loonyblog.

My birthday present from Heather:

A bottle of French absinthe (it’s Edouard, from Jade Liqueurs), two reservoir glasses and an absinthe spoon. Also, a promise to drink it with me.

Life is good.

I don’t know if it’s because I took Tylenol Cold and Ambien at the same time last night, or because I’ve been popping Sudafed Cold & Cough every four hours ever since I woke up from my barely-five-hours-of-sleep on top of my usual clutch of migraine medications, but I’ve been high as a kite all day long. I’ve been fighting a nasty cold for a couple of days (I don’t usually take this many pills…really), so I’m not complaining. Plus spending your birthday in a mild state of euphoria isn’t necessarily a bad thing (at least, so long as you don’t have to drive anywhere).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an overwhelming urge to listen to Dark Side of the Moon and maybe play some Geometry Wars.

Good news for sci-fi fans, or just plain fans of one of the best movies ever made…The Digital Bits reports that we’re going to finally get that anamorphic widescreen DVD release of Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut in September. But I won’t bother with that one, because…

In 2007, Warner Bros. will release Blade Runner: The Final Cut, featuring all the stuff that Ridley Scott’s always wanted to do but hasn’t been able to do. That’ll be out in theaters first (w00p!), followed later in the year by an ultimate Blade Runner boxed set, containing the original cut, the Director’s Cut and the Final Cut, along with gobs of extras. Plus it’ll be out on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray as well. (Now that’s a movie I’d buy in HD). The new DVDs are being produced by the same producer as the amazing Alien Quadrilogy boxed set, so hopefully this will be equally comprehensive.

Blade Runner is my favorite sci-fi movie of all-time, if only because I don’t count 2001: A Space Odyssey as sci-fi (it’s something else entirely). So a better way to write that headline might be if 2001 != sci-fi { Blade Runner > *.* }, but that’s just splitting hairs, really.

But anyway, the movie has its flaws to be sure, but it does so many things right on so many levels…it’s just perfection to me, and not even lines like “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!” can harm the movie in my eyes. Certainly not when you get a scene like Rutgar Hauer’s “tears in rain”, a speech which was entirely improvised.

Ooooh, I can’t wait. Just can’t wait. Neither can Roy Batty.

There’s an article in this month’s Wired magazine by Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers about (and conveniently titled) the myth of Superman. It touches on a lot of my favorite Superman-related subjects: his timelessness, the fact that he doesn’t really “belong” to any one writer or artist (even though everyone has their own personal Superman, the character is separate from that), and An Unlikely Prophet, the brilliant “metaphysical memoir” by Alvin Schwartz (which I count among the best books I’ve ever read…it’s back in print, so you have no excuse not to read it now).

It’s a brief but enjoyable article, but it has this little bit at the end:

Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.

A similar statement is given at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2, when Bill decides to lecture his prey on the finer points of Superman. But I disagree. I’ve always disagreed.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. When he’s out of costume, he puts on the act of being a playboy, running around with models, and doing his day job just enough so people are distracted away from his real life. Conversely, Superman is Clark Kent. Yes, he may have to restrain himself in his day to day life to prevent himself from being discovered or hurting someone, but there’s more to a man than his physical prowess. Clark Kent is a man who was raised in a small town in Kansas. He has those values still, and they define him more than any super powers. Batman was born when Bruce Wayne’s parents died. Superman was born when Clark Kent grew up to be a good man.

It’s a fundamental disagreement, I’ve had with a lot of incarnations of Superman. The Christopher Reeve movies (and therefore by extension Superman Returns), were definitely in the Clark Kent-as-mask camp, but the animated series was on my side (I think). The comics are somewhere in between. It varies depending on who writes the character.

But really, what I love about Superman is that the question is there at all. I’m not sure what one view or the other means about a person, but I imagine there’s probably something you could read into it.

A while ago, a few of my friends put together a Sam Adams commercial on spec…thanks to the wonder of YouTube, it’s now online. Check it out:

Pretty funny stuff.

Five minutes after the post below, I’ve discovered a major issue with the limited edition. The soundtrack can only be played using a DVD video player. It can’t be played in iTunes or any CD player. WTF? This is just annoying. I’m sure I’ll be able to rip it somehow, but it’s going to be a pain in the neck. It may be easier to just copy the MP3s from the game install directory (if they’re in MP3 format). A CD costs pennies when mass-produced…this is just cheap. Boo hiss.

My limited edition version of Heroes and Might and Magic V (not to be confused with the Deluxe Edition or the Super Collector’s Edition) arrived today. It comes in an extra-wide box, sure to look nice on the single shelf (if you’re lucky) that makes up the PC section of your local game retailer. Upon opening it, I was surprised to discover not a jewel case or two or a nice beefy manual, but rather one of those multiple-DVD cases and nothing else. Since all the extra content (the soundtrack, artwork and Heroes III and IV) is on DVD-ROM, and the manual is exactly the same as the regular edition, there’s no need for anything else. But of course, that does make the impressive large box a bit misleading, as it’s the perfect size to include something of a bit more substance.

Ah, but who cares. I have a new Heroes game, and it’s getting solid reviews. All is well in the world. Or at least, it will be once I finish Tomb Raider: Legend, as I hate starting a new game (even if it is Heroes) before I’ve finished the one I’m currently playing.

Get a load of this one…up on eBay is an eight foot sculpture of the creature from the Alien movies, built entirely out of old bike and car parts. There’s a simply stunning amount of detail in this thing, from a tail with an impaled skull on it to really nicely done claws and feet. I wouldn’t dream of putting it in my apartment, but this thing deserves to be in a museum. Here’s a quick shot of it:

Creepy as it may be, it’s still got nothing on that horrifying Superman statue Warner Bros. sells.

One of the things I miss from my news reporting days is writing headlines…it’s why I have a blog (really, the rest is just an excuse to fill in the headlines). The fun of headline writing is in coming up with weird references, clever in-jokes and so on. I’ve tried my best to keep up the tradition here.

In any event, today there’s one such news item making the rounds of gaming sites…Codemasters, those pillars of the industry, have announced a game based on The Turds, a franchise starring a bunch of well, you know.

So far there have only been two sites to pick up the story, Next-Generation (”Codemasters’ Excrement Adventure”) and Kotaku (”Codemasters Unleashes a Load of Crap on Gamers”). I think Next-Gen takes round one, but I eagerly await new additions to the list. Above is my quickie attempt…given more time, I think I could do better, but it’s not bad as a first try.

There’s an interesting little piece over at the NY Times about Smallville. It talks about the series’ apparently surprise success this season, which was unexpected enough that the show’s creators found the dangling possibility of cancelation liberating.

Among the other interesting tidbits is the news that the Aquaman episode (which was indeed a riff on HBO’s Entourage, which involves a fictional James Cameron Aquaman movie) wound up being the season’s most-watched episode, and that’s why they ended up shooting a pilot (even though the pilot was ultimately passed on). Also of note: the decision to kill off Jonathan Kent really was because of Superman Returns, and the actors are signed through season seven. After that, the creators expect the series to go out with a bang.

Like I said, it’s interesting stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing. It makes me wonder…does this mean we’ve finally seen the last episode to involve Lana/Chloe/Lois/etc. turning evil and therefore putting on heavy makeup and leather? It seems like every few episodes they drag that cliche out for a spin. It was funny the first few times, but after a while, it just gets stale, and made me long for the cornball days when Clark was worried about a prophecy involving someone named Newman. Wait, wait, that’s when Clark turned evil and started wearing leather pants. Sounds like someone on the staff needs to work out some issues, doesn’t it?