Good morning. Hello. How are you? #554
A day of discussion about various intellectual properties owned by international conglomerates. And a smidge of parenting.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am good. The sun is still not shining. My fingers are arthritic. Yesterday I had this idea that the Meloxicam—a medicine i’ve been taking for about ten years for pain from my fused neck—was maybe causing arthritis in my fingers as a side effect. So I looked it up on “the internet” and lo and behold, turns out Meloxicam is an arthritis pain medication, so I suppose these arthritic fingers would be worse without it, so, hey, now I feel worse off. Lovely.
Finished the copy edit on the GMHHAY book last night. I think. I think we’re ending this book with the trip to Alaska. Which might make the beginning of volume 2 a little weird, if there is a volume 2, but we can worry about that later. It’s a good book. I am proud of it. Lisa did a great job. It really redeems my personal narrative arc of the pandemic—I actually got something done. Yay me. I wrote a book. It’s not the ad economics book, of the book about Laguardia, but it’s a book nonetheless, and I am proud of that and I’ve now written four of them, so, yeah. Cool.
Also finished reading a book yesterday, a sort of Red Dawn meets Starship Troopers meets Hunger Games affair called Red Rising that was filled with cliches but also completely surprising and had an infinite number of twists I didn’t see coming, and was unexpectedly brutal and I think I want to read the next one, but it’s one of those books where the chapters are all, like, ten minutes long, so I don’t stop reading and I stay up too late, which is find during vacation but is gonna kill me when school starts again next week.
Went and watched Spiderman No Way Home in a theater yesterday. I had been watching the ticket sales and seating map at the theater closest to my house, and the first showing on Wednesday was by far the least well attended, and I had the first four rows or so of the theater to myself. I stayed double-masked the whole time. Well, except when I ate my popcorn, but I finished my popcorn before the movie, before most people even got there. I still felt irresponsible and unsafe, even though it wasn’t, and even though the whole situation clearly didn’t bother anyone else there.
Anyway, it was a pretty good film I suppose. Didn’t really move me, but, then, I am increasinly indifferent to the MCU. It used to be, like, I enjoyed the cultural aspect of it, and occasionally even liked the films, but… I don’t know. Something has changed. I also remember when I was young and people would review a movie and talk about, like, corporate ownership structure and whatnot and I’d be like “whatever, maaaan, just enjoy the film on its merits.” Which I can still do, honest. Like the basic plot premise and structure was absurd and dumb and “not realistic” (wizards and spider people are not realistic omg), but I still enjoyed Marvel’s consistently snappy dialog, supporting characters, and big surprises number 1 and number 3. I did not care for big surprise number 2. And I definitely don’t care for the big sad thing, a propos our conversation yesterday about “the trauma plot,” but, then, what is Spiderman if not his backstory, but, then, he already had a backstory in the MCU he’s a freakin orphan for crissake.
I’m not a particular fan of the current “Multiverse” arc of the MCU. It’s all over the map, there’s no big bad, yet, though maybe it’s Kang, but not really, and it just smacks of a corporation sayhing “whoops we wrote ourselves into a corner with a coherent, single universe, we need to get out of it,” then making us sit through a shit ton of movies that just exist to get them out of the corner they’ve written themselves into. Because, you know, apparently a universe is only big enough for, like, twenty stories before there can be no more stories in the entire universe. And I know this whole multiverse thing came from the comics but a) same problem, b) the MCU is thirteen years old now, Disney owns Marvel, and the story needs of the MCU have been driving the comics for well over a decade now. They’re not dumb, they need this multiverse to feel like something more than the contrived plot that it is, and the comics have supported that.
Of course, in the case of Spiderman, it’s also the case of two parents, Marvel having signed away the rights to the character to Sony long before Disney purchased Marvel. I do think that Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige are to be applauded for working out a solid deal for getting Spiderman into the MCU. The fans wanted it, it would have been inexcusable to not work that out. And it must have been a momumental bureaucratic undertaking. But of course, now they’re trying to split the baby, have their cake and eat it too, so-to-speak, so Spiderman has to simultaneously be a pillar for the MCU and for the emerging Spiderverse of Venom and Morbius n shit and maybe that is just sliiiightly too tall of an order.
I will also be permanently, forever resentful for the entire Disney organization for making me go to the movie theater to watch The Eternals and Spiderman. I am bitter, I am angry, and it is bullshit, and they should have done better. It’s funny how they’ll let you watch Encanto at home, but not Spiderman. WTF.
Also every trailer that said IN THEATERS ONLY at the beginning of it was a slap in the face and I resent them all.
