In the month of January, WordPress is showing us writing prompts, and I have been keen to participate. The fourth of January WordPress prompt was something we wish we knew how to do. I thought of turning back time, inspired by the conclusion of the 1978 movie Superman, starring Christopher Reeve as Superman and Marlon Brandon as Superman’s father, on their home planet, Krypton.
I think that my dream superpower is to be able to turn back time. Margot Kidder plays Lois Lane. In the film, Superman flies around the entire world, going back in time a few minutes to save her from catastrophe. When Superman learned he was from Krypton, his father told him to live a disguise, helping humans only and not interfering. I don’t think, it is clear, that Superman can live without Lois, so he makes the difficult decision to turn back time and get her clear of danger and save her life. There have been difficult times in my life that I might have put this power into effect to change, but you can only live life one way in reality, and this is the way I’ve had to live mine.
Filmmaker Richard Donner directed Superman, whose claim to fame was previously The Omen, in 1976. He was lucky to have the privilege to direct Superman, whom I don’t think had received a screen treatment for a very long time. The character came to life marvellously under the direction of Donner and, of course, with the portrayal by Reeve. It is a funny and strange film that turned out quite well.
If I could turn back time, I might, but I know it would have consequences on the events in my life, and so it would have to be done with care.
My friend Ryan, made fun of me for wearing colorful new socks, in junior high. We weren’t friends long after he began that. It was, I think ,the year 1990.
Today is Barack Obama’s Birthday.
I’m sure his socks were impeccable.
About MTV
It made us or broke us when it came to the ladies. After all, for a boy that age, the playbook was only beginning to be written.
TV
Beginning August 1, 1981
August 1, 1981, New York, New York, United States
August 1 this year, 2021, observes the fortieth anniversary of the debut of MTV. I think this anniversary deserves more of a mention than it is receiving.
Britpop has a canon. Why not MTV?
It probably does, but not one that I hear of. It fascinates me.
Let me conjecture.
MTV
A TV station that is called Music Television, yet never plays any music.
Jane: really wanna check out the latest Iggy video I heard it was tight, turn on MTV and see if it’s on.
Erica: Bitch please, that network hasn’t played music videos since 1999. You will have to settle for that Vevo horse shit instead.
by MrHobbes69 June 26, 2014
I digress.
Halloween is the going entry for forty years of horror, I think
In movies, awfulness like the Halloween films, the movies that started with the executive exertion of John Carpenter, additionally forty years in, presently, readies a tremendous measure of conversation. It is hard to, even for me, an imaginative fellow myself might I add, to understand why there are so many timelines for the same story. That town Haddonfield, Illinois, shot in South Pasadena and Hollywood, California, never will be forgotten.
Star Wars is the clear contender for forty years of the best sci-fi
We haven’t quite got forty years from Star Wars Episode IV and its characteristic representation on YouTube. The representation of Star Wars on Youtube is positively immense; in terms of canon, the official entries for a universe like George Lucas’ Star Wars is truly stellar. The sequel trilogy crashed twice, back at Christmas 2017, and again for Christmas 2019.
Sometimes people hate on it; more often people love it, and it is quite frequently identified as the most significant storytelling to certain people’s childhood that to retcon the story is like a sacrilege.
Star Wars Episode IX
Vader threw the Emperor down an immense circular shaft in the recesses of deep space and the Rebel Alliance exploded Star Wars Return of the Jedi’s Death Star in 1983. Somehow in 2021, the Emperor returned amid the wreckage of the Death Star to battle both Kylo Ren, performed by Adam Driver, and Rey, acted by Daisy Ridley.
It looked like a climactic explosion that took the Death Star out of existence at the end of Return of the Jedi. Did wreckage persist?
1980’s sequel Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back turned forty last year, and at that time it got a considerable mention on their YouTube channel, and everywhere else on the Internet. One night lately I watched Empire Strikes Back for the first time in twenty-five years, right at home on Disney+. Right at home, I might add.
Superman is another enduring and innovative franchise
The Superman movies began in 1978 and following revivals like the 90s series Smallville, and the 2006 film Superman Returns, two years after Superman actor Christopher Reeves died, Superman returned in a big way for Batman vs. Superman, and in the Justice League films. Like Zod and his cohorts escaping their near-permanent imprisonment for Superman II in 1980, Superman was lucky to defeat them. RIP to Superman director Richard Donner (finished 1978).
MTV was an interesting journey. The 1970s are recognized as a time when privilege, gay rights and ecological developments contended with the Watergate embarrassment, the energy emergency and the continuous Vietnam War.
