DRock's Tribute to The Batman

Hello folks, D-Rock here! It's been a while, I know, and although none of you out there are reading this anymore, I thought I'd post something anyway. (I don't have my own blog, and I have a secret, sexual desire to see the Sports Quiz Radio Blog have success -- seriously, I 'jerk it' to the idea . . . or do I? Either way, I've had Dutch potatoes on the brain since algebra times.) Anyway --
We, as lovers of pop-culture, find ourselves at the upcoming close of something near and dear to my heart, and maybe yours as well -- Chris Nolan's 'Dark Knight' Trilogy. (I would say Batman, but I prefer him to be known by the aforementioned.) I've seen both the Prologue and the first full length trailer for 'The Dark Knight Rises', via the wondrous bootleg world that is the 'inter-webs.' I don't like to get emotional, especially on the something as 'emotion-less' as the Sports Quiz diaries, but I must say that a journey; a film series that has been with me for the better part of my adult-life, is now drawing to it's close. I can't deny it, nor would I want to. Sad as it is, I must respect that a 'story' has touched me so deeply, as all good stories do for us, and that they all must end. . . .
I believed in Batman when I was 3-years-old. I drew pictures of him; my mother put them up on our refrigerator. They were, as all kids' drawing are, hokey, circular-faced, and sausage-fingered. But even from those early, Adam West-inspired days, I knew that Batman stood for something more than most of our comic book heroes do (Spiderman and Supe excluded.) I felt something when it came to the 'idea' of what Batman is! Even in those days of Adam West re-runs, there was something about the character that struck a nerve in my 3-year-old heart, and maybe, even then, I knew what darkness was . . . .
Then, something magical happened. I saw a preview on our old TV for 'Batman'. Michael Keaton was The Batman; Jack Nicholson was The Joker. I was five. I constantly asked my mom if we could go see it in the theater. She always responded with "no." She thought it'd appeared to be "too dark for kids." She was partially right, but mostly wrong: my first memory of buying a VHS tape was in Hills Department Store, when my dad bought my brother and I the VHS of 'Batman'. We obsessed over that tape. We watched it every night. We bought the 'Batman' role-play sets, and chased each other around the living room, pretending that we lived in that world, where the Bat was the Hero.
I 'got' it. I got what Batman was: He was a brooding hero who saved the oppressed. He overcame his own nightmare, utilized it, and dealt his own suffering out to those who inflicted pain upon others who were oppressed. The Bat, The Darkness . . . the Monster who taps into the nightmares of those who are afraid. I loved that. I still love it. Fear Fighting Fear -- that's The Batman.
No hero comes without their own flaws, and no hero comes without their own dark story; that's why The Batman intrigued me so much, I think, as a kid. I must've known that; respected it. Pain is paramount in the decisions we make. Pain shapes our life-decisions; cursing us! It's 50/50 when you're flawed. You can go one way as easily as you go the other, as some of you may know. Batman chose the right way -- he sacrificed himself for the well being of others because he 'could.' On one hand, he did it for himself, ('to avenge his parents' death'), but ultimately, his story becomes much more than that. He did it because he was ultimately decent; he did it because he's fucked up, and never stopped being that child on Crime Alley, kneeling before his dead parents. He does it because he's screwed up, and the only way to fight the nightmare, is to BECOME the nightmare . . .

Chris Nolan's Batman Trilogy ends this summer, a trilogy which began when I was living in New Jersey as a wide-eyed young man, and continued when I lived in my first apartment, with a fantastic young woman who has since existed my story. . .
I'm not the man I was, back then. I'm horribly jaded, despicable, and downright belligerent now . . . but I still 'believe' in The Batman. I'll be 28-years-old when Bane breaks the Bat; I'll never forget the 5-year-old I once was, when the Cape and Cowl meant something to me. It still does; always will. The Night Will Rise . . . The Dark Knight Rises.

http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/



Batman-4-Life, Bitches

My Current Wallpaper...

...keeps me badass.

OPERATION: CANADA ACTION TEAM GO SAVE RECOVER

My hot damn!!! Long time, no banter cats and kittens!! DRock here once again. I'm writing because of the disturbing state of affairs that our dear friend Canada is involved in. His last post made me cry tears of immense pain so horrible, that I finished a bottle of wild turkey while simultaneously eating a tub of cookie dough ice cream....I then proceeded to vomit on myself for a few hours in a sugar/booze blackout extravaganza.

I think I'm should have gone to the hospital. Aaaaanyway....

I write to rally you all together in a mob of salvation!!! We must save Canada from the clutches of Midwest, 90 degree, Call of Duty, burnt egg slavery!!! Now, here's the plan for...

________OPERATION: CANADA ACTION TEAM GO SAVE RECOVER__________

If you're with me, then I need us all to pull together to acquire these items...

1. Helicopter

2. Zip-line and grappling gun

3. Supersoaker guns for all involved in the mission

4. An ample amount of Rice Dream (this is what will fill the super soakers)

5. Stereo system for the 'copter

6. 2 mounted speakers for the 'copter that when blasted to the extreme will have the capacity to deafen a neighborhood into oblivion.

