Superman has always been woke…and goofy

I said I was burned out on superhero movies and wasn’t going to watch them anymore. But then I saw that Fox News declared that Superman was superwoke and Kellyanne Conway came out against it because it was nice to immigrants. James Gunn, the director said that “Superman is the story of America, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” If MAGA hates it, I might like it.

So I saw it last night, and those reviews are correct — it is a “woke” movie, it does valorize the immigrant experience, Superman’s greatest quality is not that he’s invulnerable (he’s not), but that he is kind. This is a Superman I haven’t seen since 1978, with Christopher Reeve in the lead role. I think maybe I’m not so much tired of superhero movies as I am grimdark superhero movies.

That said, while it’s a much more optimistic kind of movie that represents the values America was brought up on (although it’s often poor at the practice — this is the idealistic superhero that masks the American villainy that has blossomed on Fox News), a Gunn superhero universe could be just as wearing as a dark Zack Snyder universe. It’s silly. It’s colorful. It has swarms of goofy superheroes. It’s a comic book movie!

Comic books had to churn out new plots week after week for decades, and they often got ridiculous. Remember Mr. Mxyzptlk? Bizarro Superman? The many colors of kryptonite? The contrived plots that wobbled between melodrama and comedy?

I would get so annoyed at those wordy covers that set up some improbable gimmick that would be completely resolved by the end of the issue, usually with some strange unlikely twist that Superman was just pretending, the bad guy didn’t stand a chance.

This movie would have appealed to me much more when I was 14. I’m a little bit older now, so I’m thinking it was fun, the message was great, but, you know, the country is in crisis right now and a bit of fluff isn’t what we need. OK, maybe we do need a sense of humor to get us through dark times, so it’s nice. And kind of Gunn to give us a little sweetness to annoy the MAGA trolls.

Also, Superman doesn’t actually punch Donald Trump in the movie. Although he probably should.

I might change my mind if it literally gives you wings

I got an invitation to collaborate (that is, host advertising)! With Red Bull!

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Wow, I must have finally made it! Either that, or Red Bull is desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I’m sorry if you’re all clamoring for more Red Bull content, but I’d have to turn them down.

  • I don’t drink Red Bull.
  • I think gulping down stimulants is bad for you.
  • I hate advertising.
  • I despise capitalism generally.

I guess I’m disappointing my readership again.

To be fair…

In the comments, we got a mild objection to the term “Alligator Auschwitz”, which is fair, except that it reminded me of this cartoon.

“Remember: When discussing modern atrocities that sicken the conscience, we must always be SCRUPULOUSLY FAIR.”

We have to give our regime time to mature and rise to the level of mass murder.

Although, to be totally fair to the other side, I’d rather we did the scolding before the death camp fires up the ovens.

Emergence!

I thought I struggled with two small children over the weekend, but I just cracked a container in the lab and found one Parasteatoda mama dealing with a few hundred little spiderlings. Everyone was scampering all over the place.

Look! They’re all over the jungle gym! Seemed familiar.

An Aurelian wager

I was just served Pascal’s Wager in my email. Anyone who deploys that ill-formed nonsense is a fool in my book — including Pascal himself, who invented it after a weird Jansenist epiphany. My reply is always the same, after Marcus Aurelius, who seems to have avoided the “revelation” of religion:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

That’s good enough for me.

What happened to Pascal’s brain? He must have read some deeper philosophy than the tripe he wrote.

Gossip time!

I’ve long wondered how any woman can bear to stay with the selfish scum of the right. There’s no accounting for taste, and some of those women are probably sleazy themselves, but sometimes we can see lines being crossed and spouses just plain giving up on their terrible men.

Case in point: Angela Paxton is divorcing her slimy partner, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. I’m happy to applaud her imminent independence, but she stuck with him for forty years — what was she thinking?

Some gossip we’ll have to wait on is the rumors that Katie Miller and her rat-faced evil partner, Stephen Miller, are on the outs. She’s rumored to be shifting to Elon Musk, which is the one choice that debatably is not an improvement in her situation.

I know I’m being petty, but I enjoy seeing these people suffer.

Recovery time!

We had visitors this weekend! My son Connlann and his wife Ji, escorted our grandson Knut on the long drive from Washington state to Morris, Minnesota — and they’re driving all the way back today. My daughter Skatje also decided to trek from Madison, Wisconsin to our house, bringing our granddaughter Iliana. They’ve already gone back home.

So we had two grandchildren here at the same time and same place. Now we’re totally exhausted, but we’d invite them back any time for as long as they want to stay.

Here’s Skatje and Ji at the park.

Meanwhile, Knut was on the splash pad while Major Connlann stood sentry duty.

Iliana was on the playground equipment.

The one downside of this weekend was the Evil Cat, who was at her worst. She hated having company. Her thing was hiding under the furniture, snarling and hissing, reaching out to take swipes with her claws at anyone passing by. Including me. I got my ankles slashed a couple of times.

I hope they come back to visit some day, but the cat doesn’t.

Why are we persecuting immigrants in our democratic society?

The magnitude of the approval of immigration surprises me a bit. Almost 80% of Americans think immigration is a good thing? And approval has been about 50% for the last two decades? So how did these Republican assholes get elected? Hatred of immigrants and others was their big campaign issue!

What doesn’t make sense is that the Republicans are terrorizing Los Angeles with paramilitary goon squads; they’re making mass deportations of thousands of people; the worst Supreme Court in American history (that includes the Taney court) is giving carte blanche to Trump; and for some reason, the Democrats are practically supine and largely avoiding capitalizing on this weakness in the electorate.

It’s gotten so bad that one college in California is treating ICE like a plague.

California State University, Los Angeles, is giving professors the option of moving their classes online due to students’ fears about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Heather Lattimer, university provost and vice president for academic affairs, said in a letter to faculty this week, according to the Los Angeles Times, that she had heard students are “scared to take public transit and fearful of driving to campus.”

Lattimer said faculty have “the option of working remotely for a limited time due to extraordinary circumstances they are facing.”

I remember when we made those same accommodations for COVID. I guess Republicans are just another disease.

I never thought I’d be a conspiracy theorist

I’m a fairly skeptical guy. I never bought into those claims that Epstein didn’t kill himself — hey, he was in prison, with deeply dismal prospects, his fall was precipitous from rich guy with his own private island to convicted pedophile in prison, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine he might despair and commit suicide. But then…along comes Dan Bongino and Kash Patel. Pam Bondi says she has Epstein’s client list on her desk, then Bongino and Patel announce that there is no client list. They release security footage from outside Epstein’s cell and guarantee that it is totally unedited and complete, but it turns out that there is notable splice in the middle of it.

It sure looks like something fishy happened, and that high-level authorities are engaged in a cover-up.

I mean, the alternative is that the entire Trump administration is packed with epic fuck-ups who are unqualified and incompetent and who constantly manage to piss on their own shoes. How likely is that?