So, how did y’all like that Disney recap? It’s crazy what Mirabel was doing to Bruno, right? Aren’t they related?! Yeah, I let ya down, but that recap is still coming. I could have rushed it, just to keep the promise, or I could take my time and do it right. So, I’m aiming for something in the middle.
Meanwhile, I am not dealing with “aging” very well these days. It started small, like “Can you believe Gwen Stefani is 55 years old?!”, but now it seems like there are daily reminders of the passage of time. I remember when I turned 34, I was like “Huh. Older than Jesus.” When I turned 36, I thought “Well, older than Bruce Wayne now.” But now… It’s just too much. All I’ve got left is “At least I’m not as old as Wilford Brimley in Cocoon.” Then I remember that Brimley was only 49 when he was cast in Cocoon (They intentionally made him look older), and then I start wondering if it’s time to start looking at burial plots.
The thing that really did it for me this week, however, involved what we’ll call “starlets”. Ya see, my kids always refer to Selena Gomez as “Selena” and, well, folks my age simply don’t do that. There’s is only one Selena™ and she had no last name. In fact, it’s only in recent years that you could just call her by her mononym. Growing up, you always had to refer to her as “Slain Tejano Singer Selena”, just like “Millionaire Playboy Bruce Wayne”. That’s how it was done. Nobody outside of Mexico knew what Tejano was before her, and most don’t know after her. To us, she WAS Tejano. So, you put some respect on it, and refer to her and what she brought to the world. Recently, however, I thought to myself “I wonder if Gomez is named for my Selena.” After all, she was young enough, and it had never really occurred to me prior. After a quick check, yup – Selena Gomez was named after Slai – I mean Selena Quintanilla, which is her “nombre gombierno”. Then, with all the Snow White controversy going on, I was reading about star Rachel Zegler, only to discover she was named after Jennifer Aniston’s character from Friends?! Get me off this crazy ride!
Will Around The Web
I promised y’all a Walt Disney World recap, but I didn’t have it in me, so instead I gave you the stealth return of probably the only thing folks used to come to this site to read: Thrift Justice. That’s right, I’m back showing you the crazy stuff I find at thrift stores, and this week I discussed the retail concept that made this all possible. Tell your friends!
Links I Loved
Entertainment Weekly ranked the Top 25 Reality TV Stars of the 2000s. I’m not currently a reality fan, but I remember those early days. And there are some glaring omissions here. No Omarosa?! No Richard Hatch? No TLC representation? I agree that Snooki was that Jersey Shore cast member who rose to the top. I mean, she took a punch for her craft! But they left off The Situation?! HIS NAME IS THE SITUATION!
Run The Numbers
This week, I read Chip Zdarsky’s Avengers: Twilight miniseries, and finished up Year One of the Ultimate Universe. I’ve been on a Zdarsky kick lately, so I was looking forward to this one. So, that’s why I hate to say I didn’t love it. I’m beginning to understand that Zdarsky is great for character interactions, but he’s not the guy you get for an “event”. Like, you wouldn’t give him Civil War, but you’d give him the companion series that examines how the characters feel between the action beats taking place in the main miniseries.
Now, Twilight isn’t exactly an event series, as it’s basically a What If? miniseries. In a possible branching timeline, we see a future, elderly Steve Rogers, who no longer has the Super Soldier Serum. He’s sort of lost his way, and his belief in his country, after a failed political campaign. It seems that, some years prior, there was an event called “H Day”, where Ultron basically upgraded everyone’s enemies, and a huge battle ensued, leveling the city of Boston, and leaving most heroes and villains dead. In the aftermath, a totalitarian government rushed into place, so now Americans live in something of a fascist society. They don’t seem to care, however, as their bellies are full and their lives are good. Meanwhile, Tony Stark’s punk kid, James, is supplying this government with tech to take on any dissidents. So, recording is prohibited, the media is controlled by the state, etc. Rogers is starting to see the problems bubbling under the surface, but it takes the murder of Matt Murdock for him to wake up to what’s going on around him. He teams up with an elderly Luke Cage, who has assembled a new Defenders team comprised of teen hacktivists. On paper, I’m sure this was pitched as “It’s The Dark Knight Returns, Cap Style”, but it’s been done, and it’s been done better.
