Man of Steel, Man of Heart

Full Disclosure

'Man of Steel' premiered this weekend, and the verdicts are in: second-largest opening this year (behind Iron Man 3), largest opening in June. In the eyes of movie executives and people who like to see shit blow up good, it is an unqualified success. For those of us who grew up with the character, however, its approach is...somewhat problematic.

Full disclosure: I grew up with Superman, particularly the Christopher Reeve films. There was a movie-rental place near our home (Video Kingdom, remember when those things existed?) and when my Mom would take me, I'd always want to rent 'Superman: The Movie', to the point where my Mother, probably driven half-mad by hearing Lex Luthor's master scheme for the hundredth time, tried to gently suggest to me I might want to maybe watch a different film. We probably ended up renting 'Superman II'. This did not stop her, however, from sewing me a Superman cape which you better believe I wore to school, damn it. I also, since we're just revealing everything here, wore glasses from a young age. And there weren't any 'Biclops' comics when I was a kid...

True to Life

According to legend or rumor or what-have-you, the word "verisimilitude" was put on a banner above the art department for 1978's 'Superman: The Movie'. This has, to a large degree, informed how comic books are translated to television or film. Only Batman '66 seemed to say "fuck it", though that program approached comic book lunacy with an eye on camp and winking innuendo, but the intrusion of the real has been a constant pull against the four-color weirdness of the best comics. This makes a certain amount of sense, sure. There are things, particularly visually, that simply do not translate from comics to movies. At one end you have game attempts to, say, get Captain America's cowl right and at the other you have Batman and the X-Men done up as leather fetishists and the Man of Steel himself as some kind of cross between a rubber gimp and a giant toy.

What this also does is create an atmosphere where Clark Kent's whole glasses-and-nebbishness shtick is confined to less than thirty seconds of set-up for the sequel and a shot of an utterly unfooled Lois. Look, movie. I get why you're doing this. And it's by far not my biggest complaint about this picture. What it is, however, is endemic to the approach that results in Clark straight-up killing General Zod. But we'll get back to that. For now, let's stick with those glasses.

Spectacle

Asking someone to believe in real life that someone can just muss up his hair a bit, put on a pair of horn-rims, and pass as a totally different dude is patently ludicrous. I know this. Everybody older than about nine knows this. But Superman, a character invented for children and dragged kicking and screaming into the logic and rationalization of a grown-up movie (I typed "adult movie" at first, which: no thanks.) has to contend with the tug-of-war between this childhood dream-logic and the demands of adults who demand realism in their movies about flying space aliens with laser eyes.

Superman doesn't exist in the real world. He exists in the world of symbols. Key to the character's appeal, to my mind, is that transformation. Superman is the only character who wears a mask in his civilian life. Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, they all put on their masks to go out and derring-do. Superman works on a different level. The point of Superman is that bright, garish, embarrassing part of ourselves we keep under our clothes, that's the part that's going to get us through this, that's the part of us that's going to save everyone. You're born naked, as the man says. And the rest is drag. Superman is in human-drag. He's hiding out in the world, just like the rest of us.

For most of his publication history, Superman and his alter ego have existed in a love-triangle with Lois Lane. It is perhaps his most famous aspect, beyond the whole flight-and-strength gig. Clark loves Lois, Lois loves Superman. OF COURSE in the real world a respected journalist, or anyone who isn't legally blind, really, would put two and two together. This is not the point. The point is what it represents, and Hollywood seems to have a problem with symbols and representation versus a ham-fisted attempt at verisimilitude. We all have our secret aspects, our lurid underselves. Especially growing up, when comic books typically sink their claws in to our psyches. The glasses represent that hiding in the world, and if you can't roll with it with a straight face, then maybe this isn't the film for you.

Snap!

Superman devotees like myself, we all had a problem with the final fight, the one that culminated in the death of General Zod at the hands of the eponymous Man of Steel. Translated to film, most superheroes have a far more cavalier attitude about dispensing death and judgment, and even Superman hasn't been immune. I don't even have a problem with him exing out Zod, considering the circumstances (dude straight-up tried to genocide the human race and leveled half of Manhattan New Troy. He patently said he was going to keep it up until one of them was dead. So, okay. But we're not idiots out here. We know how plot mechanics work.

