The Good, The Bad and The Burgh: My Travels to Pittsburgh Part 6

Ok full disclosure, I walked away from writing these posts in May. I came back today expecting to simply recap my journey back to Green Bay from Pittsburgh on Sunday. Wrong, because Part Five ended on Frida, which means I have all of Saturday to recap and I honestly don;t remember as much as I would like to, but I'm not going to let that deter me. So here we go, the epic conclusion, Part 6.

Goodbye to the Burgh

Saturday March 26, 8 a.m.(ish)
Now we had to wake up early on Saturday because one of our school chums was reading their paper early and as they had come to support us at our readings we would go support them, despite our lack of sleep.

So as I'm writing this I realize I can barely remember what we did that day, we might have gone to Bruegger's bagel for a late breakfast/early lunch but then again it could have been another day. I also might have gone to Dunkin' Donuts, again I can't remember. I definitely did both of those things but I don't remember when. So with a major lack of anything to actually say about what happened during the day on Saturday let's skip ahead to Saturday evening.

Saturday March 26, 7 p.m. (ish)
The weekend culminates in a gala dinner and bigwig speaker. The dinner is very nice everyone gets dressed up and awards are handed out. Some people from St. Norbert won some awards which was actually pretty awesome considering how many people were there, yours truly however walked away empty handed.

Dave Eggers, nice hair

The keynote speaker was a man by the name of Dave Eggers. Dave wrote the screenplays for the films Away We Go and the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. He is also the author of the book Zeitoun about a man who stays behind in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and then helps those stranded with the use of his kayak.

However the most interesting thing Eggers shared (fun sidenote: he apparently demanded an ungodly amount of money and a first class ticket for his appearance) was his work setting up writing centers around the country. From San Francisco to New York Eggers has established open writing centers in impoverished areas to help children develop writing skills. The centers are free and generate revenue by sharing space with a specialty store. For example: The San Francisco center is dedicated solely to selling pirate themed items, while one in New York sells time travel equipment.

Overall it was one of the better lectures I had witnessed during the trip, and other people seemed to like him too given the line that formed around the ballroom waiting for his autograph.

However I, and some of my other compatriots went down to the hotel bar (it was still before 11!) and I discovered I do not like scotch (at least not from the rail). Then we called it a night because we had to get up early again to catch our flights out.

Sunday March 27 8 a.m. (ish - get it? I don't actually remember what time)
We got up and got out, a non creepy concierge helped grab us a cab to the airport, a Chrysler 300 with a leather interior. Unfortunately I did have to pay for this cab ride.

We aited to board out plane, this time to Detroit, and found two of our professors and a couple of our schoolmates would also be on it. The flight took off and landed without too much trouble.

We made our way through the Detroit airport, passing through this lovely tunnel.

Trippy, no?

This flight was delayed however and then we had to get a new plane because the one we were supposed to fly on was broken. They gave us some coupons for 50 dollars off our next flight (which according to one of my profs who tried to use it, don't actually work, thank you for flying Delta.) and five dollar voucher to use in the airport. Most people went to some hot dog place, but I didn't think I could stomach a dog so I bought some pretzels gum and orange juice.

We finally got to board and got back Green Bay safely. I dug out my car and then went to Culver's where all my troubles were rewarded with the new Three Cheeseburger: two patties three different slices of cheese, all delicious.

Oh my, well hello there

And there you have it, eight months and six posts later my trip to Pittsburgh and back.

Let's break it down real quick so that my titles to these posts make sense:

The Good

• Diverse music in bars
• Sam Adams on tap pretty much everywhere
• The South Side

The Bad

• Poor travel conditions
• Early bar close time
• Lack of good/interesting places to eat in downtown area

The Burgh

•  Coleslaw on sandwiches
• Strange obsession with dinosaurs
• The Penguins

Hit the comments with your comments.

Where I have been, and where I am going

Hello and welcome back.

It's been a while, but here I am still alive and kicking. It's been about three months since my last post, and many of you may be wondering:

Where has he been, what has he been doing, what secrets is he hiding, etc, etc.