The eighties were a novel time for design, music, and film. During the 1980s, MTV was instrumental in advancing entertainers like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, who played in turn.
For fun, I put on about twenty-five songs that were in the MTV catalogue in ’81. I’m unsure Lou Reed was completely prepared for how MTV would change music. Even come 2021, I order the MTV TV channel, a retro channel to round out the mix of programming I get from communications provider Cogeco. Tell me who’s boss, baby…
Funny fright flick Ghostbusters is making a return
I usually enjoy ties to the past. For instance, come October, Ghostbusters Afterlife is set to shake up crowds. The 80s, some might say, was the best decade ever.
Ghostbusters rocked comedy starting in 1984 when it received its theatrical release. Funny dialogue and plot devices plus the supernatural theme and special effects make it a great movie.
Back to the Future is a heavy hitter
I couldn’t say whether Back to the Future is a kids’ film, yet the typical rating for films is that C8 demonstrates a film or TV or game that is for children who ought to have effectively arrived at the age of eight. I think that’s what Back to the Future is rated. I again watched the scene when Doc Brown explains, to Marty McFly, that the inventor, Doc Brown, has built a time machine inside a DeLorean sports car.
It is droll. It enjoyed a resurgence in Season 3 of the Netflix series Stranger Things.
It feels to me like Batman never left
I think Batman in 1989 was rated PG, meaning that the parents of underage kids attending the movie must have their parents’ to put the experience of watching the PG movie into a family context. Pondering that is one explanation I once in a while lament the choice to avoid considering a youngster.
I was captivated by Batman as a twelve-year-old, and I envisioned turning into a reprobate like The Joker. I was able to read some of the more adult Batman comics that were in print and successfully selling at the time.
The Killing Joke is a great story. So is Batman: Year One, which is a series of issues, in Detective Comics, “rebooting” the origin story of Batman, although I don’t know honestly if “reboot” was a coined word in the eighties… I must be too young…
I remained interested in the second and third movies in the Batman franchise. 1995’s Batman Forever is underestimated, I think. The popular opinion of Gotham, now on Netflix, is that it is a great TV series, and I agree that Gotham is superb.
Lou Reed’s song A Perfect Day is in the Gotham series when the Penguin is coming into his own…
The music
Lou Reed delivered perhaps the worst music of his career
I enjoy it. Albums like Legendary Hearts and Mistrial, the video presence of Lou Reed, now older and more mellow one might say (especially if you have heard Reed’s remarks on the Take No Prisoners double-LP during the introduction to one of his Velvet Underground songs), demonstrates a personality that by now is so recognizable that it is somewhat lackluster in the face of what MTV was doing.
Was Reed a great dancer? He certainly was footloose. He employed longtime Velvets devotee Robert Quine for a new guitar presence on 1982’s The Blue Mask and nominally again for 1983’s Legendary Hearts, scornfully mixing him out of the finished album while retaining his name on the album jacket.
Andy Warhol remained an active presence
Warhol is of course a legend and known to buy whatever goodie did interest him, appearing often on MTV before his untimely death in 1987.
NYC began to evince itself, apart from its excellent theatre and theatrical politics, a city well-represented in the media, which some days depicted its Burroughs as havens for fiendish, delirious, magnificent drug addicts and other homeless. The Naked Lunch is a 1959 novel by American essayist William S. Burroughs. I am not sure Lou Reed did enough to identify himself as that “other” Godfather, however, well-reviewed his 1982 LP The Blue Mask was received. “Take the blue mask down from my face and look me in the eye…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHOBZixJOtg
The addict William Lee takes on different assumed names, from the U.S. to Mexico, in the long run to Tangier and the illusory Interzone. His excursion begins in the U.S. where he is escaping the police looking for his next fix.
The novel was remembered for Time’s “100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005”.¹
Images of street life in the Big Apple
Suddenly a definition of music culture was ready and available to all who might pursue an interest in it. It is amazing what happened in the 1980s around the world and I start to feel stunned should I probe into it. I am so sorry about 9/11.
Music by itself is pretty cheap
MTV was 24/7, and the most I ever made out of possibilities for 24/7 were somewhat hampered by a shortage of comfortable space. I had days that I watched late-night cable TV with an absence of proper audio in favor of music recordings. There could have been possibilities.
While rock music is one of the electric things in the world, we enjoy it in controlled, cool environs, not the great outdoors… with rare exceptions. Someone with a passion for outdoor festivals could speak to you about it.
