Harry Potter and the Sweaty, Piggish Tourists
May 31I kid, I kid.
Universal Resorts out here Orlando way announced this morning that they will be bringing a themed section of Islands of Adventure to life as “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.”
In other words, it’s Universal and not Disney who has landed the fattest golden goose on the market, maybe in the history of theme parks.
I don’t think you can possibly discount the significant impact this development will have on the action here in Central Florida. One would assume Disney has to be kicking themselves in the mouse ass after this one, since the clout of Harry Potter could quickly and easily eclipse the allure of any of their existing intellectual properties and/or attractions.
One would also assume that Disney already has some fairly beefy contingency plans in the works to bring new rides and lands to their parks in an effort to combat the Potter allure.
Then again, Disney often makes incredibly short-sighted and stupid decisions, so it’s possible their plan is simply to release a limited-edition pin and be done with it.
Anyway, I’m excited. Islands of Adventure is a vastly-underrated theme park, assembled by former Disney Imagineers with an incredibly high level of detail and theming. It’s got great rides and immersive lands. So Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, and the rest should be in very good hands.
More ASS, Some LoSH
May 30There’s something bittersweet at the heart of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, a pang of regret mixed with that ugly beast known as “reality”–as if the characters somehow know that their world, their adventures, all that they hold dear is too wondrous and sparkling to last forever.
In a sense, it’s almost a parable for today’s geek–the twenty- or thirty- or forty- or whatever-something, struggling to stay in touch with the stuff they love while juggling assorted “real-life” responsibilities like babies, house payments, laundry, and so on. Or maybe it’s just me–I wonder sometimes. Can I remain in this slightly arrested state forever, where I spend most of my days living as a perfectly “normal” adult in the perfectly “normal” world and sit down before bed each night to paw through moldy superhero comics that are more than two decades old?
Those comics, the Legion of Super-Heroes (Levitz/Giffen era), seem to have a comment to make too–they’re the ultimate Mary Sue concoction, at least they seem that way. It’s a relatively insular superhero and sci-fi mash-up universe, set in the distant future of a definitely insular superhero universe (the DCU, natch). It’s consistently fueled by its own arcane, obscure history and culture, redefining what it means to be an anal-retentive obsessive nerd.
And yet, for a nerd, what a place to go. Everyone’s friends, you know them better than they know themselves, and loyalty rules above all. Even better, there’s some SERIOUS action happening–sex and love aplenty. A pre-teen kid growing up in the sixties through the eighties could do far worse than to aspire to becoming a member of the Legion, and as that kid became a young adult and then adult geek, there must have been tremendous comfort in being able to escape into this elaborate fantasy world every month.
One comic mourning the loss of childhood playthings; another that enshrines them in never-changing amber.
Dumb Dora said, "Goodbye, Charles, you _____."
May 29It’s safe to say that the death of Charles Nelson Reilly at the age of 76 affects me more than most thirtysomethings. Not because I was his illegitimate love child with Brett Somers, but because I was a genuine, unabashed fan–both for his supreme kitsch value in the pantheon of pop culture, and for his exceptional wit and style.
This piece I wrote for a zine several years ago pretty much says it all. It has absolutely nothing to do with geeky pursuits whatsoever, unless you find a straight white male’s love for CNR to be somehow “geeky.” It probably is.
During the summer of 1989, two things fascinated me. One was QVC. The other was Match Game.
ASS, JLA
May 27Or, random thoughts on two random comic book collections I recently read.
All-Star Superman holds up incredibly well when read collected, in a single slab, in a single sitting. In fact, it reads BETTER than the individual issues taken one at a time, and that’s pretty amazing considering that the single issues are still pretty damn good, and that they actually each stand up alone as satisfying one-off nuggets of story.
This is a gorgeous, whimsical, romantic, bittersweet, almost ELEGAIC take on the Man of Steel. It gets praised to the high heavens, but it still doesn’t get praised ENOUGH. Re-reading it in hardcover form made crazy thoughts like “greatest superhero comic book ever” float thru my brain.
Here, Superman is all-powerful…but he’s dying. Lois Lane is head over heels for Superman…but still pissed that he hid his “secret identity” for so long. Jimmy Olsen is a goofball AND far cooler than his “real” DCU counterpart will ever be.
There are contradictions here, people. Complexity. The waning days of a wondrous Metropolis where there are many problems, each more flamboyant than the last, but one constant solution: The Man of Steel. And through it all, Grant Morrison tosses off brilliant whacked-out ideas like pennies in a fountain, and Frank Quitely marries Curt Swan to Jack Kirby, and somehow, it works beyond working.