I can understand the Last Son of Krypton being put in this impossible position and choosing between the human race, a member of which he's been raised since birth, and this last remnant of his old home, I can get that. But the mechanics of the story built to that point are faulty and hackneyed. Superman makes very few decisions, weighs no real moral options. Zod is straight up going to build a new Krypton on the ruins of Earth. There isn't a lot of decision making involved in "do I stop Zod or what"? To use a recent filmic example, Zod's death here is the opposite of the boat scene in 'The Dark Knight' where Batman essentially wins not by beating up the Joker (which isn't the point of the Joker anyway) but by proving him wrong. Zod doesn't represent any kind of opposition to Superman's general thesis (which isn't ever really developed in the film to begin with) rather he is a force of nature that simply must be shut down.

This is after the aforementioned forty-minute fight, first in Kansas between Superman, Faora, and Unnamed Guy Who Might As Well Be Non, then between the army and the Kryptonians, then between Superman and Zod. It's a brillaint thing to watch, especially before the twenty-minute mark. After then, apocalypse fatigue sets in. For plot mechanics reasons, in fact, Superman is dispatched to the other side of the world to deal with another alien death machine, while the greatest city on Earth crumbles and people die by the thousands, the preventing of which you'd think would be a job for Superman.

Miracle Monday

Zod and his cronies show up on Earth looking for a supermcguffin in Clark's blood (sigh), which they will use to build New Krypton on the ashes of the human race. Absolutely no reason is given for why their massive post-singularity technology can't just relocate one planet next door to either Mars or Venus and just go to town on that. No, Zod seems almost churlish in his desire to erase the human species. As I said above, this presents Superman with a non-choice, which means those things he is meant to represent (Truth, Justice, All That Stuff) are in no way tested against Zod's philosophy. At their best, cape comic characters are philosophical concepts (justice, revenge, patriotism, utopian feminism, ostracized-teen angst) boiled down and given lurid four-color face-lifts. But if Zod is merely a force of nature, a tornado played by Michael Shannon (who is great, but is in Michael Shannon-as-villain mode, and therefore largely wasted) then there is no challenge to Superman's philosophy. As Chris Sims pointed out over at ComicsAlliance, Zod is proved right. Superman is forced to kill him. Take a look, for contrast, at the Superman story 'Miracle Monday', a tie-in novel written way back in the 1980's, about Superman fighting against, well, the Devil.

He wins that fight. He wins it by simply by saying that the purpose of good is to stand up to evil. He wins it not through force of arms (though being invincible sure helps when mixing it up with the Devil) but because he isn't going to back down against a bully. That's the character who is lost in 'Man of Steel'. I hope next time we get him back.

Faster than Speeding Bullet-Points

In brief, what I did like about the film:

• The Casting: Cavill largely works as Superman, and Costner and Lane nail the roles of Clark's parents. Amy Adams makes a great Lois Lane. Really, the only casting decision I question is Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, and that's down to him not being irascible enough. Also, I'm not sure I'm ready for a Perry White who wears an earring. 
• Krypton: Kal-El's birth planet goes through a radical change compared to the Donner movies, becoming an almost primordial place teeming with (somewhat toyetic) life, a believably ancient culture, and a technology seemingly based on those novelty things you'd get with the pins in 'em where you stick your hand in one side and there's an imprint of your hand. What the hell are those called? There's a bit of exposition that is almost entirely animated with this graphic, and it's marvelous, makes the whole speech worth it.
• The first scene when he flies: Traditionally in Superman narratives, flight is the last ability he gains, and there's an obvious reason for that. X-ray vision, super-hearing, these are properly treated as nerve-wracking and creepy, but flight? That is probably the key aspect of Superman as a fantasy figure, and the joy he takes in it is something we can all identify with. Who wouldn't want that?