Remove it to the littlest club, and you have an intimacy that is unmatched, speaking generally, between artist and patrons. The result is like love.
The aftermath. The result imperial
When the restraint against more adult themes came to an end, films that previously had entertained fierce legends about the sights on camera, as with The Texas Chain-saw Massacre depicting Ed Gein chasing and slaughtering people.
In the interim, grim scary movies caused much displeasure against chaste and, dare I say, sane members of society. Whether to put the seeds of rebellion amid the reels of one-dimensional characterizations and poorly-plotted forgettable mire, there was so much box office to be had with films that sunk little previous investment and returned fortunes at the box office.
The devil won, dare I say.
The “dome” crowning these indulgences served another purpose, to elevate what remained of quality endeavours high up on the landscape. For entrants unwilling to descend to the depths of hell but not glorious enough to reach the upper echelon, the spread of lowbrow crime films began like spurts of blood from bullet holes to dot the landscape, forming what should amount to a canon of disreputable fun, if there isn’t such a canon in place already the scope of which is unknown to me. Sometimes it is the best-laid plans of men that curtail our best effort…
A shallow foothold, youth culture was strong as it ever had been, a generation following the sons and daughters of the dawn of love, in a morass to excel at the continuing breakdown of norms and conventions while enjoying the best that the beginning of the triumph of art in the hands of the masses would bring.
Art would soon be disposable, and yet we still have MTV…
The radio format remains consistent. The composition of the song goes a little unchanged, despite the efforts of gifted upstarts who would challenge it. What dictated tastes to the new unwashed was the resale of the same values as what just came before, coupled with the Renaissance of everything new and cool, everything under the sun.
Before long it was soon not even the twentieth century anymore. Time kept running like a river.
Despite everything that came and went about the shape of the media that housed music, the venues that assembled and entreated it, MTV remained like a light on the house of TV. If there was a certain kind of hipster in the house, it was a reasonable certainty that MTV would be there as well. There was no comparable TV channel that could effectively replace MTV.
It proved enduring.
Like a ray of light cast from a pier to the tides under darkness, MTV remains a go-to for information, like who’s who and what it takes to be a part of the culture, and for the hipster that valued the influences of the past recast anew and now again relevant, a weave of customs that never left you, that had never gone away. It remains for you to groove to, to think a little about and to ignore when necessary.
You are the controller; the best of the best is at your command. It is a game of electric crosshairs and you are the sergeant-at-arms.
Paper cups
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References
¹ Lacayo, Richard. “All-TIME 100 Novels”. Retrieved 15 November 2016 – via entertainment.time.com.
What are the professional values of your boss like?
The HBO Max director’s cut of the film Justice League revived the popularity of DC superheroes, Batman, Superman, The Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and other heroic entities.
If you are a fan, you may have passionate feelings about the theatrical version of the film, and the miniseries.
But would your boss expect you to know anything about the Justice League?
Superheroes
Maybe your boss is like Michael Scott from TV’s The Office. While Michael Scott impersonates famous standup comedians, maybe your boss wants you to be the hero of your own story. When I had supervisors coach me on the job, they would try to get me feeling good about the work.
When I was a salesman at a computer business, my own supervisor liked to say to me, “You’re the boss.”
Superman
Dishearteningly, the film Man of Steel from 2013 was the main Superman film for some time, not doing a lot to restore the name of the DCEU- – there was no continuation of the film series until Batman v. Superman: I don’t know that everyone needed Superman to kick the bucket at Batman’s hands. It just isn’t that nice an idea.
2013 Man of Steel Set in the DCEU
2016 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Set in the DCEU.
Now Justice League in 2021 is a four-hour miniseries that could make your emotional investment in the DCEU feel worthwhile again.
In the years 2007 and in 2008, I did my best to hold down work. One day, my sales team held a draw to boost company morale, where supervisors awarded prizes for good work.
Some of the prizes were movie units on DVD. A couple of them went into my coat pocket: I won them, Godzilla with actor Matthew Broderick and 16 Blocks with actors Bruce Willis and Mos Def.
All our bosses wanted from us was sales calls so that we could say we had earned the sales contract.
Back about the time I won those movie DVDs, my friend on the job, whose name is Brandon, pointed out snidely one day that I was not the film buff I should have been. He must have been having a bad day.
“Do you know how many people are doing that?”
Yeah.
Today, years later, I thought I would point out nine things at work that you can only learn if you have at least a passing familiarity with the film Justice League.