To answer the first: College, the whole time, minus a brief jaunt to Madison and Minneapolis which we may or may not get to.

To answer the second: A lot.  Two words I wished were one, and hoped that by simply spelling them as such for most of my life, someone would finally give up correcting me. (A failed experiment to say the least.) You see that little slogan on the right there that says " Just an average guy with too much time on his hands"? Turns out that second part isn't as true as I had envisioned.Again we can get into specifics later but for now let's just say I have been very busy, and also there has been very little striking my interest to write about. Writing emails and press releases and taking notes and correcting papers all day is exhausting, but I feel I am on the mend, or at least sucking it up a little. So we'll try and start this again. I won't make any promises on what I'll write about because I never seem to come through, but I will tell you what I'd like to write about and then we can see if I follow through on any of it.

As for the third: Many, and someday I might share them.

And as for the etc., etc.: you're just going to need to be more specific.

Here's what I'd like to write about:
1. Despite having taken the trip 8 months ago, I'd really like to finish up my Pittsburgh posts especially since my blog partner in crime: Raymond, writer of The Hot and Bothered Effect (see sidebar) has made a claim that he would like to contrast my opinions of the city with his own. (Although he has also seemed to take a hiatus from his writing as well.)

2. I'd like to do a little halfway followup to my SNL Wishlist I posted back in May, specifically how I'm doing on my host predictions (spoiler: not well).

3. I'd also like to followup on what I've been watching on Netflix, because I know that's what you're really here for.

4. Might profile another one of my friends again, although that was kind of lame I think.

We'll see what else happens, the posting of the pop-culture stuff got a little dull, but I'm certainly not going to stop. However I got some more positive feedback when I do more personal posts so I'll probably throw out a couple of those too.

It's all about "feeling it". You get that writing bug and then you spew it out. That's what I'm doing, spewing. We'll see how long it lasts.

Come along with me, hit the comments tell me what you want me to say, I just might listen.

And now a dangerous discussion about race and pop culture icons

For those of you who do not follow such things as closely as I do there are two race related developments in the world of superhero culture in the last two days. The first being the big reveal that the new Spider-man is half back and half Hispanic teenager named Miles Morales. Now don;t worry, this isn't the real Spider-man, but the Ultimate version of the Marvel character. What is an Ultimate Spiderman you ask? Well you don't really care, and it's not really important, since the real Spider-man, Peter Parker, the original is still alive and well and webslinging like he always does. This fact of course did not stop people (read, web commenters) from becoming enraged that such an iconic character had been so drastically changed. Now that's all I'm going to say about that because as I said, it's not the real Spider-man that has changed, and a little diversity never hurt anyone.

The new Spidey (kinda)

Lawrence Fishburne

The second issue arose when it was announced the Lawrence Fishburne (Morpheus from The Matrix) would be taking on the role of Perry White in the new Superman movie. Perry White, surprisingly is a WASPy character, and Lawrence Fishburne is black. This has upset some people who feel beloved character is being altered so that a film that would have a predominantly white cast can appear more politically correct. There are two sides to this argument.

Perry White

One is that this is true (to an extent), and the other is that this is bullshit.

Before going any further I'd like to direct you to this link. This is the article that inspired this post, as did the comments that went along with the article. Normally, I avoid reading comments at the end of articles or posts (unless it's one of my articles or posts) because I feel they do little to add to what has been said in the article. However my curiosity got the better of me, and although there were only 14 comments when I first read, it was enough to make me a little upset that the race of an actor is still such a problem to some people.

Now in Mr. Frannich's article, he makes some good points, as do some (read few) people in the comments section. The main issue is that these are not real people we are discussing. However, this does not necessarily mean that race is not an issue. A someone pointed out, they would not cast a white male in the role of Luke Cage or Blade. However, the point this commenter misses is that those characters were created specifically for an African-American audience in response to a lack of such characters in mainstream comics. It would be disrespectful to cast a white male in either of those roles. But here's the thing about Perry White:
1. It's Perry White, if we're listing significant Superman characters, he probably falls somewhere towards the bottom ten, behind Ma and Pa and just ahead of let's say, well somebody else. I find it hard to believe there is this much uproar over a character whose screen time will probably amount to about fifteen minutes (if not less).