Elastic Man

In the end, I think, 'Man of Steel' was not made for me. Much like the new Star Trek films, and most comic book films, in fact, it was made to cash in on a general interest in superhero films by the general public, and the general public is probably going to like this film. Is it worth it to me to see the Big Blue Boy Scout succeed in the cinema, even if he isn't very Boy Scoutly? I'm not sure. What I am sure of, however, is that a mildly shitty disaster-porn movie in which Superman straight-up snaps a dude's neck is not going to undo seventy-five years of the character, who has proven elastic to change. He'll keep going, on past a hundred, because he works. The best parts of 'Man of Steel' understand what works about his character. It's a shame the worst parts so effectively drag down the best, but the great thing about these big budget franchise things is they have another chance to get it right. I live in hope. And I remind myself not to take this shit too seriously.

Keep flying.

Danerys Targaryen and the Pyramid of Death

I never read the 'Game of Thrones' books, but, like much of America, I have become enthralled in the story as it's unfolded on HBO. I love epics. I love soap operas. (Don't make that face. So do you. The only reason people don't watch 'Guiding Light' or whatever the hell is because it airs daily and has been on for fifty years, making its story lines impenetrable and insane. See also: superhero comics.)

So I am relatively unspoil't (some might say Unsullied, but that would take balls) with regards to how this whole thing will shake out. That won't stop me from positing, based largely on the mechanics of How Epics Work (which is one of the main reasons I like them; they're the stories that are least apologetic about letting you see how the gears work) whose survival is likely through this season of the program and beyond.

Danerys has to survive because she's the only one connected to her plotline. If she were to die in the sacking of Yunkai, I doubt Mormont or Old Guy That Isn't Mormont or New Guy Drawn By Joseph Michael Linsner would suddenly take up her cause. Untethered to her, the dragons would be little more than a nuisance. Directed by her, they are instruments of terror. She is categorically the safest character in the whole show until she actually arrives on Westeros to fuck shit up.

Similarly, Sam, Theon and Bran are safe for now (as is Bran's running crew), given that their plot lines don't intersect with anything in a dramatically meaningful way. Implicit in this is the lesson that if you want to survive in Westeros, get the fuck away from everything and everyone even remotely interesting.

Nothing bad is going to happen to Joffrey Baratheon. He's too much of a shit and we all hate him too much for any misfortune to befall him. Sansa, in the obverse, is safe. As long as she can suffer, she's going to live a long life. The Red Woman will keep around, because the night is dark and full of terrors, y'all, and because she's the most recognizable prophet of her religion.

Jon Snow is probably okay, at least through this season, and I wouldn't count him out as a major point-of-view character. He is the lens through which we view the wildlings and while it's concievable Sam or Ygritte could follow on in his stead, it seems unlikely. Arya and the Hound probably sit around here. I can see Arya lasting the whole series, but that's just because she's awesome, nothing to do with the mechanics of the story.

Both due to their knack as survivors, character-wise, and their ability to fit in just about any story, both Varys and Littlefinger are safe for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of them snuffed it long before book seven. The other ends up as the Hand, for about an hour.

I don't have a lot of hope for Robb, That Lady Robb Married, or Cat. Or the Blackfish. Or Cat's Idiot Brother. There are just too many people knocking about Riverrun or the Twins or wherever the hell they are right now. As a head of state, Robb is nominally protected, but we all know the North is going to get it in the kiester before all this is over.

Similarly, King's Landing is just chock full of disposable characters. Somebody in the Lannister clan has to bite it, and I would wager Cersei or Tywin (the latter gettting it from Joff, the former, I dunno, falls down some stairs?) ahead of Tyrion in the death department. I think the diminuitive Lannister will survive at least through this season and in to the next. Bronn? Shae? Their days have to be numbered.

The buddy-cop movie that is Jamie and Brienne will last at least until this season, long enough (I think) for one of the two of them to snuff it. Probably Brienne as it would hurt Jamie, and the only thing more integral to your survival to the Game of Thrones plot than your (eventual) plot utility is your capacity for suffering.

Stannis? Dead. Davos might live but he's like Mormont: without his liege to back he doesn't really serve a purpose, and Stannis might well outlive him, but I wouldn't wager for long. Gendry is similarly ready for the noose. He could outlive Stannis if the Red Lady sees him as a more legitimate line to power.