One thing I’ve noticed through all this reading is that I’ve been so voracious that it’s been hard keeping the various story details apart. I came to realize that, over the past couple of years, Marvel has told the same story three different times: The heroes are forced to battle an enemy they can’t punch. Now, I’m not sure if they’re leaning into current events, or if they’re just being lazy, but Avengers: Twilight, as well as the current Ultimate Universe “2.0” and One World Under Doom are all about how the heroes are battling a corrupt, fascist government. And that’s sort of the problem of comics dealing with real world events, because you end up with a page of Doctor Doom crying after 9/11. These are battles they shouldn’t win. They’re not equipped to handle. And yet…
I’m gonna go ahead and spoil it, but the Avengers come out on top in Zdarsky’s series, but I don’t feel as optimistic for the other two stories, which are still going. The common thread between the two remaining books is that whatever tragedy eventually befalls the heroes before “curtain drop” will be completely and unquestionably earned by them. You can feel there’s a reckoning coming in the Ultimate books, and I want to dive into that in its own post.
Meanwhile, Doom hasn’t committed any crime yet, but “hero hubris” can’t believe his benevolence. On the surface, he’s doing a great job as Emperor. I know there’s probably more to it, but it’s also sort of hard to say “Doom is evil and will ALWAYS be evil!” when villains go back and forth all the time. He’s building hospitals, opening borders, and killing Nazis. And he’s doing it all simply for The Glory. Him and Peter Cetera. What I wouldn’t give for an Emperor Doom right now! But the “heroes” have yet to make a compelling argument as to how all of this is “bad”.
How do you defeat an enemy you can’t punch? It’ll be interesting to see how they write themselves out of this one, but I hope someone, somewhere, is taking notes.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- It was announced that Chris O’Donnell has been cast as the lead in the upcoming 9-1-1: Nashville. I know this can’t be the career he saw for himself, but I’m sure he’s just thankful he can still pay his bills 30 years after Batman Forever
- Movie production company Village Roadshow filed for bankruptcy this week, as the gradual termination of their co-production deal with Warner Bros pretty much spelled their doom.
- Did you know Jenna Ortega was in Iron Man 3?! I didn’t! Apparently, her lines got cut, but she was the one-legged daughter of the Vice President.
- Mindy Kaling’s Sex Lives of College Girls was canceled after 3 seasons.
- We was Kangs and Kweens! That’s right, Jonathan Majors and Meagan Good were married in a private ceremony in their home on Tuesday.
- The title of the in-development spinoff of The Big Bang Theory was revealed, and it’s Stuart Fails To Save the Universe. So, get ready to just call it “Stuart Fails” for the next 7 years.
- Folks are excited because the distributor of The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Ketchup Entertainment, is in talks to release the shelved Warner Bros film Coyote vs. ACME. These folks should also know that The Day The Earth Blew Up has only made $6.5 million at the box office, so maybe WB knew what they were doing…
- In an interview, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos reflected on the Marvel Netflix series, saying that Netflix wanted to make art, while Marvel wanted to make money. I’ll also point out that Netflix-original film The Electric State cost a reported $320 million to make, yet no one likes it, so maybe Sarandos isn’t the Art Expert here.
- Hulu reported that Solar Opposites will end with season 6. If you ever meet anyone who watches that show, be sure to let them know.
- Disney announced that Coco 2 is set for a 2029 release. 30 years ago, this would have been released straight to VHS, all the voice actors would have been recast, and it would come with a coupon for Grape Nuts.
Above, I discussed how I’m not doing a great job being OK with getting older. That’s when I realized something. I realized a pretty important part of my “lore” actually. You see, 30 years ago today, I was packing for my flight to Russia. In about 6 hours, I would be boarding my very first flight, for my first time away from home, heading for a place I’d only really seen in that episode of Head of the Class when Dennis and Arvid got in trouble for smuggling in rock music and blue jeans to sell to the people. People like to talk about “branching timelines” in pop culture, and this was certainly a branching point for me. I honestly don’t know what my life looks like without that trip, as I’ve sort of been coasting on it ever since. But lets back up a bit.
Why would a 13 year old go to Russia? Well, a better question is actually Why would someone send their 13 year old to Russia? This wasn’t my idea. If you’ve followed the trans debates, you know folks don’t listen to anything 13 year olds want for their lives, so this was not an adventure pitched by William Bruce West. No, my mom grew up poor in Alabama, and she always wanted to be an actress. She likes being the center of attention, and I guess I got that from her. Since she never really achieved any of those dreams, she pushed me into weird stuff so she could basically live vicariously through me. If there was an opportunity that wasn’t available to most folks, that’s what she aimed for. Hell, if they were doing Space-X flights back then, she’d have found a way, and I’d be dead, and there would be no blog post in front of you. I mean, unless that’s how President Rogan decided to communicate with his subjects.
Anyway, I was at a new school – a very expensive school – and I was only supposed to be there a year. I’d had a bad experience at Catholic school, and she pulled me after the first 6 weeks. That had led to my one-year public school experience, which then led to this prep school. But the tuition wasn’t sustainable, so this was a stopgap measure, and then I’d go to some upstart Christian school that cost a lot less. So, since this was a short-term thing, we were trying to take advantage of everything they had. They had Family Ski Day and Grandparents’ Breakfasts and stuff like that. But when the Russia thing came about, you couldn’t dim the gleam in her eye. No one we knew had been to Russia, so we’d have a “leg up” on them.