[Sidenote: I really shouldn't be surprised though since the same thing happened when Idris Elba was cast has someone named Heimdall in Thor. And while, it was a little weird to see an African-American in a Norse dimension, Elba was badass, and owned the character who most people  didn;t even know in the first place.]

2. Perry White has been around since issue seven of Action Comics a time when almost almost all comic characters were white, and if they weren't the were an offensive stereotype of another race (generalize much? yes, yes I do). A African-American could not hold the position as editor of a major newspaper when the character of Perry White was created.

Here's my main point, race is not important to a character as long as it is not a defining aspect of the character. And I think most people would have a hard time arguing that for Perry White. I look back to last summer when Donald Glover was simply looking for a chance to audition for the role of Peter Parker. He knew he wouldn't get the part, but he just wanted a chance to audition, to at least start breaking down this unrealistic barrier that has been set-up that says character's must play to their race. It's funny that no one has a problem that we have a Brit playing Batman, Superman, and Spider-man now. Really there's no reason for them to be white males. The fact that they are white has nothing to do with what makes them great characters. This is not to say there aren't certain characters that need to have their ethnicity respected. Take Wolverine for example, whose Canadian...ness(?) is an essential part of what defines his character's history.

I'm not trying to start a personal crusade here, just trying to let people know we need to chill out about some of these issues. Personally I'd love to someday see a black Batman or Spiderman or James Bond for that matter. And to these small steps with minor characters will slowly work their way inward, until we are simply left with the actor or actress that will bring the most to the role.

Agree? Disagree? Hit the comments and let me know if I'm hitting the mark or way off base.

My Outrageous Post-Graduate Plan Vol. 1

As my graduation slowly/quickly approaches, I will undoubtedly keep thinking of ways to get rich quick, not work, or work minimally and make a lot of money. As these ideas pop into my head I'll share them with you, and you can give me some pointers, sway me one way or the other, or join in my delusions.

Volume 1: The Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail is approx. 2100 miles, stretches across fourteen states, and takes between 5-7 months to complete. In other words, the perfect thing to do after spending nine months in northern Wisconsin completing my education.
In all honesty I don't know what I want to do with my life. Do I want to grad school? Maybe. Do I want to go into the work force right away? Maybe.
Now let me be honest about something else. I love America. I love everything about it, but I especially love the history, and various nation parks that this country has, and I would like nothing more than to see it all.

The Rationale
Now why exactly would I want to go do this? There are a number of reason's the first being that once after I graduate would be the only time in my life where I would be able to take this trip. I wouldn't have a job to worry about, or bills to pay (kind of), or any other responsibilities that come with being a citizen of the real world. I wouldn't have a wife or children (fingers crossed) that I would feel guilty about leaving for six months just so I could go on a hike.

In addition since I don't know what I want to do with my life, I feel this would be a good opportunity to (as cliche as it sounds) find myself. I need to discover who I am when I am on my own. Ive always had people I can rely on, and I am extremely grateful for all the friends and family that have been there for me in good times and bad. However, there is a point where you need to see who you are away from those people, without their influence, without fearing about how you look in their eyes. This would be a good opportunity for self reflection, self discovery, and planning for the future.

The Plan
As I may have mentioned before, I love a good plan, and if I were to actually do this, there would be a lot of planning involved. First thing that would need to be planned is a budget. A rough estimate would put my expenses at about $5000. That's a significant chunk of change. The major expenses will be food as I travel from Maine down to Georgia, which I forgot to mention. See the trail runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Most people hike from South to North, but because of the length of the journey they start in April and follow the warm weather North. I would probably start in Maine and go south for two reasons. One, I would have to start at the earliest on Tuesday May 15th, and at the latest I would want to start on Wednesday May 16th. The Maine park is closed to thru-hikers (people who hike the trail the whole way through without interruption) after October 15, which means I would have exactly five months to hike the trail. As a first timer I don't think I could do it that quickly, plus it would hinder the enjoyment of the experience if I was working against a clock. In addition I'd want to be moving towards where the warm weather would be sticking around, not going to where it would be getting cold first. So, North to South it is.