Probably the one guy with the best chance of living through this whole thing is What's-His-Name-That-Keeps-Coming-Back-from-the-Dead, but since I forgot about him until now, odds don't look too good.

However, it's possible the whole tenor of this story could change. The Red God went from unmentioned in Season 1 to enabling shadow demons and multiple resurrections. The whole war of succession can't last the entirety of the series. The Ice Zombies are coming and they're gonna wreck the North, and it's possible that the show will shift focus to whatever power is behind the Red God, whose disciples I've personally taken to calling Cylons.

Who'd I miss? If I missed them, they're probably dead.

Story fragment: The Cartographer's Apprentice

Rain clouds covered the skies of Middle-Earth, obscuring the view from Henry's ship. The view port was a quaint, antiquated affectation, fairly useless when compared to the array of panels and screens at the far end of his suite on the ramscoop SS Wind Rose.
It was his great-grandfather's idea, Middle-Earth. Alvaro Santarem charted a half-dozen systems in the Hundred Star Reach, his slavish attention to detail in Tolkien extending from the star's primary to the moons of Galadriel (elves) and Thorin (dwarves); the rocky, shallow-lit asteroids (humans) and the icy, distant comets  (the assorted, multiple names of various weaponry). The man was nothing if not slavish in his attention to detail.
Middle-Earth was what some in the old days referred to as a super-Earth, a beautiful, massive rocky world with sapphire oceans, emerald forests, and opalescent clouds. The only problem being it was too large and its atmosphere too rich in oxygen for human beings to thrive there comfortably, if at all. There was an abundance of native life (including a race of squat bipeds Alvaro had insisted on referring to as "hobbits") but on the whole Middle-Earth was a fantastically beautiful place where no one could go, which must have tickled the elder Santarem to no end.
Tolkien was the Wind Rose's last port-of-call before shipping out to the Outmarches on a charting mission of her own. They would slink below the rings of Sauron and collect stores of helium-3 to augment the interstellar hydrogen the ramscoop would rely on in its decades-long trek through the night, perhaps gathering up a comet--Glamdring or Ringil--and harvest its water.
The idea of this made Henry vaguely uneasy. He suspected it was meant to. Alvaro Santarem named every ball of ice, gas, or rock in the system. He turned them from Things into Places. One of the few clear memories Henry had of his great-grandfather was of the old man telling him a story from the Bible, that when God created man, He set him about naming all the beasts and birds of the land. "Even the trees and rock," the wizened old cartographer insisted. "Even the stars."
The little hobbits below had no idea, of course, about Henry or his grandfather or the names and significances the humans attached to things. When and if they evolved speech, the hobbits would have their own names and stories for things. By then. Henry would be long dead, his own name lost, itself just a hand-me-down reflection of some original story.

The Clothes Make the Man

Famine, war, economic collapse and some genuinely scary human beings angling to become President of the United States, and this is what I fill my time with blogging about.

I hate the new Superman costume.

Few days ago, Warner Brothers released a promo image of Henry Cavill as Superman, busting out of--or in to--a bank vault. And while the shot itself is nicely staged, and Cavill certainly looks the part, the costume here ruins what was for me already a lukewarm sense of anticipation, considering my favorite superhero is going to star in a film directed by one of my least favorite directors.

In fact, with the exception of casting, which is almost uniformly great (I have no opinion on Cavill, having seen him in precisely nothing), every news item coming from the production of this movie has made me wince. Coming 2013: Superman fights General Zod! Again! Directed by Zack Snyder! So there's a pretty good chance Kal El, last son of Krypton, will punch someone's organs out of their chest before stumbling into YET ANOTHER belabored Christ allegory. Cack sandwich.

Here's the thing: Warner has been immensely successful with the Batman films, mostly on the back of Christopher Nolan, who has directed a complex, psychological take on the Caped Crusader, one that eschews robot penguins and a hammy Jack Nicholson for a down-to-earth tale of a billionaire ninja and a clown with the world's widest smile. These movies are fantastic. And I have no doubt that next summer's capper on the Nolan trilogy will be just as good as the two which preceded it.