It is such good shit.
JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, on the other hand, is just a chilling little look into the mind of Dan Didio. I’ve been interested in picking up these collections on the cheap because I’m a sucker for these kind of tribute-esque books. But this trade reads more like a “primer to the rape of Sue Dibny and the murder of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League” than anything else. (And I say this as someone who overall LIKES DC’s current direction, minus the raping and murder, of course.)
Seriously. They should have just called it “Brad Meltzer’s Essential JLA Reading Collection” and been done with it. They’re not BAD stories, per se, but the choices are so transparent that it’s enough to drive a reader batty.
Geek CV: Jon Collins
May 23Have you ever had one of those D&D games? You know the ones. Someone refers to someone else as “just a stupid elf” and suddenly the character sheets are awash in sensitive elven tears. Or a particularly temperamental druid gets all pissed off at the DM for hogging the last piece of pizza (because the DM always gets the last piece of pizza) and it ends with everyone cursing everyone else’s immortal souls to eternal damnation (ie, “As long as we both shall live, you will never be invited to my apartment for Farscape night EVER AGAIN”).
Not that those things have ever happened to me or anything. Ahem.
But for those of you who have intimately experienced the glorious highs and excruciating lows of all things RPG, well, Jon Collins feels your pain. Jon is an awesome geek actor who executive produced and stars in the nerd-friendly flick Fellowship of the Dice. The film is shot mockumentary-style, a la Christopher Guest and The Office, and it follows a cynical young lady (Aimee Graham) looking for a new group of friends. Gamer guy Sanford (Alastair Surprise) invites her to participate in a session of his favorite RPG, Wizards, Warriors and Wyrms, and the experience opens her eyes to a whole new world.
The film is a funny and affectionate look at nerd life and features Jon as Larry, a talkative gamer/aspiring actor with a penchant for yoga. Jon and the other filmmakers will be screening Fellowship at various conventions throughout the summer, so definitely go see it if you can. In honor of this Saturday’s screening at the Gamex Convention in L.A., we asked Jon to respond to a few burning nerdly questions…
Please share your geek CV.
Gamed when I was younger. Had a ton of action figures — still do. I have every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, but for the longest time, I taped them when they aired and I had them in specially-made boxes that a friend of ours put together. [My partner and Fellowship of the Dice writer-executive producer] Tom surprised me [with that] as a birthday present one year. They were labeled and had different pictures of the cast on them. My older brother lives in Italy and he’s a huge Buffy fan, so last year for his birthday, I shipped all the tapes out to him and I kept all the DVDs for myself. I have the Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game. I play the Buffy the Vampire Slayer role-playing game. And I have the Angel role-playing game as well. I’m a huge fan of Heroes. I have 150 comic books at home. We have a lot of different types of role-playing game books at home. We have Dungeons & Dragons, Champions, Silver Age Sentinels, Aberrant, Trinity, Tunnels and Trolls. We have a ton of board games. My idea of an ideal New Year’s Eve is having a bunch of people over with some drinks and we play board games all night and have a bunch of movies playing, usually with a theme — one year we did superheroes, one year we did all the Lord of the Rings movies, including the animated Hobbit. So, total nerd and proud of it.
Which Fellowship character’s gaming style most resembles your own?
Oh, the character I play. The character I play in the movie, I’m making fun of myself the entire time. I tend to play the flamboyant bard or singer or the very social one of the group. The joke amongst my gaming friends is, “Have Jon do it, because Jon likes to talk to people.” So I tend to play the really social one with the quippy one-liners and that kind of thing.
When you game, are you a pure stats sheet kind of guy, or do you like to have a picture of your character to go with it?
It depends. I just started playing this superhero role-playing game and one of the guys who plays in the game found a website where you can design your own superhero, so I designed my own superhero. I usually don’t do that. I usually don’t have a drawing. [Sometimes] I’ll find a picture online, like, “Oh, this is maybe what the character looks like.” I’ll come up with a character history and a little bit of a background. When you’re young and you’re role-playing, a lot of it is, “Kill monster, take treasure, kill monster, take treasure.” But as you get older, it’s more the interaction and the improv of it that tends to be why we play now. It’s not just the killing the bad guy, which is always fun – [it’s] combining that with some other things as well.
Go here for more screening dates and info (or to buy a copy of the flick!). Netflixers, it’s also available for you to rent.
