In case you missed it…

The Seattle Seahawks won the SuperBowl 29-13. Several members of my west coast family were watching and cheering for the home team.

For many of us, the only reason to watch the SuperBowl is the half-time show, and here it is stripped of the surrounding violent game and ads.

I don’t understand the lyrics, but I liked the music and dancing. I also appreciated the representation of Puerto Rican culture, and at the end when he says “God bless America”…and then lists all the countries that are part of the continent of America. Ironically, TPUSA’s alternative half-time show was called the All American Halftime Show — I don’t think they would have got the point — and Kid Rock screaming over a poorly adjusted cheap sound system was less intelligible than Bad Bunny’s Spanish.

I’m too old for a naked Vampirella now

Way back in 1975, when I was a college freshman, Ian and Betty Ballantine visited my university to give a talk about publishing fantasy and science fiction. In particular, they were there to promote Betty’s latest project, The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta. This was catnip to a young nerd who was already playing Dungeons & Dragons, so of course I attended. So did two other people. It was embarrassingly poorly attended.

To my advantage, though — she just gave out pages from the book, and poster-sized prints of the art from the book, so we got all this wall art for our rooms, in addition to stories about Frazetta and the publishing industry. I had a poster of Vampirella!

I lost my nerve and didn’t tack it up in my dorm room — it was just a little too wild and racy.

And now I learn that Frazetta was fond of reworking his paintings, even after he’d sold them for pulp magazine covers, and that he’d updated Vampirella. The repainted version is up for auction now, but I’m not putting in a bid, and I wouldn’t hang this one on my wall, either. The revision involved completely removing her skimpy red costume, and I’ve never considered redecorating my house with sultry naked vampire paintings.

What do you think I am, Vernonia amygdalina?

I don’t think my flesh would be particularly bitter — maybe fatty and stringy, not particularly meaty in flavor or texture. This just-so story fails with the non-existence of the property it seeks to explain.

Go eat a tasty teenager anyway. Although, if you’re a feeble predator, I might be a good choice because I won’t put up much of a fight. You’re going to have to weigh availability over quality.

First Canada, then Switzerland

This image was apparently made by a pro-Trumper with a poor sense of geography — I guess they thought you could look out from the Canadian Rockies (or Newfoundland, who knows what goes through the brain of MAGA) and see the Matterhorn.

Someone else later added the Canadian goose preparing to launch a devastating rear assault. Don’t ever mess with the gooses.

Poor Things, a most peculiar movie

I’ve been deprived for so long. Our local movie theater has been showing the usual profit-making superhero movies and kids’ shows, so when I saw the announcement that they were showing something outside the norm — a norm I’ve become tired of — I had to go. I had a great time.

Cool. What a surprise! It’s a weirdly beautiful movie. The premise is that a hideously scarred Willem Dafoe fishes up a pregnant suicide (Emma Stone), and he transplants the fetus’s brain into the skull of the woman using fantasy 19th century Frankenstein technology. It’s then about this baby/child growing up in an adult body, and encountering a dream-world version of Europe. She has a super-power, though: as an innocent in an adult body, she discovers she has a button she can press to make herself very, very happy. There’s a lot of sex in the movie. But mainly it’s about discombobulating perspectives and a mind changing and becoming more aware over time against an exotic background. Stone took a lot of risks with this movie, but she pulled it off.

As I was leaving the theater, I was asked what I thought of it. My answer was “Peculiar!” That was high praise.

It was a relief to see a challenging movie in town. Morris residents better see it fast, though: it looks like next week we’re getting Madame Web, a confusing superhero movie tangentially spider-related, and Ordinary Angels, some uplifting dreck made by a Christian production company. I’ll be staying home next weekend.

I don’t like Star Trek anymore

I have a terrible confession to make, one that may drive away many readers: I am tired of Star Trek. I was a kid when the original series aired, I watched them religiously, I still have nothing but fond memories of it all. By the time Star Trek: The Next Generation rolled around, though, I was at the point where I was watching reruns to mainly groan at the bad science and the cheesy special effects, and ST:TNG didn’t help — more bad acting, more terrible writing, more ludicrous plots written by people who seemed to have more of a background in soap operas than in science fiction. All those other series that were subsequently shat out? I didn’t even watch them.

I know. I should be drummed out of the old SF nerd club. I feel terrible for not being able to share in the pleasure so many people still get out of the series, but you all go right ahead. Have a good time, while I roll my eyes at all the Trek worship.

I would rather see something with a fresh take. Something that is genuinely about ideas, rather than milking a comfortable old story to death.

But still, here’s something I did enjoy: a site that catalogs all the reused props from Star Trek. You need a strange futuristic device on a desk? Add some odd lighting to a CD rack. Glue random geometric shapes together, spray paint them silver, and done–we’ll find a use for it. Rearrange the shapes, you’ve got something new.

Nothing goes to waste. You can use them same props in different series!

Kudos to the props department for their creativity and economy. This I could enjoy reading, even as I’ve lost all interest in the plots of the stories they support.