Where was I?

Budget. Right.

So five thousand. I'd rather not spend that much, but a minimal cost looks like at least $4000. Why so much? Well first of all there's a travel expense, as much as I'd like to drive out to Maine and leave my car in some shady parking lot for six months, probably not a good idea. So I fly. From Green Bay, I can connect in Detroit and from there fly to Bangor, Maine for the lowlow price of $250 dollars. Then I don't need to worry about a return trip for another six months, that one probably from Atlanta. However, as close as Bangor is to my starting point, it is still a two hour drive away. So that'll be an expensive cab ride I'm sure.

Then there is the gear. I'll need a backpack, and a tent, and a sleeping bag, and food. I keep thinking I'll need two water bottles. I want to get some type of Swiss Army Knife, but there is also this survival gear in a sardine can which looks pretty neat. Then there is a $175 GPS thing that lets people know where you are, which I think would be handy, and KellyMarie would appreciate knowing where I am. Plus boots, I need a good pair of boots, and flashlight would be helpful, because it will most likely be dark at times.

Everything you could ever need

Now I said I would need a tent, but that's a case of better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it, BECAUSE the Appalachian Trail has wicked awesome lean-tos set up along the trail about a days hike from each other that are free to sleep in.

I mean, doesn't that just look fun?

I mean c'mon that's way better than a tent anyway. But still apparently people get tempted into going into to town and spending a night in a motel because of things like "running water", "flush toilets",  and "showers". But I am a man, and I will be a man in the wilderness, so that stuff wont bother me. But really, those are some serious questions I have. Like where will I shower/bathe/clean myself? And where can I do laundry along this trail? Because laundry I think will be the most serious problem. First of all I need to pay for the laundry, so chalk that up as another expense. Second I need to plan how many clothes I'm bringing along. One piece of info I read said plan on resupplying every 10-14 days. I can handle that. but will there be a laundry mat evenly spaced out every 10-14 days? and then do I need to bring 10-14 pairs of boxers, and 20-28 pairs of socks (because another thing I read advised wearing 2 pairs of socks while hiking to avoid blisters)? and then how big of a backpack am I gonna need? and I haven't even gotten to my shorts, shirts, a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt to be safe. Which then brings me around to food, a sleeping bag and a tent. plus soap, toothpaste, and other luxuries. One of the things I read said your pack should be 25-40 lbs max, an obviously the lighter the better. I don't know about you, but to me it already sounds like I'm pushing it.

However, that's where my first two purchases come in, two books about planning a thru-hike totaling roughly $26 (start the running tally). They will come in the mail on Tuesday next week, I believe. I'll come back with an update on how helpful they are.

And speaking of mailing. There is an issue with changing seasons, meaning that while I'm hiking the seasons will change. This means a wardrobe change. Which means I'll need someone to send me a new wardrobe when the weather gets colder. It's very expensive to ship things. And apparently people are always sending themselves things along this trail that they pick up at the local post offices. This is another area I need to more thoroughly research. There are two ways to do it. One to send packages at different intervals of your trip. The other, to have a package called a "bounce box" where you simply have all the items you need in a box that you keep shipping ahead of you, switching out what you need from your pack as you go. An interesting idea, but again, pricing issue.

Also, contacting people is also a concern. I would debate weather or not to bring a cell phone along. I would assume there are many places that I would get no reception so having one would be pointless. I also don't know how I would charge the damn thing as I'm sure there are not an abundance of outlets on the trail. On the other hand, it's always good to have in case of emergencies, and when I did get to a place with reception it would be nice to be able to call people. I think maybe the best solution would be to get one of those pay as you go phones, but again I need to look into it more.