The problem, however, with a studio making heaps and heaps of money off one guy who wears long underwear and beats up clowns, is that they automatically think that the same formula ("let's make him darker, grittier, edgier") will translate to a guy who flies and wears long underwear and beats up on bald people. It won't. It doesn't. And it can't.

Simply put, what works for Batman does not work for Superman. It can't, and I don't understand why anyone would think that it would. Similarly, 2006's Superman Returns is a case study in how what works for the X-Men (namely, pouting and brooding) does not work for Superman. Bryan Singer, fresh off two excellent X-Men films, leapt at the chance to direct a Superman film, and what we got was two hours of the Metropolis Marvel feeling sorry for himself and breaking up the family of the woman he...space roofied, apparently?

Coincidentally, Brandon Routh's threads bore more than a passing resemblance to Henry Cavill's.

This costume is apologetic. It is the Barack Obama of superhero costumes. It tries to strike a balance between what works on film and what works on the page and as a result comes out looking muddied and palatable to no one. And it's not the darkness of the hues I have a problem with. Dean Cain's Superman costume from the 1990's TV show had a pretty dark blue, but it was a bolder color, and so was the red.

BECAUSE THAT IS SUPERMAN'S WHOLE ENTIRE DEAL.

He dresses up like the flag because he symbolizes that American spirit, that optimism. There are cars brighter than Henry Cavill's costume here, and some of those cars are actually gray. As usual, there are folks out there who've articulated these points much better than I on their own blogs, and I'd like to refer to one of them now:

Superman isn’t Superman because of some tragedy which informed his growth. Pa Kent does not die because of a failure on Clark’s part – indeed in most versions of the story, Pa dies when Clark isalready Superman. Clark’s knowledge of Krypton doesn’t make him a superhero either; again, this is something he finds out later, too late to traumatize him. Clark is Superman because he decides to be Superman without being prompted. That’s more complex and nuanced a story than “somebody did something to me.” Superman’s story, which informs his entire character, is one of someone who chooses to be good of his own free will and agency, with no influence other than moral upbringing. That’s both more compelling than the “somebody did something to me” origin most superheroes have and more difficult to work with.

This is from the excellent blog Mighty God King, and I really could just post the entire thing over here, except that'd be cheating, but I recommend reading the whole article because it has really the best counterpoint to the "Superman-as-Jesus" trope which was one more lead weight Brandon Routh had to fly around with hanging from his neck in Returns.

Superman isn't Jesus. And Superman isn't Batman. You don't have to ground him with muted grays and yet another fight with other dudes from his own home planet because you figure, hey, General Zod is the only one who can put the hurt on the Man of Steel.

What Superman should be about, more than any other comic book character translated to the big screen, is that sense of pure comics, of insane wonderment, of operatic bad guys and heroic daring-do. As a character, he is a reflection of everything that is best and brightest in America. Truth and Justice. He needs to be a flag.

And he deserves a better director than Zack Snyder.

PS: Tim Gunn!

Missive

This is an outgrowth from a discussion I've been having on facebook about the prospect of the upcoming third Christopher Nolan Batman film, 'The Dark Knight Rises,' which, despite the shit title, benefits from the fact that Nolan is, by and large, batting a thousand at this point.

If you have nine minutes handy, here's a summation of the Bane storyline from the mid-90's Batman comics. Also, the guy makes a dashing caprese salad.

Batman has been tremendously well-served by Nolan in the past two films. I doubt you could find a moviegoer or a Batman fan that didn't find 'Begins' and 'Dark Knight' at least highly enjoyable, if not definitive in their interpretations of the character. By grounding him in reality--again--Nolan has cemented what works about Bruce Wayne and put it all up there on screen.

The rest of the DC Universe has not fared as well.

I'm a DC Comics fan, as much as I think brand identification is utter claptrap. My father would--and probably still does--make jokes at the expense of Chevy cars in favor of Ford, despite the companies being, at least to me, virtually interchangeable corporate giants, based out of the same city, delivering essentially the same product. Fanaticism toward corporate properties has bugged me for along time, but at least in the case of fictional people, I have a preference.