7. Protective ear wear so that our brains don't explode upon usage of the 'copter speakers

The helicopter will be used to swoop in without warning just above Canada's apartment complex. We then fire grappling hook attached to zip line near a point of easy access, such as a window. This is when the fun comes! The theme song of Sports Quiz, Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," will be jacked to the high heavens over the helicopter's stereo system. The idea here is to create a blistering situation in which the roommate of Canada will have no comprehension. Smoke grenades would work just as well...but this is more fun and appropriate, I think. As the song begins, our agents (read...us) will zip line down to said entry way. Hopefully the sound waves from the Squiggled One's Purple Rain surprise will break the glass of our window entry, and we can enter the apartment in a blaze of glory. Now...what about these super soakers filled with Rice Dream, you ask?? Since it would be wrong of us to actually kill anyone on this mission, we have to settle for the next best thing in the line of defense. Anyone who tries to stop us from acquiring the target (Canada) will be immediately engaged with a stream of horrifying, rice-based milk product. This will stop anyone in their tracks and induce vomiting almost instantly.

Now, in the haze of confusion and heat (I'm sure it will be 90 degrees or above) we rapidly and uniformly seek out Canada and grab him as soon as he's located. Whomever reaches him first will immediately get him out of the building and into the chopper, which will at this time will be waiting on whatever nearby patch of open ground the pilot finds. As soon as Canada is escorted out and is secure, the rest of us then will back out of the area and all head for the chopper. As soon as we're clear of the area, "Let's Go Crazy" can be turned off, and we can ditch all the Rice Dream out of the helicopter so as to avoid rice induced vapor poisoning.

Now, the only question is...How do we acquire any of these things?

Graduate School Mini Post

Since we last talked, children, I have moved to an undisclosed Midwestern hellhole, attending an undisclosed Midwestern university's MA program in philosophy. I am also responsible for teaching a section of an Intro course composed of roughly 35 bovine, glassy-eyed, mouth-breathing future drop outs.

I am also currently living in an apartment complex and rooming with a 20 year old Saudi Arabian guy who plays Call of Duty at all possible times, yells in Arabic while playing said game--behavior which, among other things, drove out our other room mate (another 20 year old, from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, who couldn't figure out how not to burn eggs).

This post is just to let you all know that I just had to turn down the heat in the apartment. It's about 50 degrees outside right now, and my room mate had the thermostat set to 90.

I.

I don't even.

What.

Stupid News (Squirrels)

Stupid News! I was walking around in the Hill Section of beautiful Scranton, Pennsylvania when something caused me to stop abruptly. There, not three feet away from me on the sidewalk was a squirrel drinking from a puddle.

Anyone who knows anything about squirrels knows that there are certain rules about squirrels. And anyone who knows me knows that I have a bad history with squirrels--because, I believe, I broke one of those rules. The big rule. I broke the big rule of squirrels and it has caused me trouble ever since.

The general rules of squirrels are about squirrel things and squirrel activities that humans are not allowed to see. Basically any activity that is not scampering and climbing trees or being exploded in the road is verboten. The BIG rule of squirrels is, however, that you never see a baby squirrel in the wild. You only see big red ones, big gray ones, or big black ones (Canada)--but never babies. Unfortunately, last year, while walking around Lake Scranton, I saw a baby squirrel. And things haven't been right since.

I continued my walks around the lake--sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Whenever I walked the lake alone I would encounter a squirrel. It would sit in the middle of the trail (a paved road), stare at me, and not run away. There are two things in the universe that will frighten anyone, anywhere: toilet water rising when it should for all reasons not be, and a squirrel that does not run away when you approach. There are laws in the universe, and one of them is that squirrels dart off and scramble up a tree within a certain diameter. But on every occasion that I walked the lake by myself, I would encounter a brazen game of squirrel intimidation. I had to walk to the edge of the road to avoid the squirrel. I--a human being that has mastered fire and knows limited mathematics--I had to give wide swath to an animal whose Hitler equivalent is a nice set of whitewalls. And it watched me with every step I took. Every time. Every time I was alone.

And this brings us to yesterday, the end of my brief winter reprieve from their bushy tailed revenge for rocking the boat. It was a threat, plain and simple. The thing--the creature--sitting there sipping gently from a puddle. Eying me up. Well within the well-known squirrel-run-away radius. Close enough to touch.

You may not realize the unspoken (but perfectly clear) statement in this act. I was walking home. They know where I live.

Comments on watching the first episode of something called "Galaxy Express 999"

I found this in Hulu. I decided to watch it with no understanding of context and give a running commentary. Enjoy.



OK, we're starting this off right. We are immediately presented with the baffling logo for what I can only presume is the production company for this particular piece of Japanonsense: a starry background, glimpsed briefly, as we see a cartoon cat's head, grinning widely and toothlessly in the way only the severely, blissfully retarded can. Said horrifying cat has something on or about its head. Perhaps an old fashioned floppy hat. It also has some mysterious business around the back of the head. Perhaps a friendly waving paw? Or maybe a feather from his hat? Or maybe a piece of the cat's spine, still jutting out from the gaping, unseen decapitation wound? Ah, no answer, for as soon as the ghoulish feline visage appears, it is gone again, leaving only unanswered questions and subconscious nightmare cues.