Budget
The budgets for Batman v. Superman and Justice League were immense. At work, I suppose it’s about how much money is being spent on the job at hand, like payroll, upkeep, amortization, and other employment details. It may not be Superman’s Arctic Fortress where you work, but if the lights are on, and you’re putting money in your pocket, you’re alright.
Cast and crew
Who’s your supervisor? Who are the day people (or the night people, if you are one of the day people)? Who is greeting people?
Remarkable positions. I wonder if Bruce Wayne handled conference calls when he was kicking it in the Batcave.
Costume
Everyone in Justice League has a sensational, superhero-worthy costume.
I certainly didn’t, but we didn’t have to dress in a suit and tie. For fiscally-challenged sales reps, like myself, what is the dress code? How are we to match?
Do we get a casual Friday?
I wasn’t under much demand to dress smartly, but I gave it a go.
Self-Promotion
Like a winning free ticket, for instance, how do you get thinking outside the box? Do we need to be guarded with our business, or can we extol once in a while how great it is that we’re in the trenches doing it? How liberal can we be with feedback from the ruling class?
How sensitive are the bigwigs in terms of our rabble-rousing?
Would Lois Lane get the headline?
Transmission
Alfred at Wayne Manor
Do we have to put away our phones while we work? Is it too much to ask that we get to multitask?
Would Alfred the Butler look after more than just dusting the modest decor of Wayne Manor?
Is there valet parking for our Batmobiles?
Personal computer knowledge
We proved in the interview that we know the system. We know the important commands.
I feel like I am frequently bewildered, despite my competence as a blogger. Dealing with gadgetry is a proper skill, your Batbelt, your communication lasso, and in all sincerity I raise a glass to you, my friend, reading this, having a knack for that. I just know it and between you and me, I believe it.
I don’t think spear-wielding Aquaman is too high-tech.
Musical score
Any chance you can wear just one earbud? That doesn’t have anything to do with the Justice League, but it could make work more tenable with a bit of music to enjoy.
The book The Four-Hour WorkWeek by Tim Ferriss recommends you play music any time you like. It’s the tried-and-true bestseller about productivity.
Popcorn in the aisle
Some people swear by microwave popcorn. Popcorn and an excursion to the films is a popular customs. It is strange, though, if, when at work, someone cooks popcorn in the staff kitchen.
When that happens, the aroma of popcorn catches uncool people unaware and there are both envy and odd recollections of being at the movies and experiencing happiness and satisfaction if you ask me what is happening there. I was never invited to get in on the buttery treat.
Sequel
Any possibility we’ll be back? What about our friends? Any shot at getting more and better work, whether or not a steadfast go?
And you need it. I’m talking to you, the DCEU.
You’re welcome to like the post, follow the blog, and/or comment.
For several years I have been lending time to my dad’s business, a cemetery which has been since attended by myself, my father, and as well an uncle of mine, and another friend of the family.
The International Day of Democracy is today, 15 September. I am curating my Conventional Wisdom post.
May 13, 2018
The Internet bid RIP to Margot Kidder, the sixty-nine-year-old actress who was Lois Lane for the seventies and eighties’ Superman films. For 1978’s film Superman, Kidder played Lois Lane near perfectly.
I have also watched a few random episodes of Krypton, the prequel TV series for the Superman universe. The design is quite appealing and the ideas are complex but interesting.
15 September
While there are no more new Discover Challenges for WordPress,I wanted to update this post for clarity.
In March I borrowed a box of comic books belonging to a cousin and reflected a touch on those stories that I remembered. It got me catching up on the Innerspace sci-fi news series on Space on cable TV. Reflecting on their launch of the Superman origins series Krypton, one of the hosts of Innerspace in an episode from earlier this winter reflected briefly but pointedly that Man of Steel is a bad movie.
I take it Man of Steel is regarded many times as such and to counter the perception that it isn’t a good retelling of the thousands of Superman comics available in print, I want to include here from Jun 2, 2014, Exploring Man of Steel on YouTube TWITTER ► https://goo.gl/koijhV which is a go-to for a review in detail about a maligned film.
Henry Cavill in Man of Steel (2013)
It is now known that Henry Cavill will no longer appear in the film role of Superman. You can hear thoughts on Man of Steel in a brief discussion piece about Superman and the rest of the DC Comics Universe. Henry Cavill Leaves Superman
I have also become aware of the Geeks + Gamers YouTube channel, and I am including here their challenge of the effectiveness of Man of Steel as a Superman film and how the channel doesn’t even believe, at the time of upload, that Henry Cavill is through as Superman. It’s against the grain. HENRY CAVILL OUT AS SUPERMAN? THE DCEU IS DEAD TWITTER – https://twitter.com/GeeksGamersCom
Conventional Wisdom
My thoughts on the conventional wisdom of Man of Steel are presented here.