Let me pause for a moment. If by some quirk of fate you have stumbled on to a corner of the web that calls itself "Strontium Lullaby" and are *not* a comic-book fan, first I apologize. Second, by way of explanation, there are two comic-book publishing houses which own pretty much every superhero you might ever have heard of: DC and Marvel. Marvel is owned by Disney but has its own film department now (after that film department's maiden voyage, 2008's 'Iron Man', excelled so greatly) but has licensed other of its properties to other film companies, like Spider-Man to Sony. DC, despite being wholly owned by an entertainment conglomerate, has had less in the way of success this decade in putting out superhero films.

Briefly: Marvel=Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Fantastic Four.

DC=Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman.

One of the questions I was asked was "what's the difference between the two houses?" and the answer is, at this point, not much. However, when Marvel Comics debuted in 1961 (taking some characters from an older company, Timely) their approach was quite a bit different. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and others sought to infuse a bit of humanity to their creations. The DC heroes, outgrowths of their 1940's selves, were still iron-jawed icons, lacking in solid characterization. Marvel wanted to cater to a slightly older demographic than superhero comics had originally shot for. The result was Spider-Man struggling with keeping up the rent while Batman had to wear a different colored cowl every night.

This is a generalization, and by the late 1980's would be largely moot, as comics struggled to grow up after 'Watchmen' and 'The Dark Knight Returns' served as such industry game-changers that everybody was struggling to keep up with them, while learning all the wrong lessons in the process.

So as a DC fan, I'm a bit...well, saddened isn't the right word, exactly...irked? Vexed. I'm a bit vexed that Marvel has managed to pull out all the stops on getting its properties to the big screen. I'm not even talking the winners here, like 'Thor', 'Iron Man', or the first two 'Spider-Man' pictures. They've put out films for 'Ghost Rider', 'Daredevil' and 'Elektra', which were, really, just frigging awful, as well as TWO sucky 'Fantastic Four' movies an a pair of Hulk films which keep hitting just to one side of the mark. In contrast, DC, which is already owned by a tremendous media conglomerate and doesn't have to shop its properties out to all and sundry, has managed in the past decade of the superhero film to produce two tremendous Batman films, an anemic and misguided Superman picture, and a tone-deaf Green Lantern adaptation. Also Smallville. Which sucked, despite the fact that it was a primetime TV show that had Deathstroke: The Terminator waterboarding Aquaman and the Green Arrow. How you get that kind of thing wrong is beyond me.

That's my missive. There's not much point to it, really, just that I'd marginally prefer a good Flash film to a good Iron Man one, and far and away would prefer a decent adaptation of Superman to, really, just about anything.

One final thought on Bane. He's not exactly well known outside the comics. Guys like the Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, they've all been featured in numerous adaptations beforehand, so, when you get something like Heath Ledger's revelatory performance as the Joker, part of what makes it work so well is the contrast, to Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero, and to (a sadly lesser extent) Mark Hamill. He appears in 'Batman and Robin' briefly, but as an unmemorable thug

Bane isn't like that. Neither, interestingly enough, were the Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul. Both made appearances in the animated Batman series, but neither of them with the prominence of the regular Batman heavies, and neither of them appeared in Batman '66. (Ray wasn't created until '71, and really wouldn't have fit 66's palette anyway).

I think part of the reason Bane was chosen for this film was that there must have been tremendous pressure on Nolan to create another dark, gritty version of a classic Batman foil. Let's make the Riddler a psychopathic nutjob, too! Asses in seats, guaranteed! To try and deconstruct one of these guys. To say nothing of the poor schmuck who has to play the deconstructed Riddler/Penguin/Mr Freeze. Think deranged ice-cream salesman. Asses. Seats.

So you take a character who, in the comics, is an extremely relevant part of the Batman mythology, but otherwise relatively unknown. Bane works because he, like the Joker (and like the best foils in all superhero stories) is a mirror for the protagonist, an anti-Batman, but with the same drive and determination that drives our hero.

Now, if only someone will make that Green Arrow movie.

