aalgar.com

Dear Mr. Sarcasm,

Can you please tell me what a “helter skelter romance” is and if you’ve ever been involved in one?

Tricia has a question- Do you know what my balls look like?

— Lyra Silvertongue

Dear Lyra:

In keeping with my “second question first” policy (I once read someplace — I think it was in Sun Tzu’s Art of War — that keeping your questioner off-balance is the key to victory for any would-be General in the advice column battlefield), I’m going to have to deny any involvement with your daughter’s balls. No, I don’t know what they look like, smell like, sound like… none of my senses have experienced your female offspring’s “balls” in any way.

(Incidentally, it should be noted that I do have five senses like every other human being, despite my repeated attempts to be recognized as a deaf person with a certain kind of ESP that allows me to interpret vibrations of air molecules as “sounds.” Hey, if Daredevil can be a blind superhero whose power is that he can see… why not? In his alternate identity, Daredevil is a lawyer, so surely he would appreciate the legal precedent I’m attempting to use here.)

So, no. Sorry. You won’t lure me into that old testicular trap involving underage girls. Not again. My prison tattoos are now perfectly symmetrical, so if my actions get me sent up the river again, my OCD demands that I get incarcerated a further time to maintain that balance. And who has that kind of time these days?

As for your original query, the “Helter Skelter romance,” I’m afraid the answer is also “no.” While no less an inspired intellect than Charles Manson has found hidden meaning in this song (which is really about an innocent piece of playground equipment), I’m afraid I can only appreciate it for what it was: an attempt for Paul McCartney to prove to his rock ‘n’ roll contemporaries that he wasn’t a pussy.

Perhaps somewhere in my past, I may have been involved with some image-enhancing tough girl who, as the song goes, put “blisters on my fingers,” but that, if it even happened, was a long time ago. I only date nice girls now. Which I mention because of its total veracity, and not at all because she’s looking over my shoulder as I compose this.

There is certainly a measure of psychological complexity in the seemingly whimsical musical stylings of the Fab Four, however. As I have mentioned previously, my mother would frequently sing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (in which the titular device “made sure that” various undeserving souls were “dead”) and “Rocky Raccoon” (in which the legs of Rocky’s rival are shot off) to me as a young child.

And while maybe I didn’t grow up to become the household name that Mr. Manson is (nor did I develop an intellect capable of interpreting a song about a simple playground implement as a call to an apocalyptic race war), I do have bright orange hair and a terrible night job. Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything. But the important thing is, it also has nothing at all to do with your daughter’s balls. Hooray!

Thanks for writing!

Dear AAl,

Otto makes me crazy. Who did you know that had any resemblence to this boy?

When’s the last time you said goodbye to someone you cared about?

You kick anyone in the balls today? I just hit their car instead… and carved my initials in the door. They totally deserved it.

— Mrs. Silvertongue

Dear Lyra:

Ah, yes. One of my groupies from the “lost years” I spent dispensing my sarcastic wisdom on an internet message board. Only when I say “groupies,” I mean “people who indulged my ceaseless attention whoring by occasionally asking me questions.” And when I say “wisdom,” I mean “the same half-baked pop culture references and vague semi-jokes I’ve been telling on this website, slightly reheated for a new audience.” And, of course, when I say “internet message board” I mean “place where people come to discuss comic books and eventually divide into so many insignificant splinter groups that it makes Christianity look like a united front.”

See what I did there, where every element of that statement actually had a different meaning? Everything I say has hidden meanings like that. I’ve taken the science of sarcasm far beyond its initial purpose of “lying and being funny” and elevated it to an art form in which I can masterfully disguise all sorts of messages, propaganda and (perhaps most of all) pathetic cries for help.

My first novel, Fish Stories, to which your first question no doubt refers (the only other Ottos I know are a toad in the game Zork Zero, a vampire in the Terry Pratchett book The Truth and Kevin Kline’s Oscar-winning thug in A Fish Called Wanda), is a perfect example of this sort of clever subterfuge. While you think you’re reading about an indecisive would-be writer with no self-esteem, who spends more time moping about ex-girlfriends than actually living his life, you’re actually reading about (check this out) me. I know it’s hard to imagine this, but that whiny kid is meant, in a completely abstract way, to represent me. His whole struggle to emerge from the shadows of his talented but slightly overbearing friends to become his own person represents something in my life, but I’m not going to tell you what. Because what’s the fun of writing symbolically if I just hand you the secret decoder ring? Perhaps if you’re nice I’ll tell you which cereal features the ring as a free prize. But only if you’re nice.

And judging by the content of your third question, I can’t imagine you are particularly nice. No, I haven’t kicked anyone in the balls, that I know of. Though since I started my terrible new job, I’ve really rather wanted to a few times.

I’ve alluded to this before, but I’ll go ahead and spill the details, in the interest of shedding additional light on the question of ball kickery. I’ve been in Seattle nearly a year now, and despite my kickass resumé and my goddamn irresistible fucking charm, I’ve not had what I’d exactly call “luck” in the search for a decent job. So out of necessity, I took what I could get: working filthy manual labor from 10:30pm to 7am down at the train yards. (You know those creepy folk you see in all-night grocery stores at 3am? Those are my people now.) Out in the elements. For Spaniards (which itself is not so bad, but for the fact that much of the material I work with is not written in my native language). It’s hard, it’s cold and it’s all around one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had.