This week’s WordPress Discover Challenge presents the trial of posting a different point of view than what other people have, whatever POV. This appealed to me because I thought of Superman, as a matter of fact, from the films of the nineteen seventies and eighties about the beloved comic book character, and also from the 2013 film Man of Steel, which is what specifically I have a different interpretation to write about than the casual interpretation it often gets otherwise (a great superhero film).
On Christmas Eve last year, December 24 of 2016, late in the afternoon my younger brother and his son went with me to my parent’s house for dinner and the Christmas tree. My brother let me know that the two had been in the middle of complaining about Superman, in the movies, and I was surprised that they have this opinion, which is not the same opinion I have. We’re very different people from one another.
Man of Steel presents the Superman character as an alien, which I know he is, as in the story of his life told in the 1978 film about him (titled Superman, naturally). However, whereas in that film Superman is a very human character, who blends in with his peers quite easily, in Man of Steel (2013) Superman is almost an alien monster, considering that while he looks human, he has the mentality of an outsider. This is clear, for example, when he only takes his job as a reporter for the Daily Planet at the conclusion of the film (spoiler), which is unlike Superman (1978), in which his entire time in Metropolis is spent in the alter ego of Clark Kent, a reporter alongside Lois Lane.
What I think about Man of Steel is that Man of Steel is the story of an alien creature living among humans whose fate is to help the human race. This is like how in ancient Egypt, Egyptian workers built enormous pyramids, which were probably tombs for their leaders once deceased (the Pharaohs).
It is unknown how the ancient Egyptians were able to build these pyramids because there is no evidence that the Egyptians of ancient times had technology which could have made building those pyramids possible. It is a great mystery.
Les Anderson
One theory is that, as in history when impossible feats were accomplished without the benefit of technology, alien forces could have visited Egypt and helped the Egyptians build the pyramids with the help of the alien people’s technology. It is a popular theory among people who believe in life among the stars (Erich von Daniken is one scholar who argues that the theory is based on the real history, of Ancient Egypt).
Given that the pyramids would have been nearly impossible to build without technology, consider that aliens visited and lent a helping hand, with an interest in contributing to the prosperity of human beings (as a species). Man of Steel is a little like that because Superman is an alien living among humans helping preserve the human race from dangers that are inherent to people encountering alien creatures.
Wil Stewart
What I think is that when Superman reveals himself to human authorities, when he is given the ultimatum to surrender to his enemies, it is noted that Superman may be a hazard for human folk merely because his body may contain a disease that could be inflicted on humans. I say this because it is not immediately the fear of Superman’s powers as a superhero that bothers the authorities, or the details of Superman’s past in the Kansas town of Smallville, but whether Superman’s body could spread illness and death to the humans who meet him. I don’t think that the Egyptians meeting aliens who gave them help to build the pyramids, stopped their alien benefactors to question whether they would become sick from contact.
What I am thinking about Man of Steel, is what if the point of Superman’s existence among humans is that he doesn’t succeed at guiding human beings to a better existence? Every time it is questioned if humans in ancient times had visitors from other worlds among them, there is never evidence that the aliens caused devastation and ruin for people of the past.
What if Superman’s role as a visitor to modern-day people of the world demonstrates good intentions on Superman’s part, but poor planning for the man from Krypton that actually reduces the success of people to safely maintain conditions for life around the planet? When you sit down with Man of Steel, consider the possibility that while the strange realities that led the men and women of Ancient Egypt to construct pyramids, in this film, when Superman is battling and causing destruction in both Smallville and Metropolis, this could be the beginning of events that challenge human’s mastery of Planet Earth and undermine them in a way that will end in defeat and downfall. If Superman for once is the alien visitor closest to human beings in his physical form, could he likewise have the kinds of human weaknesses at the end of human’s reign over their blue and green planet?
Every other time in history that aliens might have come to help humans with the growth of their civilizations, are we, at last, to understand that there is no more? However, Superman feels about belonging to the human race, which is clearly passionate, considering the climax of the film when Superman is challenged by his nemesis about how he feels about human life, if Superman is the final alien visitor to Earth, is it because he will eventually destroy us all? That is how I would understand Man of Steel, instead of interpretations that are more along the lines of a visitor from the stars who kindly brings the benefit of his superpowers to help us, folk.
The Korus
Thank you for reading and good luck to you, whatever you do. Take care of yourself as always.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 