The Killing Jar

Davey keeps the jar under his bed, where it's dark. The killing jar. Grasshoppers are the best. He keeps the jar beneath where his head rests on the pillow so he can hear them struggle. Grasshoppers fight the longest. Sometimes they'll hold out for more than a day. In the mornings he'll lay on the wooden floor of his room, flat against his stomach, and pull up the bed skirt that blocks the light from outside. He'll check to see if the grasshopper--or whatever it is--is still alive. Early morning, when the whole world is quiet. When his father is not yet home.

It is surprising what can be endured.

The morning air is cool as he leaves the house, guiding the screen door with one hand to close with a gentle, unnoticed click. The jar is in his other hand, open end turned downward. It is a comforting, familiar shape. Behind the house there is a stream, dry now from the heat of August afternoons, the heat that's coming, that will wrap him up like a Mother's too-tight embrace. Like the day has had one too many and needs to pull you close, so close you almost drown. This is preferable, of course, to other things.

He carries the jar though he's not sure he will use it. Th last one had been a disappointment. Davey thinks he remembers the first grasshopper taking ages to die. This one had barely lasted the night. He wakes up now, sometimes, at the silence.

Davey follows the dry stream past the clearing where the older kids come to neck and to break bottles against the old felled tree. He treads carefully and quickly by, his eyes on the ground though he knows no one is there to watch him. He follows the streambed to the creek.

I dreamt of him last night. Dreamt I was him, down by that creek where we found him, almost a week before the school year began. This was 1992, I think. I awoke this morning to a dull pain in my right temple and the sound of a cat howling outside my window. I live on the third floor; the howl must have been something. I sat in the dark there, listening to the sound and trying to remember why I'd dreamt of Davey Caldwell.

You learn a lot of things in school. You learn whose parents are poor, you learn who can be dumped on. You learn just how far you can push a thing before the adults force themselves to intervene. I learned those lessons. So did Davey Caldwell.

I gotto feeling guilty about the cat, mainly about how, really, when I looked to inward, I felt nothing. No distress at the thing's state. Not sorrow, nor even guilt, really. The guilt I was feeling was second-hand, guilt at not feeling guilt. I decided to go down to check on the thing, bring it some cat food, if only to shut it up.

We found Davey by the creek. He'd captured a frog in that jar of his he carried everywhere. I think in the years between then and now, I'd convinced myself I told Roger to leave it, to let the poor kid alone. Waking up this morning, I knew that wasn't true. Just one of those things we tell ourselves.

So there we were and there he was. For a long time he didn't see us.

I got about half-way down the last flight of stairs and I saw him. Homeless guy. He was sleeping in the foyer of my building, against the radiator. Stopped me cold. For a second, I had the absurd thought it must be Davey, lying there. Of course, it couldn't be. Davey died, years ago.

"Hey, Davey," Roger said, and I knew this would end badly. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Collectin' frogs." His eyes down. The little frog struggling against the side of the jar.

"Oh yeah? Int'ris'ted in the flora?"

"Fauna" I remember correcting him, but I didn't. I never would have.

"Can I see it?" Roger asked. Smirking.

"No, it's mine."

That act of defiance, that denial...we probably would have gone after him anyway, but that "no" sealed his fate. We rushed him, Jim and I only a half-step behind Roger, who had Davey pinned with next to no effort. We knew our roles. I pinned his right arm. Jim got his feet. Roger sat on Davey's back and pushed his face into the mud. The jar tipped over; the frog got out.

If I went out, I'd probably wake him up. I don't know how long I'd been standing there. If I went outside to tend to the cat, I would have to talk to this guy. I didn't want to talk to him, I didn't want to tell him I'd only come down because of the cat, I didn't want him to ask me for something. So I just stood there, dumbly, for a little while longer, there on the steps at three in the morning, in my bathrobe.

Davey was twisting, writhing to get free. Roger was inching down his back. "Get his other arm!" he shouted at me, his hand on the belt of Davey's pants. "You like that, faggot?" He was saying. "This is what your Dad likes, isn't it?"

"What are you doing?" I finally asked. My attention wavered. I didn't see Davey's fingers find the upturned jar. he jerked his arm free, then brought it up. I was right where I definitely shouldn't have been. There was a terrible crash as the thing broke on my temple, all the lights went on at once, a blinding white-hot flash and I blacked out.