The Galaxy Express, I presume, mere moments from demise as it is sure to plummet from these unfinished tracks, killing many in the city below. Remember, kids, Japanese cities are made of wood and paper, and are thusly not particularly resistant to multi-ton falling metal anacrhonisms. OH SHIT THE TRAIN CAN FLY.

Not only within the atmosphere of Earth, we see, but also out into the soulless void of space. The title begins to make some small amount of sense--at least, when I ignore the fact that I am currently seeing a train, smoke billowing forth, press onward into the uncharted heavens. A male Japanese voice sings to me as the eponymous vehicular abomination cruises through asteroids and around the moon. Perhaps he is trying to explain to me why any of this is happening.

Now there are more trains flying around like prog rock album covers, whistling and leaving glittery comet tails, making me wonder: if they are designed to function in the vacuum of space via their own propulsion, why do they need so many wheels? The credits end, the singing Japanese man has failed to make me understand. I am afraid.

The show begins, and we are informed that it is 2221 AD, and though "great advances have been made," we are still using technology that is, in this narrative, roughly four hundred years old.

Ah! Megalopolis, joining its sister cities Metropolis, Citytown, and Location USA. Also, how can something be "extremely modern"?

As the narrator babbles about temperature control, a long-haired woman turns around and waves, revealing a terrible robot John Lennon face with a glowing hole in the forehead. This, I imagine, is what will come for Mark David Chapman when he dies. The back of her knees also share the same unholy orifice. The narrator says that the wealthy trade their bodies for mechanical ones, which beats my habit of trading my body for money.

The poor of Megalopolis live in a green wire frame and rubble hellscape where shirts have been uninvented and dream of the mythical (perhaps?) GALAXY EXPRESS 999 that can take them to get a free robot body or something. They look skyward in either hope of the hallucinogenic spasms of their decaying brains. This it the American Dream.

A mother and child walking through the winter wastes--how did such a dainty frame birth such an abnormally large head? I bet she's just a mess down there. Ruined. Destroyed. It becomes clear that she is trying to get her hydrocephalic monster child onto the possibly mythical train--thus proving the unfortunate genetic factor in cases of mental disability. Their brief moment of warmth and laughter is shattered by the senseless and horrific violence that runs like a rhythm through Japanese children's programming. While my mind tries to comprehend the idea of cyborgs on horseback, the mother of the water-headed ape child is murdered--and, we discover, she was naked under her coat. We are less than ten minutes in and a dead mother has been sexualized. I am unsure if I will last the full 25. It also occurs to me that, really, hunting a woman and child for sport in an open field can't be much fun at all.

The child is saved by a blonde white woman who lives alone in the forbidding, violence-filled wasteland, who seems to busy herself solely with spying on suffering travelers while withholding aid. A deviant such as herself, I imagine her cruelty orgasms are prolonged and unsettling. Her relationship with the child is immediately inappropriate. The child angrily breaks his host's china and makes demands. The pervert-woman saves his life, then offers him his entire life's desire (a pass on the magical space train!) and he behaves like a stripper's boyfriend. Deformed and ungrateful. In my day just one of those was enough to get a child left outside the city gates to be eaten by wild dogs.

As you contemplate the child's rudeness, don't miss how he trembles with an adorable rage, then grabs a rifle to go slaughter his enemies. The horrible blond woman does nothing to stop him, even though the child is either going to be brutally killed, commit several acts of murder, or both.

The ad bumps are inscrutable and disturbing.

The evil cyclops discusses the taxidermy of the mother when the hydrocephalic hero bursts in and mows them down. The head cyborg begs for his life, and the boy brutally beats his head in with the rifle butt, then torches the place. The protagonist becomes a child murderer. Not a murderer of children, but a child who has murdered. That, I think, is somehow worse.

The police chase him because he is a murderer. He is rescued again by his blonde benefactor who probably became familiar with his bathing suit area while he was unconscious.

In the city the child stares cheerily out the window, reflecting on his status as the angel of death. The blond woman is taking a shower and talking to someone with a male voice, and the child (confused and probably aroused) chooses to investigate. Oh, no, there's no man in there. Just a naked, showering, adult female who doesn't seem shamed at all to be in this situation.

The police arrive! The woman is immediately in her coat, apparently taking a free-balling lesson from the mongoloid's dead mother. They escape and fly over cartoon Auschwitz.

I am less amazed by the final revelation of the space train than I am by the apparent fact that Megalopolis seems to have no residents besides the poor naked people, the two protagonists, and the two cops that chased them. No, wait, the fact that a steam locomotive with opening windows is still somehow spaceworthy is pretty amazing.

The line "The next time you see it, it might not be with human eyes" makes me want to read my children Lovecraft bedtime stories.

MIND BOGGLING END CREDITS IMAGERY!
GALAXY EXPRESS 999!

(Preview footage of the next episode: a dead girl in a hole on Mars and more child gunplay)

GRAPH