It’s not even so much the hours, or the cold. It’s the fact that… well, it’s hard to explain without a proper frame of reference. Geek boys in the audience will understand the following metaphor, though I fear the females among you may not. To you, I apologize in advance and hope you can ask a dorky male friend for guidance if necessary.

You know, when you were a kid, how your dad would make you come out and help him fix a car or something, and he’d ask you to hand you, I don’t know, the “three eights metric framistat”? Then you’d give him this sort of blank look because nobody ever taught you what one of those is? And then he’d get really angry at you because nobody should have to teach you this stuff? Apparently it’s ingrained on the Y chromosome.

My job is kinda like that. Part of it involves inventory (counting, ordering, organizing), which I’m actually pretty good at. But most of it involves guys asking me for three eights metric framistats all night, then getting really mad at me when I give them a blank look. Which doesn’t do a whole lot for my self-esteem, much like that little weenie in my novel.

What it does do, however, is make me really want to kick somebody in the balls. But then I realize that maybe that’s what happened to my dad, and somehow it messed up his chromosomes, resulting in the gene not being passed on to me. Except that he was actually my stepdad. Also I’m pretty sure sperm gets manufactured really fast, and unless you go conceive right after you got kicked, the damaged batch probably doesn’t even enter into it. (And I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t feel like anything groinal after a good swift kick in the nads.)

Ah well, I almost tied this all together in that cool circular way that every humorous essayist aspires to. Except, too, that I completely ignored your second question. Let’s see… I care about my dignity, my self-respect and the faint glimmer of masculinity that I thought I had. I said goodbye to those things when I started working for the trains from Spain down by the plains. Does that count?

Thanks for writing!

Back in the primitive days of 1984, when geeks were still crammed into lockers, sent up flagpoles by their underwear and otherwise humiliated in ways that no human being has actually witnessed outside of the movies, Revenge of the Nerds showed us The Way. And while it would probably be a bit hyperbolic to claim that a raunchy college sex comedy was responsible for the reign of the geek in pop culture, there is one thing that it can pretty much definitively claim credit for: the invention of “nerdcore.”

For those who haven’t seen the movie (and unless you can travel back to the mid-80s and be in your early teens, don’t bother now — the right time and place have passed you by), allow me to briefly summarize: nerdy fraternity is relentlessly stomped on by pretty frat boys, but ultimately (who saw this coming?) gets their revenge. This revenge comes, in accordance with the very strict laws of 80s teen movies, in the form of a talent show, in which the nerds put together an extraordinary techno/rap number that blows the crowd away. (Side note: did you realize Poindexter — the spiky-haired one who played the electric violin — grew up to be Danny on The West Wing and Cal on Studio 60?) And so, nerd rap is born.

It took awhile for the effects to be felt. Sure, you could argue that the Beastie Boys are nerds, with their regular references to sci-fi and comic books. But they’ve crossed so many borders and boundaries over the years that it’s hard to pin any one label on them. The movement I’m talking about started probably about half a decade ago, and includes names like MC Frontalot (who, best I can tell, coined the word “nerdcore”), mc chris, MC Hawking, Optimus Rhyme and others.

I’m not sure if nerdcore counts as a proper “cultural movement” — I really don’t know what that means anyway — but it’s definitely become more prominent. The mixture of clever lyrics and established legitimate musical forms definitely reflects the overall acceptance of the geek in the modern social hierarchy. Or maybe it’s just that it’s popular on the Internet, where all the nerds hang out anyway.

Nerdcore isn’t the only music that My People have, though. Nerd music, to my thinking, doesn’t have to fit any particular musical genre — it’s all in the attitude, and in the lyrics. The specific flavor of cleverness can be as varied as the types of nerds in the world. Some is scientifically smart (I’d throw They Might Be Giants in this category). Some is smart in the peculiar realm of popular culture that we inhabit (the aforementioned Beasties, as well as Weird Al). Some is just weird in all the right ways (definitely Devo; probably Zappa; many others).

If rock ‘n’ roll was the original music of rebellion for the disenfranchised, then nerd music may be the closest tie to those roots — giving the meek and misunderstood a voice and a pantheon to guide us through the hard times.

I suppose it’s a sign of the overall balkanization and over-specialization of our culture in general. It was inevitable that nerds would have their own music. And we’re probably not far off from “turf wars” within nerdcore, where we’re splintered even further into “Lord of the Rings nerdcore” or “Star Trek nerdcore.” Because if there’s one thing geeks are really good at, it’s becoming really divisive and sucking the fun out of something.

For now though, I’m happy that there’s guys out there making songs about Galvatron and getting laid at Star Wars conventions and the follies of creationism and bounty hunting for Jabba Hutt. I’m more than willing to call MC Frontalot the Elvis of my generation. That feels a lot more right than Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder, that’s for damn sure.

Dear Mr. Sarcasm,

I realize I’m probably in the minority among your fans, but I sincerely enjoyed your novel, Fish Stories. And while it’s good to see you back on the internet, writing stuff again, I have to wonder: are you ever going to do another novel?