When I came to, Davey was sitting a little ways away from me. he had a frog in his hands. I don't know if it was the same frog. The world swam in and out, I remember that much. And there was blood. A lot of it. Mine.

"Where'd they go?" I managed after a while.

"To get help, I guess," Davey mumbled. "I think they're scared."

"Why are you so fucked up, Davey?"

And he told me. Bits of it, anyway. The rest I think we all worked out years later. He must have been gratified, I suppose, to have me as a captive audience. After a while I sat up. He told me the story of his life; maybe he thought I'd tell someone, maybe he thought I'd never believe him, I don't know. We never talked to each other again. After a while, there were sounds, adults coming, calling after Davey and me.

Davey stood up. He let the little frog go, almost as an afterthought, I think, and he disappeared in to the woods. Roger and the others happened on me a minute or two later.

"Little faggot ran off," I told them. Things got worse in Davey's life after that.

I stared at the middle distance around the homeless guy for a little bit after I made my decision. I wish I could say Roger got what was coming to him. I wish I could say it was him in that foyer. He's a broker. Fortune 500. I didn't do too badly, either, all things considered.

After a little while longer, I went up.

You Provide The Pictures, I'll Provide The War (On Crime)

The curious problem with any review of a theatrical-release film is that film's immediacy. I get in, my box of Hot Tamales snuck in under my coat, I sit down, and two hours later I gotta leave. It's not like I can get the projectionist to rewind so I can watch the whole first and second acts again. This is a roundabout way of apologizing for whatever diffusiveness afflicts this writeup, but there's something going on in The Green Hornet that I have to get off my chest.

First of all, I enjoyed the movie, much more than many of the reviews told me I would. I wasn't expecting to (I wasn't even expecting to go, but I was bored yesterday and it was this or The King's Speech and I was pretty sure George 6 doesn't blow anything up in that one). However, the movie delivers cheerily-executed violence (who knew Michel Gondry would turn out a fine action director?), Seth Rogen being Seth Rogen and an unexpected--albeit small--role for Space Badass Edward James Olmos.

However, there's something going on in this film, a subplot, an itch, an undercurrent of yellow journalism that disturbs me. Spoilers to follow:

Rogen takes the reins of his father's newspaper and in a prank attempt to get back at his Dad, steals the head off a recently-dedicated statue to the man. He's caught on film right after this and right before he and Kato bust up a bunch of ne'er-do-wells about do so something quite untoward. That night, before he knows he's a hidden-camera film star, Rogen decides he wants to do this full time.

He takes the meager amount of footage and information about his escapade and uses his Dad's paper to explode the thing into a front page story, much to the chagrin of (Edward! James!) Olmos. He gets Cameron Diaz's character (a rarity in an action picture in being an actually interesting lady, the film compensates by giving her no discernible motivation for the setup that made her interesting. So: square one) to do all this criminology research so he can turn it around and use it to plot his strategy, all the while using the Daily Sentinel to blow up his antics to Ed Dillinger proportions.

By the climax of the film, Rogen decides to do something of actual journalistic integrity, Michael Clayton-style, but in the explosive(ly awesome, I don't care that an elevator can't take that kind of weight) climax, it's telling that he aims to put the info on the Net, rather than running it through his paper. Of course it's a guy's voice, which obviously works better on the Net or on TV, but when you combine it with the lack of regard Rogen's character displays for journalism in general, it makes a distasteful cocktail. I can't see Clark Kent or Lois Lane, or, really, Van Williams' Britt Reid doing something akin to what Rogen's Reid does.

Part of this, I acknowledge, is the mechanics of the story. Gondry needs Rogen and Chou to get down to the business of administering beat-downs, and the vigilante-pretending-to-be-a-criminal is a pretty integral part of the GH mythos, and I'm glad they kept it. It just bothers me. By the end of the film, his reputation as a city-wide bad guy secured, Rogen steps down as the Sentinel's chief, but doesn't really ever learn his lesson or anything.

Still. A fun time was had by all, and by "all" I mean "me". I just hope that should a sequel happen, they try and make the newspaper something credible rather than just a prop.

He said on the Internet.