The Aftermath
This all being said, I would still need to find a job or go to grad school once this was over. That leads to two possible options. One, simply start grad school at the beginning of 2012 (although I need to see if that's a viable option). The other option is the job. This would mean returning home after my trip (which I'm sure KellyMarie and Walt would be thrilled about), and trying to get a retail job for the holiday season while I apply for "real jobs" that I can begin in 2012.

So there it is, my grand post-graduate plan. It's the first of many, maybe I'll throw up the other one next week, and after that I'll post them as they come to me.

Thoughts? Feelings? Suggestions? Outrageously uncalled for racist remark? Hit the comments, and while I said I was gonna do this solo, I'd welcome the company (I'm looking at you Ray) if anyone else is up for it. And to be honest it's never safe to travel alone.

Let's Take a Minute to Talk About Fear

Let's preface this post with a short explanation about why I use "let's" a lot in these posts. According to my Business and Professional Speaking professor, Dr. Hutchinson, the use of words (or in this case contractions) that use words like "us" and "we" increases the verbal immediacy between the speaker (me) an the audience (you). Verbal immediacy meaning that we are in the same boat together, it makes me more relatable, and puts me on the same level as you. Let me know how that's working.

This post is going to take place in two parts: The first will be about an experience today. The second will be a reprint of something I wrote back in November while reading Stephen King's It.

Earlier today I found a great new site called listverse.com. Listverse is a blog that has an infinite number of Top 10 lists ranging from the historical to the pop-cultural (which in my mind are pretty much the same thing but that's another post). The neat thing about the site, besides the boundless avenues to venture down, is that fact that a large number of the lists are user generated.

One of the last lists I perused today was the Top 10 Unbearable Phobias. This list being comprised of those phobias that would be the most difficult to live with. Among them Ambulophobia - the fear of walking or standing. Decidophobia - the fear of making decisions. And Somniphobia - the fear of sleep. It would be easy to make light of any of these, but there is a certain terror involved in even thinking that these phobias are affecting people.

Everyone is afraid of something. A common fear is death. Allow maybe it's better qualified as dying. That is the long drawn out process of dying from an illness, or some other reason. Death is too quick, maybe it's a fear of not existing, but then again, if you don't exist, neither do your fears.

I'm afraid of getting cancer. This probably stems from both of my grandfathers getting diagnosed at the same time, and one of them dying from it. But I also know two people my age this year that were diagnosed with cancer. That's kind of frightening. Seeing healthy people your own age getting sick.

I know a lot of people have recently said they are scared of thunderstorms in the last couple of days, which I think is kind of silly but I will try and be understanding.

People say we can't let our fears control us, but that can often be difficult. Sometimes it' hard to be rational. It's hard to not let fear overwhelm you. Usually we can pull ourselves out of it, to only let that fear consume us for a little while before breaking back through the surface. Or we take the Jack Shephard method to fear, and if you know what that is, we can be friends, and I'll let you stitch up my stomach.

Speaking of which, I think most people have a fear of being alone. I certainly do. Loneliness is not a fun thing. It can be nice to have time to yourself, sure, but deep down, we are social and intimate beings. We want to be around people and we want to be able to share with people. We want to share our hopes, dreams, feelings, frustrations, and desires. We want to be fulfilled by having someone we can share the burden of life with. I don't mean that in a depressing way, like life sucks or anything. I mean it in a hopeful, uplifting way, and well, I probably shouldn't have used a word like burden then. Hopefully you understand.

I'm gonna close out the first part of this post by disclosing one of my irrational fears. Every time I cross train tracks I have a fear of being hit by a ghost train. If you know the name for that, or want to make one up, hit the comments.

Now Part 2, titled: On Fears & the Like (11/7/10)
When I was a child, I feared two things more than anything else: the wind and aliens.