— Totally Not Made Up in Authentichlan

Dear Techno Chocolate:

Actually, I’ve given the old second novel (which I’m often told is the most difficult project any writer can undertake) a try several times since the publishing of Fish Stories in 2001. The problem seems to lie in the fact that my Attention Deficit Disorder is worse than ever these days. And while that may create some compelling dialogue that wanders away from the rigid and the predictable, it makes writing simple narrative nigh impossible. Check out this excerpt from my since abandoned novel, Want Some Catcher in the Rye? ‘course Ya Do!

The night was —

You know what? I’m not going to tell you. Chances are you don’t give a damn how the night was. Chances are you’re going to skim over the mood establishing descriptive paragraphs until you see some dialogue, or even just some action verbs. Oh, I’m sure plenty of people read these parts, because that’s what people do when they read books. But when was the last time you heard anyone compliment a book for its long descriptions of how the night was?

It’d be like praising a film for its compelling establishing shots. Probably some director someplace really has the hang of them (the films of Stanley Kubrick — sixteen hours of establishing shots with perhaps a plot in there someplace — leap to mind), but for the most part, they just exist because the audience likes to know where they are. It establishes mood. But when you come right down to it, opening with a description of a particular night is perhaps the worst choice a narrator can make, because no matter how good a wordsmith he might be, he’s inevitably going to be compared to that shining turd of literary cliché: it was a dark and stormy night.

So, if you want to know how the night was, that’s just too damned bad. Maybe I’ll throw out enough hints about the particular time and place of this story that you could look it up in an almanac or something, if you were so inclined. If you’re really that anal retentive about it —

No. You know what? Screw you and your incessant need to know about the night. I won’t enable your obsessive-compulsive disorder — which, let’s be completely honest here, is not the funny little quirk you try to pass it off as. It’s a serious mental illness, my friend. You need help.

So, forget about the night. In fact, the night is irrelevant, because our story starts in the daytime. Noon, let’s say. Roughly noon. Noonish. Because now I’m inclined to be as absolutely vague as possible, just to spite your overwhelming demand for meaningless details.

The person walked into the place. He (or possibly she – or maybe even whatever pronoun one uses for hermaphrodites, though there are so few true hermaphrodites in the world that you’d probably be able to narrow their identity down, so let’s just keep it to the simple “he” or “she” for the moment) felt some emotions as this was done. At least one person of unspecified age, sex and nationality noticed them. One of them — I’m not saying whom — was wearing a hat. Like all hats, it was evil.

What? Don’t look at me like that. Hats are evil. Trust me on this, I’m an omniscient narrator. I mean, you’re ready to accept whatever I tell you about the condition of the night, when you could just as easily stick your head out the window and look for yourself. What you really need me for is the less obvious stuff like this. Write what you know, they say, and I know about hats. They’re evil. You won’t catch me wearing one of those things. They trap thoughts inside your head. Or possibly seal in demons or something. Okay, I haven’t worked out in what way they’re evil, specifically. I just know they are. That’s what omniscient means. Within the confines of this story, I see all and I know all. Which particular details I choose to share with you is my own affair. You just shut up and keep reading.

What do you mean, what story? I can start the action anytime I like. Only now I’m inclined to stall longer, just to piss you off.

Wait, where are you going? No, the whole book isn’t like this. Come back. I’m sorry. Look, we got off on the wrong foot, all right? Let’s start again. I’ll do it right this time.

The night — sorry, day — was partly cloudy, cooler than it had been in the morning, and there was a 30% chance of rain by late afternoon. A light wind was blowing in from the north-northwest, and —

Hey, come back!

Now personally, I think that ranks among some of the finest first pages in literary history, but my agent seems to think differently. And since he, like you, is a totally real person and not somebody I just made up, I guess I have to listen to his advice. He also didn’t seem to like “it was the best of times, it was ooh, shiny object!” What a nitpicker.

Thanks for writing!

Last week, I posted what might as well have been a suicide note. By announcing my deliberate intention to watch both Batman and Robin and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, I effectively gave notice that I intended to bring harm upon myself. And yet, I gave no consideration to my own mental well-being, because science demands an answer to the seemingly unresolvable question: which one is worse? Well, I’m here to tell you both that I survived the ordeal and that we have a definite winner. More on that in a moment.

First up was 1997’s Batman and Robin. I’d only seen bits of this movie before, never all at once. I went into it with the idea that I would not compare it to other incarnations of the character: not the comics, not the animated series and not Batman Begins, the most recent film. In fairness, this movie should only be judged on its own merits (such as they are) and to some extent, the preceding three films, to which this is meant to be a sequel. So, much as I might hate it for not being those other, better things, I won’t be deducting points for that. And it’s probably a good thing, because if I had to subtract further points, I’d need a bigger scale.

I really did try to go into this thing with as open a mind as possible. I swore to myself I would not resort to the usual sort of cheap hyperbole and exaggeration that people typically engage in when discussing this movie. And, putting all those things aside, I can still say that Batman and Robin is one of the worst movies ever made.

I started jotting down particularly ridiculous elements as I watched before realizing what a futile gesture this was. Might as well copy and paste the entire screenplay to that end — there is not seriously a single moment that isn’t terrible on at least one or two levels. Every line of dialogue is delivered as a glib action movie one-liner, though you’re hard pressed to even roll your eyes or groan at any of them. The actors have that same disingenuous feeling you get when you watch somebody reacting to CG elements that aren’t there yet — except they’re often right there, in the same shot with another warm body. Hell, some of them are even decent actors. But not a single one of them manages a drop of chemistry with any other one.

