I've been meaning to post a Best of 2018 list, but I've been busy and get stuck writing up blurbs about the music. The TLDR version (wghich may be all you get) is:
New Stuff:
Death Valley Girls - Darkness Rains
Sleep - the Sciences
Turbonegro - Rocknroll Machine
Dog Party - Hit and Run
Zeke - Hellbender
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Joe Strummer - Joe Strummer 101
Tiger Army - Dark Paradise EP
Distillers - Blood in Gutters/Man vs. Magnet single
Old Stuff:
Hawkwind - In Search of Space, Space Ritual, Doremi Laso fatido, Warrior at the Edge of Time (AKA - the Lemmy stuff)
Massive Attack - Protection, Mezzanine
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Joe Strumner - Earthquake Weather
Big Audio Dynamite - Big Audio Dynamite, 10 Upping Street
Looking forward to:
Flesh Eaters - I Used To be Pretty (Jan. 18th)
Giuda - E.V.A. (april 2019)
Distillers - new album (in studio now - title, date TBD)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