The wind was silly and was a fear I outgrew by kindergarten. I have three distinct memories of
that fear:

The first was when I was 4. I ran around a neighbors van in endless circles. My neighbor's mother, aware of my fear, asked if I was doing this because I was afraid the branches above me would fall on me. I told her no. The real reason was that when I ran I created a wind against my face. This made me oblivious to the natural wind. It helped me deal with my fear.

When I was 5, I was being babysat by a friends grandmother who had a hill in her backyard. Being winter, my friend, his sister, and I were supposed to go sledding. But high winds were blowing the snow around, and instead I spent the day inside coloring. This may be the first memory I have of letting my fear dictate what I do.

My final memory is again at the age of 5 (maybe 6) and my mother forced me to go outside to play. It was a gray, gusty fall day. My biggest trick to avoid playing outside on windy days was to hide in my garage. The garage had hockey sticks and nets, so I could usually get away with playing with those as long as I left the garage door open. However on this day, one of my parents had left their car in the garage. So I stood inside next to the car, which probably would have worked if not for my grandmother's untimely arrival. She pulled up and caught me sitting in the garage, and while I strongly implied I would not like my mother to know I was hiding in there, she ratted me out anyway.

The wind was a fear of the elements, of that which cannot be controlled, of power, or sound. My fear of aliens was quite different.

My fear of aliens came quite suddenly after seeing a blurb for a news story about UFO sightings in Wisconsin cornfields. I didn't know much about aliens, but I knew immediately that I didn't like them. My mother assured me there was no such thing as aliens, and that the story was only on air because it was so close to Halloween. While this appeased me for the moment, the seed had been planted.

I couldn't even watch Star Wars without getting frightened. I recall Jack Nicolson getting killed by a creepy-crawly alien hand in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! Yet at the same time, as much as I hated it, as much as I lost sleep over it, I still wanted to know more about UFOs and aliens.

I had an awful time with my imagination getting away from me (still do). I would have visions of long skinny gray arms, with skinny gray fingers appearing in door frames and beckoning me to follow them.
While most kids are afraid of the monsters under the bed, I was afraid of aliens. Whenever I was asked to go to the basement to get something, I had this idea of glowing gray bodies emerging from the darkness.

I hated it, and I hated the idea of fear. When I go down to that basement I find myslef revisiting those fear. Why? Because our fears never truly leave us. As much as we grow, change, evolve, and mature, we still have that person we were living inside of us.

The alien fear is obviously a fear of the unknown, of things that are different. But it is also a fear of drastic change. Of shattered realities and conceptions of truth. If aliens landed on earth tomorrow everything (most everything) I ever knew or believed to be true would be wrong and I would no longer know where I was.

The ground upon which I would stand would open up and swallow me whole.

But that might just be another fear.

[Narrator's Note: Ok, the second part of this post is kind of weird, and a little depressing, but I was reading It and it was probably about 1 a.m. when I originally wrote this, so clear thinking doesn't really factor into the occasion.]

Go ahead and hit the comments, what are you afraid of?

The Narrator's Negatives: Green Lantern

Narrator's Negatives focuses on pointing out what went wrong, why something was bad, and how those mistakes could have been avoided. Today we draw our attention to the film Green Lantern.

Eyes, those haunting, haunting eyes

This past weekend Green Lantern premiered to scathing reviews and tepid box office receipts. Usually I'm not one to bash a movie I haven't already seen, but in this case I'm making an exception. I'm usually all down for the superhero fare. I went and saw Ghost Rider on opening night, and I own a copy of Daredevil. I'm also a big Ryan Reynolds fan. Remember the show Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. I do, I watched it pretty religiously until it went off the air. (Also on that show, Nathan Fillon, who had a strong fan campaign going to star as Green Lantern before Reynolds got the job, go figure). But from the minute I heard Reynolds would be playing star role as Hal Jordan, something just didn't click. Then came news that the Lantern suit would be completely CGI'd. Then the first image of Reynolds in said suit, all glowy green, with those scary eyes that didn't seem quite connected to his body. Then the trailers started coming out, and again something failed to click, everything was too green, the jokes too lame, and the speech, just couldn't seem to have the impact it should.  Alright I'm drifting a little so let's start to structure this post a little bit, shall we?