The thing is, if this were just an unapologetic attempt to duplicate the 60s series, it could actually be enjoyable on those terms alone. Indeed, Uma Thurman actually seems to be playing Poison Ivy to that end — as if the whole thing is a big joke and she gets it. But everybody else seems to want to be taken seriously. They all have semi-dramatic subplots that, in capable hands, we might be coaxed into caring about. And by introducing these elements of apparently serious drama (Alfred’s failing health, a growing rift between Batman and Robin, Mr. Freeze’s dying wife, Bruce’s emotional distance), it manages to become the worst of both worlds: we don’t laugh at the comedy and we don’t care about the drama.

Even in the most basic senses, the film is a failure. I never particularly cared for Tim Burton’s bizarre vision of Gotham, with its looming art deco buildings and random circus elements for no apparent reason. But he made it work, in a Tim Burtony sort of way. Shumacher takes these elements and turns the Vegas factor up about twelve notches. So, while it might be a bit ridiculous that the Batmobile is covered in neon lights, I suppose it might actually work as camouflage in this absurdly decorated city. And then there’s the much-maligned benippled Bat-suit. The less said about that, the better.

Overall, there’s just too many awful things to mention in a confined space. The Bat credit card. The cartoon sound effects during the fight sequences. Batman and Robin surfing through the air after defeating Mr. Freeze’s rocket, which he had for no apparent reason to begin with. Freeze trying to get his henchmen to sing along with an ice cream commercial. A gratuitous motorcycle racing sequence. Schwarzenegger acting over-the-top, even for him. (Seriously, turning “always winterize your pipes” into some kind of menacing catch phrase?) The sleazy sax music whenever Poison Ivy is onscreen. Alfred conveniently dying of the same disease Mr. Freeze’s wife has.

It goes on and on like this, and after only about an hour, I found myself wondering if maybe one or more of my teeth could use a nice, long root canal. Somehow, finally, I managed to make it to the end and somehow pick up the shattered remains of my sanity in an attempt to reassemble them.

…except that I still had another two hours. The experiment was only half over. I suppose I could have put it off to another day, but this sort of thing is best done like a Band-Aid: one quick motion, right off. Only this is more like having a long piece of duct tape covering my entire body. (I’m kind of a hairy guy. Trust me, that’s a painful prospect. But vastly preferred to this torture.)

I’ve actually seen Superman IV all the way through, several times. Back in the late eighties, my little brother had it on regular rotation in the VCR, so I’d absorbed most of it via osmosis during that period. (I also know Follow That Bird, Annie, Willy Wonka, The Neverending Story and Explorers alarmingly well thanks to this method. Thanks, Cody.) Still, though I can probably recite odd lines of dialogue without even realizing it, I needed to give it a proper viewing with its competitor still fresh in my mind. (And actually I’d very recently watched the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, so I have an idea of what a good Superman movie looks like pretty fresh in my mind as well.)

From the beginning, it’s apparent that Superman IV is not operating on the same budget as its predecessors. The signature 3-dimensional credits have been replaced with a similar, but clearly cheaper effect. They did at least manage to hold on to John Williams’ iconic score though, which gave me a little tingle despite myself. (And in fairness, had Batman and Robin kept the Danny Elfman theme from the previous films, it would have been a similar effect.)

But that music and the cast (who are really starting to show their age here, especially “boy reporter” Jimmy Olsen) must have comprised the entire budget, because the effects — from the obvious soundstage-space station featured in the beginning and carrying throughout the movie — are not exactly what we’d become accustomed to, even by the primitive standards of the late 1980s.

I suppose here would be as good a place as any to mention Golan-Globus Productions, the outfit that somehow managed to nab the rights to the series and get this thing made. The geniuses behind the Death Wish films, Masters of the Universe and one of MST3K’s finest moments, Alien from L.A. starring Kathy Ireland, Golan-Globus was a far cry from the pedigree of the first film. I guess it was these B-movie moguls who allowed Christopher Reeve to pitch his wacky left-wing “no nukes” version of Superman, but how they managed to gather the entire original cast to throw together this mess is anybody’s guess.

And “mess” is as good a word as any — cheap looking, heavy-handed and badly conceived, it is in every way a failure. It manages to invent several new characters (rather than drawing on the half century of material available to them), all of whom are absurd caricatures or just plain extraneous. And why Jon Cryer’s “Lenny Luthor” gets the musical theme typically reserved for Ned Beatty’s “Otis” is beyond me. It is indeed a sad state of affairs when you can look at a character and long for the likes of Ned Beatty as Otis.

But ultimately, for all its failings — “rebuild the Great Wall of China vision,” the Nuclear Man, turning the Daily Planet into a tabloid, the zany “dinner with Clark and Superman” scene, the bizarre resurrection of Lois learning French (which got excised from Superman II in the aforementioned Donner cut anyway and doesn’t exist now as far as I’m concerned), Superman being able to undo his “magic forgetting kiss” (also mercifully undone) when necessary, pulling a second magic Krypton crystal out of some previously unseen orifice, cloning Superman to look like Fabio and sound like Gene Hackman, Lois being filmed with about a pound of Vaseline on the lens and so, so many more — it just doesn’t hold a candle to the awfulness that was Batman and Robin.