Also how many fucking Batmans do we need. I mean, there was a respectable, what, eight years between the last of the Burton Batmans, Batman and Robin, and the first Nolan Batman, Batman Begins? Now? I don’t even fucking know, there are, like, two at the same time? This is dumb, this is unsustainable. I read comics as a kid, but it was weird unpopular shit like DP7 or Psi-Force. I don’t really care that much about Batman or Spiderman, I am here because they’re supposed to be big cultural events. But how is it a cultural event when there are two different Batmans happening at the same time?
Then I came home, did Jane bedtime, where she was mostly an angel and it was lovely, even though she wouldn’t poop in the toilet. We did a lot of snuggling, that was nice. Ha I am lying. We spent the majority of our bedtime trying to teach her to not say “no” immediately, to everything. She would ask me a question, I would answer it, and she would immediately say “no.” Usually I ignore it, but last night I was like “this is a rude habit and it upsets me,” so I spent the entire bedtime trying to get her to stop this. It is not kind to say “Is the kitty on the bed?” And then when I answer, “yes, the kitty is on the bed,” because the kitty is on the fucking bed, then you immeditely say “no.” It will not stand, maaan. But it is sooo much work to temper these habits, and the temptation is so strong to just let it go, because, who knows, she’ll probably grow out of it anyway. But then you are basically suffering hundreds of microagressions a day, and even though you know it isn’t real, that she shouldn’t get to you, that it doesn’t matter, it hurts. So I thought I would try and help. Did it help? Who knows. Maybe a little bit. I will keep at it.
And then I watched another Disney property, and not only that, another Jon Favreau property, and it was much, much better, because while Disney has gone a long way to messing up the Star Wars universe as well, there is still this blissful, perfect corner of it overseen by Favreau and Filoni that is, hands down, the best thing going out of all disney’s properties (except maybe the Animation division they seem to be doing really well. And Pixar. Okay I’m just talking Marvel and Star Wars here): the little Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett division, the “let’s just give these bigshots their little creative playground so they stay happy in the fold” division, the Volume R&D division, but I am here for it.
Rise of Skywalker was a mess, I remain a Last Jedi fan, a Rae fan, a kill-Snoke off fan, I don’t dislike Disney’s handling of Star Wars because of all the butthurt incel reasons, but it’s still… I don’t know. It is losing something, I fear. But the live action Star Wars TV stuff, so far, has been stellar. Just perfect.
Finally, what is with Disney Plus letting us only have one TV show at once? Book of Boba Fett was a month later than the last season of The Mandalorian. Seems pretty clearly delayed to, like, follow Hawkeye, which had a holiday theme, so had to run at Christmas time. It is deeply weird that a “TV Channel” can only have one “adult action” show on at a time, even from different franchises. And the schedule is tightening as new shows get introduced. Maybe it was a coincidence that Hawkeye felt veerry abbreviated, two whole plots obviously re-written and shortened (the mom plot, the john-snow-looking-guy plot with its loads of ADR and inexplicable arrow catch). It was still a good show, because Hawkeye understood the fundamental truth that a story can still be good even when there is not an apocalypse immenent, even when the stakes are more personal, but it clearly needed another episode or two. Maybe that’s the showrunner’s fault, not Disney, but… they have, like, 10 more new shows coming across MCU and Star Wars. Are they gonna try and cram em all in so no more than one runs at a time? Because it’s weird.
In my head-canon, in the MCU, Happy actually is Jon Favreau, so when he inexplicably doesn’t show up for half of Spiderman, even though they’re in his apartment, it is because Happy is out in LA, at the Volume, producing The Book of Boba Fett.
Also what is up with Robert Rodriguez? He resigned his Director’s Guild membership when they would not let him share directing credit on Sin City with Frank Miller. As far as I know, he has not reclaimed it. Disney is a signatory to the Director’s Guild’s agreements. Disney should not be allowed to hire Robert Rodriguez to direct The Book of Boba Fett, yet clearly they are, so clearly I am missing somethin. I wonder what happened. Did he rejoin? Did they bury their hatchet? Interesting that the two most famous DGA orphans are now Star Wars directors.
Anyway, there you go. I was thinking that I consume a lot of media, you guys like media, we all like media, and I don’t talk about it a whole lot so why not indulge in a day of discussion about various intellectual properties owned by international conglomerates.
Let’s do a mix. Little behind on the mixes right now, not gonna lie. Too much copy editing. But here we are. W Hotel Mix. The best line of mixes.
Talk soon! 2021 is almost over! Next year will be so much better, right? Forward! Onward! Lol no.