Let's start small and work our way up, with the decision to CGI the suit. This isn't the first time this has been done, but it It might be the first time it has been completely done. a good chunk of Spiderman's action is CGI, but we also have a good handful of scenes where the audience knows Tobey Maguire is in that suit. But Chris, what about Iron Man you ask? Well Iron Man is a suit, a full suit, and that is where the advantage lies. Its a metal suit, with defined limitations, and a mask that doesn't reveal any facial expressions. It was believable because of this. The Lantern suit was glowy, why the hell was everything in that movie so glowy? And why was it veiny? I mean it was oddly veiny. Didn't we learn our lesson from rubber nipples? Now we need to CGI muscles and veins on the suit? next time around make the suit real. Yes, it'll probably take an outrageous amount of time to put on, and no the green lantern is probably one of the harder suits to bring to life because it doesn't have too many discernible breaks in the fabric, but someone in Hollywood should be able to figure it out. I recommend whoever did Gaga's meat dress.

Next we need to address the issue of choosing Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern. As one of my friends said, they should have used the black one. For those of you unfamiliar with comics, there are about a half dozen people going by Green Lantern. All with the same powers and galactic connection. The original is not even Hal Jordan. But he is arguably one of the most well known. At least that's what Warner Brothers believed. But the most prominent Green Lantern in the mainstream media in the past ten years has been John Stewart (or as my friend called him, the black one). You might know him best from the Justice League and the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series that ran on Cartoon Network in the early 2000's. This was a great version of the character, and one many of the main demographic this film was targeting, the 16-24 male (demographic may be entirely made up by me). These are the people who grew up watching these cartoons, and that is the version of the character they are most familiar with. Let's think of this another way too, this would have been the first superhero film to feature a prominent African-American as the lead since the Blade franchise died out. Perhaps the reason this film didn't perform, it couldn't stand out in a what was already a crowded summer, because it was just another superhero film with another white pretty boy in the lead.
Which brings me to my next point. One argument for Green Lantern's, at this point we'll call it lack of success rather than outright failure, is that Green Lantern is not a character audiences are familiar with. To which I call bullshit. Audiences know the Green Lantern, what they don't know is Hal Jordan. People know Batman is Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker is Spiderman, and Clark Kent is Superman. Most people couldn't tell you what the Green Lantern's alter ego is.  Now there are two arguments that can be made, first, what about Thor? True most people don't know Thor's human identity (it's something like Blake Donaldson), but the film maker's handled that nicely by simply ignoring this aspect of the character. The other argument what about Iron Man? Again prior to the film's release, I bet many people couldn't tell you that Iron Man and Tony Stark are one in the same. But that's where acting comes in. Downey Jr. took that character and made him cocky, arrogant, and immensely likable. Ryan Reynolds simply decided to be Ryan Reynolds, and not even a fun version of Ryan Reynolds. He played a toned down bland version of Ryan Reynolds who gave lame jokes. He played it without the zest that makes Ryan Reynolds so appealing.

There were other points I wanted to make, but since it took me two days I've forgotten most of the rest. I could go on about the lame supporting cast, and the cartoonish world Reynolds enter whenever he isn't on Earth. But really if you're still reading this, I'm not sure why.

Music Video Mayhem: Matt & Kim "Block After Block"

Matt & Kim's latest music video from their album Sidewalks is for the the track "Block After Block". Matt & Kim's previous music video for Sidewalks featured an epic battle royale between the two bandmates. So how do they up the ante for this one? Turn New York City into what everyone wants it to be, their personal playground. Never has New York City been this much fun, and its mostly because they don't seem to be trying. Lots of movies and TV shows have portrayed New York as a fun place to be, but the characters always have specific destinations in mind, items that they are checking off a list. Matt & Kim manage a to capture a sense of complete spontaneity running through NYC at a break neck pace with an entire crew of jubilant fans in tow. 

What do think a good time you wish you could have? Or does is it a failed run for fun?