Rest assured, this is a terrible, terrible film. But it’s more sad than anything else. It resembles the earliest parts in the series enough to serve as a reminder of just how far they’d fallen. You know these guys can all do better, and you feel bad for them. And you know that if somebody like Richard Donner or Mario Puzo had been able to nudge them back on the right track, they might actually have pulled a decent Superman movie together one more time. In fact, Bryan Singer did manage to pull it together, more or less, by making a movie that was true to the spirit of this series and a fresh start at the same time.

Batman, on the other hand, required a clean sweep of the table and a new start with no resemblance whatsoever to what it had been before. Somehow, despite the odds, Christopher Nolan made a film that washed away the nasty taste that Batman and Robin left in our mouths, and it’s a good thing, too. Because that movie unquestionably deserves the title “worst superhero movie ever made.”

Well, till I get a chance to see Elektra, Catwoman and Ghost Rider, anyway.

Dear Mr. Sarcasm,

Great, so now we know what creeps you out. Big damn deal. What enquiring minds really want to know is, what pisses you off? You just don’t seem to be the same angry, bitter guy that we knew and loved back in your prime. You’d think a divorce and financial ruin would keep you on track, but the last two months or so would say otherwise. So spill it. How do we really get you angry?

— Another Clever Name from Someplace

Dear Barely Even Trying:

What another fantastic letter, and not at all something I created myself as a set up. Man, it’s so great how people just keep writing in with questions, especially since I practically begged for them last week. You truly are the most thoughtful and responsive audience a guy could hope for, whoever the hell you are.

• People who can’t read, write and speak in their native language.

Ah yes, my old go-to. Really, would there even be a Sarcastic Voyage if I didn’t pull out this chestnut every so often? I do seem to have gained an ally in the fight — fellow internet e-mail checker Strong Bad regularly pummels his readers for their terribly constructed missives. But, apart from a cartoon wrestleman, whom I’m told isn’t even a real person, I feel pretty alone on this island some days. I used to think it was just because I spent most of my time reading stuff on the internet (where convenience supersedes correctness 10 times out of 10), but it’s as pervasive as ever out in the real world. You’d think by now that I’d get over seeing signs like “ADD FRIE’S FOR $1.00 MORE” or “WHY PAY MORE.” (period, not question mark.) Spelling and typos aren’t the same at all — I’m talking about simple grammar and punctuation here. Also: if you’re really so lazy that you feel the need to type “plz” instead of adding the two extra letters to form the word “please,” then you’re probably too lazy to breathe. So stop. We’ll both feel a lot better if you do. It may seem like I’m being petty here, but believe me when I tell you this: people like me are the only thing stopping “plz” turning into a redraft of the Constitution that begins “we teh ppl.”

• Alliteration.

Don’t ask me why — I just hate having more than one word beginning with the same letter next to each other. (Even “hate having” in that previous sentence made me itch a little.) It’s probably because it smacks of campy cuteness (argh), as though people think they’re the announcer from the old Batman series, shouting about “dynamic duo” this and “caped crusaders” that. It’s not cute or clever. All it does is call attention to the fact that you’re trying to be cute and clever, which completely negates the material in question.

• “Security.”

I called up my credit card company to make a payment not so long ago, and they asked me a question to verify my identity. Fine, I thought. Even though I already put in a unique PIN at the phone prompt, I’ll play along. Then they asked me another question. And a further three. They actually asked me personal questions so obscure that I had to look them up (stuff that pertained to previous addresses from a decade ago), and all to verify that the person trying to give them money is the same person whose name is on the card. Mind you, when they call me because my payment’s overdue, they don’t even bother to check if it’s me answering the phone. I understand the point of preventing identity theft and so on, but sweet mother of crap, just let me send you some money already. Paying bills should not be this difficult.

• All this mail!

Seriously people, I’m only one man. I can’t possibly answer every single one of the thousands of e-mails you bury me in every day.

• Recently, on a bag of Goldfish crackers…

…there were these four cute little cartoon Goldfish. Which is kinda cool — I’ve eaten these things for years, and they’ve never enjoyed the same pop culture success as, say, the Keebler elves or Snap, Crackle and Pop (I suppose that old Peppridge Farm guy probably counts, but you probably need a shovel to get a good likeness of him nowadays). I have absolutely no problem with them trying to associate their fine product with a lovable mascot or four. So the first one’s called Finn, which is neat little fish pun. (Puns don’t make me cringe quite as badly as alliteration, though they did send my ex-wife into murderous rages for some reason.) The next one is Brooke — equally clever in that dim-witted sort of way, I suppose. Then there’s Gilbert. Okay, I don’t really get that one, but maybe it’s like naming one guy differently for comedic effect, like “Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde.” I can accept that. And then there’s the fourth goldfish. His name, and I swear to Dave Barry that I’m not making this up, is “X-Treme.” This is not an adjective they use to describe him, mind you. It’s meant to be his actual name. I… I don’t even have the words.

Thanks for writing!

A few months ago, on the Bendis board (this is a bit of a redundant phrase — everything I did a few months ago was on the Bendis board), the subject of “worst superhero movie ever made” was brought up.