My teacher, Dave (He had come from this really liberal private school in DC, where all the students called teachers by their first names), had actually spent time in Russia and somehow he got hooked up with Project Harmony, which was a Vermont-based non-profit organization designed to foster relations between the US and the former Soviet Union. How it worked was that the US would send a group of kids over there, for roughly three weeks, where they’d learn the culture and visit schools, while living with a host family. Then, about a month after returning to the US, that host family’s kid would come over here, and stay with the American family. Dave linked my school with his former school, so we were this blended bunch, going off to the unknown.
This is probably a good time to mention I’d never been away from my family. I’d never been to sleepover camp. I’d never been on any transportation that wasn’t Amtrak or Greyhound. Oh, and DON’T THEY HATE US?! I’d seen Rocky IV! That age is already a weird time, but to throw this on top of it? I know she bribed me with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Deluxe Tigerzord, but I’m sure there was something else involved that I’ve forgotten over the years. I’m not lying when I say that I’ve had to do a lot of processing over the years regarding this whole thing. A lot of it was “Who the fuck does that to their kid?!” All that risk just so you’d have conversation fodder for cocktail parties?!
Anyway, it wasn’t so bad. My host was Sergei, and he was awesome. He was 14 at the time, but he was kind and sociable. Bit of a hearth throb. If this had been in America, he totally would have gotten a role on a TNBC series. I’m happy to say that I still talk to him, all these years later. He tends to call me on my birthday, and he’s still just as great. In fact, he’s really into extreme sports, and there was a period of time when I was actually a mule for him, shipping him snowboards and stuff, since it’s cheaper in America. I figure that’s also probably why I live in this area, but don’t have a clearance. That or the fact that I ran a website that was my name for over a decade. His parents were friendly and welcoming. Dad worked at a bank, while Mom did her best to recreate “American” foods for me (Hot dogs taste weird over there). He had an older and younger sister, and a best friend, named Igor, who hosted another kid from my school, Chris.
I could do a whole book on Russia, and I might one day (Do you have any idea what it’s like to be black in Russia?!), but we’re not really here for the day-to-day account. No, I made the claim that the trip sort of changed my life, so I need to circle back to that. Once I got back, it was pretty good cocktail party conversation. I used the experience for my college essays, and I refused to apply anywhere that required a different essay (God, I’m such an asshole). If I had a Hasbro filecard, it would probably say
- Went to Russia
- A Cappella
- Graduated from Cornell
And, honestly, that’s kinda sad. There’s more to me than that, and I know there’s more, but these 3 things have sort of defined a good chunk of my life. Now, at this age, I’m trying to really boil down to what it is, exactly, that these things contributed to who I am now. That’s a daily process, honestly.
It’s also timely that I talk about this right now. Sure, it’s the anniversary of my departure, but there’s more. I didn’t end up leaving that school after all. I felt like the Christian school was a notch above a homeschooling program (Calm down, protestants – I had gone to a Lutheran school for 7 years), and I got a real fundamentalist vibe from that place. And this was before they’d even started wearing red hats! So, the prep school’s headmaster worked with us on financial aid, and I would end up graduating high school from that place. There was also brief talk about him possibly pulling some strings to get me into the Naval Academy. What does THAT Will look like?! Anyway, just before the Disney trip, I learned that he had passed away, and I was out of town at the time of the memorial service. Had he been like “Nah, rich kids only”, I’d have ended up at the Silver Spring Christian Academy, and I’d be probably be running a Subway franchise or selling that app that blocks porn on your phone so it doesn’t ruin your marriage.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been watching the news, you know that everyone in DC is getting laid off. One of the first organizations to feel the sting was the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. I wasn’t really familiar with the organization, but it seemed like they did positive work across the world. Around that time, I got a hankering to find out if Project Harmony was still around. Apparently, around 2020, Russia sorta kicked them out. I’m guessing Putin didn’t love what they were doing (at the time, they were training law enforcement, and providing internet training to folks), so they’re not a “welcome” organization in Russia these days. Working backwards, however, I found when they started doing the exchange trips, and I discovered that those very trips – like the one in which I had participated – had been subsidized by USAID.
So, I don’t know who I’d be without Russia, and I’m still learning who I am with Russia. But it’s not so bad, and I think I could have ended up a lot worse off. I wish I could tell that scared little chubby kid that everything’s gonna be OK. Hell, I wish he could tell me that. Anyway, thanks Mr. Zvara, and thanks USAID.