A great debate raged, as they often tend to do when nerds are presented with the task of proclaiming any kind of superlative, particularly one so close to their hearts. There were, of course, many candidates — the 80s and early 90s being an especially terrible period for the genre. Special mention should go to Roger Corman’s tragically unreleased Fantastic Four, the movie where Reed Richards’ graying temples were applied with silver paint. You can tell because the tops of his ears are actually silver in some close-ups. Seriously.

But I believe that sequels to good movies are deserving of their own special level of criticism, because really: how bad can a movie be if your expectations are low to begin with? On the other hand, present us with the next chapter in a mighty saga and we’re really hoping for more of the same. We’ve overcome the initial doubts that our beloved hero can be brought to the screen and now we just want you to serve up what you did before, only a little different. Screwing up something like that, it seems to me, takes a special kind of ineptitude that a Roger Corman would simply never have to deal with. Now throw in the undisputed top two iconic figures in superhero comics, Superman and Batman, and baby, you’ve got a stew going.

And so we come to the central issue, raised by my Bendis board friend, JR. What truly is the worst superhero movie ever made: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace or Batman and Robin?

The more I thought about it, the less certain I was. For on the surface, these two movies are remarkably similar. They’re both the fourth (and last) in film series that perfectly demonstrated the Law of Diminishing Returns. Both have since been vindicated by new, slate-cleaning re-imaginings, but only after languishing for years in production hell. Both featured esteemed actors and experienced directors.

But that’s where the similarities end. Both are terrible, terrible movies to be sure, but for entirely different reasons. Superman IV, for instance, managed to retain the entire core cast that it had since the first installment (Reeve, Kidder, Hackman; even Perry White and Jimmy Olsen). Batman and Robin, on the other hand, held on to only two of its original supporting actors (Alfred the butler and Commissioner Gordon).

On the other hand, Superman IV chose to ignore a half century of comic book history in choosing its new featured characters, and instead invented its own unique-to-the-screen players, including Lacy Warfield, The Nuclear Man and Jon Cryer as Lex Luthor’s nephew, Lenny. (Do you have any idea how painful it is for me to even type that? DO YOU?!) Here, Batman and Robin managed to stay somewhat true to its roots. (That sentence was even more painful.) The new characters in this film included Bane, Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, all established long ago in the comics and the far superior animated series.

Superman IV suffered serious budget losses due to a terrible mishandling of the rights. Batman and Robin enjoyed a fairly substantial budget. And so it goes down the line — both movies are awful, but each in entirely its own way. As such, it’s impossible to do a side-by-side comparison in the abstract. Because, think about it: is it worse to see actors you’ve come to know and love, cashing in for one last time, or is it worse to see Hollywood’s flavor of the month taking up the mantle for each new sequel? Is it better that a terrible movie ruin characters you never cared about anyway, or to at least care enough to use characters you’ve heard of? It’s really hard to say.

Unless, I suppose, someone actually sits down and watches them both. And I guess that’s what this is going to come down to.

I am ashamed to admit that I own Superman IV (as an unwanted part of a box set), but I’m going to have to acquire Batman and Robin from Netflix. And thank goodness for that — as much as I do want to settle this issue, I’m certainly not going to shell out any extra money for it. Plus, the inevitable zero-star rating can only help Netflix’s artificial intelligence better learn my tastes.

So next week, I report the results of my terrible experiment. I’m doing this so that you don’t have to. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make in the name of science.

It’s probably pretty obvious by now that I’m not really sure what to do with this column since “the big comeback.” When I planned to start producing regular content again (for some reason, the first reference that pops immediately to mind whenever I think about this is Willy Wonka starting up his factory again – my run-on sentences being, I suppose, linguistic Everlasting Gobstoppers with their sub-clauses, parentheticals and my personal favorite – “stretching a sentence to paragraph link by way of a dash”), I knew that Sarcastic Voyage had to be among the features.

As I love to point out to anyone who’ll listen (typically anyone I’ve lured in with a different topic altogether), I was writing this thing regularly long before the foul non-word “blog” polluted our collective consciousness. I’ve been putting my thoughts and humorous observations on the web for well over a decade now. If I were Howard Stern, I’d claim to have invented the whole idea. But I’m not, and I don’t think I’m better than you because I thought to do this before most of you even got your first e-mail address. I know I’m better than you for one simple reason: volume. I published a 500 page book of this crap, and that was still only what I’d deemed the best ten percent or so.

Here’s one of the big, shameful secrets of Sarcastic Voyage: I don’t actually believe any of this egotistical crap I’m spewing. Mostly I’m mimicking the best writer you never heard of: the seemingly retired Mark Leyner. Leyner wrote an entire novel (Et Tu, Babe) that took the entire concept of “power fantasy” to absurd new heights, imagining himself as a global megacelebrity with more money than God and more balls than those colorful and almost certainly biohazardous pits of plastic at Chuck E. Cheese. And, as far as I can tell, the entire ludicrous ego trip is predicated entirely on a single semi-favorable review he received for his previous book.

By posing as this triumphant god of literature, Leyner sheds light on the shameful secret of all writers: we’re all, every one of us, a bunch of insecure little children, hoping to one day earn the love we think we don’t deserve through the craft we feel we’re no good at. (And if you think I’m being self-deprecating to prove a point, just ask my ex-wife. She’ll describe me exactly that way – only probably in far fewer words.) And by shamelessly stealing Leyner’s shtick, I’m hoping to continue the tradition.

The sad truth of the matter is, folks, that Mister Sarcasm isn’t doing quite as well as he might be. Who’d have thought that 11 years of experience building airplanes and helicopters wouldn’t turn up anything resembling a decent job in one of the country’s biggest aerospace markets? Who would have imagined him working a shitty job in the middle of the night, down at the train yards, just another face in a blue jumpsuit? And who among you would have ever dreamt of the day when he’d have to make up letters to answer for this column?

Okay, that one’s pretty much been a mainstay from day one. But seriously, if you’re reading with any regularity, would it kill you to send a quick note? If you’re taking pennies from the tray, you should occasionally drop one in as well. It’s only fair.

Anyway. To return to the much-belabored point, despite this being the ninth installment since the relaunch, the simple fact is that I still have no idea what it’s about. I’m still more or less burying my head in the sand, politically speaking… at least till Emperor Palpa-tard steps down. I’m not nearly the pop culture wunderkind I was when this thing began (wait, wasn’t I the guy who didn’t know what a Spice Girl was?), so there’s not much ground to cover there. And while I could easily fill nearly infinite column inches with my b—g-like personal whining, neither of us wants that. I mean, typing out that paragraph about me being a colossal failure made me uncomfortable. I’m sure it did the same for you. And while making people uncomfortable may be an acceptable form of comedy in, say, the U.K., it’s just not my style, man.

I guess the problem is, I don’t really know what my style is anymore, man. I more or less exhausted the possibilities inherent in ripping off my favorite humorists of ten years ago – Dave Barry, Christopher Buckley, Dennis Miller, Douglas Adams and the aforementioned Mark Leyner – but I haven’t really replaced them with any new guys to rip off in the meantime. Like most of the rest of the world, I stopped reading books in favor of the Internet (which, incidentally, is not a big truck, but a series of tubes) a long time ago. And I refuse to rip off (at least consciously) anyone on the Internet, because that kind of plagiarism is much too easy to prove. I’m not the greatest literary thief who ever lived, but I at least like to make you work for it a bit if you’re planning on busting me. I’m of the mind that anything found via a simple Google or Wiki search isn’t anything worth having in the first place.

So, for the moment, the answer seems to be to keep writing in these absurd holding patterns about absolutely nothing. Unless and until inspiration hits me, that’s really all I have. Or, as my hero Mark Leyner once said, “as a writer, the idea of being paid to masturbate is not at all unusual to me.” Of course… you, the reader could put an end to all of this with a small donation of a letter to Mr. Sarcasm. Maybe I’ll even throw in a stylish tote bag if you write now.

Since I’ve been drawing and co-writing a comic with an “adventure” theme to it (as opposed to the more straightforward superhero stuff I’ve been doing with Tales of the Odd), I figured I should check out some of the greats in the field. This proved a little tricky, due to the fact that globetrotting grave robber comics are not as prominent as they once were. So I chased down a couple of old classics in hopes of inspiring me to new levels of [insert your own adjective here].

First I looked at Carl Barks’ classic Uncle Scrooge adventures, upon which the cartoon Duck Tales would be based some years later. Apart from a bit of title confusion (Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times is an entirely different book from The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck), I have absolutely nothing bad to say about these comics. They were amazingly vivid, well-written and they’ve aged surprisingly well. They’ve inspired at least a few generations now (George Lucas, who writes the intro to one of the books I read, mentions that he and Spielberg appropriated the boulder in Raiders from an old Uncle Scrooge adventure), and I even remember having read some of these myself as a kid. Great stuff, definitely the inspiration I’d been seeking.

So then I moved on to Terry and the Pirates, which I have seen repeatedly cited as a huge influence over some of my favorite cartoonists. (Most recently Bill Watterson in his Calvin and Hobbes collection.) So glowing and universal was the praise for this early adventure comic that I truly expected a sort of Indiana Jones in strip form, with hidden treasures, sinister dangers and all the rest. Well… I got that. And this (click to see full-sized):

Mind you, that is not a particularly inflammatory page from Terry & the Pirates. It’s simply the first page of the reprint comic. The whole thing is just as bad, if not worse — in fact, this particular reprint issue takes place almost entirely in China. And yes, they all talk and act like that.

The recent Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs have come with these weird little disclaimers at the beginning, not-quite apologizing for any racist content that might follow, but acknowledging it in hopes that people won’t say anything. This comic did nothing of the kind, and in fact, featured the buck-toothed Chinaman prominently on the front cover.

I can’t say I’m offended (I’m not Chinese, and I have to admit, it does make me laugh in the abstract), but I am surprised. I’m surprised that these things were reprinted so recently, and further surprised that an entire generation of cartoonists (including über-expert Scott McCloud) cites this as a shining example of what comics can become. This opens up a much deeper, much darker issue that I have no intention of touching in this feature. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to show you the image above. Enjoy!

Dear Mr. Sarcasm,

Who do you respect or admire?

— Wondering in Wonderland

Dear 1,

Probably more than anybody, the people I truly respect in this world are the ones who get the joke. In this age of hyper-self awareness and two or three levels of meta-textuality, you’d think we’d all be conditioned to get that a subset of the population exists to mock the absurdities of modern life. (For instance, you think I have any clue what “hyper-self awareness” or “two or three levels of meta-textuality” means? No. I was attempting to be funny. Sometimes it works for me. This time… not so much.)

Take, for example, the Internet. Please. (See what I did there?) For every popular website that makes you laugh, there’s at least two or three that dissect those jokes into their base components, effectively sucking the fun out of it all. This has forced me to wonder if fun is perhaps a delicacy of some kind and that maybe I should try sucking the fun out of something sometime. If only I’d had this thought when I was of college age, when that sort of experimentation is not only understood, but practically expected.

It’s become somewhat of a ritual to me, after watching the always hilarious new feature at homestarrunner.com, to check out the semi-official wiki of that site, hrwiki.com. Admittedly, this website has served a useful function to me, as an avid fan of the content of homestarrunner.com, namely in showing me where all the secret hidden goodies are. (I have absolutely no patience to look for easter eggs.) But there’s a terrible dark side to this website, from which I cannot force myself to look away. See, this site has a forum. And like any open forum where people are allowed to express their opinions, nobody seems to get the joke.

Hence, in reaction to a recent episode where Homestar Runner gets stuck inside the office water cooler, the serious question is raised: “how does he get out of there?” (For those of you unfamiliar with the characters in question, imagine somebody asking why Daffy Duck isn’t dead since Elmer Fudd just shot him pointblank in the face.) And rest assured that every single liberty the Brothers Chaps take with logic or the laws of physics for the sake of a laugh will be listed under the wiki’s “goofs” section. People like this are the reason The Simpsons created Comic Book Store Guy. And they’re also the reason I feel the need to zip my jacket over my Spider-Man t-shirt in fear of somebody actually realizing that I’m a geek and stoning me for it. Because, let’s face it: we kinda have it coming.

Anyone who’s spent any time on the Internet knows what I’m talking about. It’s hardly an original phenomenon, but it’s one that manages, impossibly, to get worse every time I launch my browser. Here’s another great example: a friend of mine recently sent me a link on the YouTube involving a cat in a “pet washing machine” at a pet store. It was about 60 seconds of a cat being placed inside this thing, which was like an enclosed shower stall, and squirming around in confused panic as it sprayed water at him. The cat was clearly uncomfortable, and perhaps the treatment was a bit unnecessary. But aside from perhaps the initial shock of some cold water, he wasn’t harmed in any way. And watching him jump and claw at the glass door, frankly, was a hysterical counterpoint to the eight thousand fifteen hundred twenty two cute cat videos people show one another every day.

Here are one of the comments below the video on YouTube. I swear this is a word for word paste, directly from the comments section. “due to its limited understanding of what was happeneing i would say the cat felt the same way as the jews felt in the gas chambers” Wow. Just… wow.

One of the ads that ran during this last Super Bowl apparently involved two guys eating a Snickers bar from either end, then meeting in the middle in some kind of awkward almost-kiss thing. So they act proceed to do a bunch of “manly” things to make up for it. The ad was apparently pulled for its “homophobia,” proving that people not getting the joke don’t just live in the tubes of the Internet. They even trotted out the mother of Matthew Shepard — the kid who was dragged and beaten to death for being gay — to say that the spot “encourages the same type of hate that led to the death of my son Matthew.”

Um. No. Guys joke about being gay. They’ll do it till the end of time. I know gay guys who do it. It’s a lot less about homophobia and more about exaggerated, chest-thumping male bravado. And in the right context, like a silly commercial selling candy bars, it’s kinda funny. Now, had one of the guys beaten the other one senseless for his actions, maybe I could see the point that it was sending the wrong message. If anything, you could argue that the commercial was making fun of insecure, allegedly “straight” guys, by painting them in a less than flattering light. And in that respect, it’s almost a sort of backhanded push in the direction of tolerance. If you’re willing to accept the notion that a 30-second commercial selling Snickers has any social relevance whatsoever. Which I am not. Because I get the joke.

Here’s an example I never thought I’d use: Bill O’Reilly kinda gets the joke. He made an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show recently, and he took it with pretty good humor, I have to say. Colbert has been relentlessly mocking O’Reilly and his contemporaries for over a year now, effectively playing a caricature of him every night, and showing us exactly how and why he’s an arrogant ass. But the arrogant ass gets a lot of credit for showing up on The Report, and getting the joke. Which is a lot more than I can say for President Bush, whose dead-on skewering by Colbert at last year’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner did not go over so well. Consequently, the host of this year’s dinner is… Rich Little. (Seriously, Mr. President: did you have to punish the audience for the crimes of the host?)

Dennis Miller (before he took a bizarre detour into Bat Country) put it best: who moans at a joke? I’ve never understood people who get angry at an attempt to make somebody laugh. Unless you’re going for a direct personal attack, I don’t think there’s a way you can offend me with a joke. And it doesn’t matter why it’s funny. Laughter is a biological aberration — a mysterious involuntary reaction with no apparent advantage in terms of natural selection. And I think we’d all be a lot better off if we pulled the sticks from our asses and just had a good laugh, without trying to find fault with it somehow. Because, dude. Seriously. Having a stick up your ass is totally gay.

Thanks for writing!