Ten Ways to Get the Right Guy to Like You

*sigh*

So a couple of my friends from STCC shared this on Facebook, so of course I had to watch it. I don’t know why (before you ask); I just had to.

Apparently, I've been waiting for this video all week, because I just went on a huge rant here. I don't mean to be disparaging or to lecture (but I’m going to), but this kid is waaaaay too young to have any idea what he's talking about. Some good advice here, but... Well on with the show. Watch this. And try not to puke, because as dumb and brainwashed as this kid is, he does make a couple good points, some of them accidental. Don’t worry; we’ll be going over all of them after the break.

 

#10. I agree with what he says, but not what he makes it mean. Yes, wait for the right guy. But how do you know he's the right guy? You date him. I agree with "don't date every guy that comes along," but you don't buy a car because it's the right color. You do your research and figure out which one's right for you, then you wait for it to go on sale. Do your research. If you call that "dating," then date some guys you think are interesting. If you call it "hanging out with a guy to get to know him better," then do that.

I just have to say one more thing about #10. You don't need a man. You don't. If you think you do, you don't know yourself well enough. Here's what I tell any teenager and twenty-something who will listen: if you think you need a man (or a woman, if you're a guy) to make you complete, you're not emotionally mature enough to have one.

#9: Yup. I would take this one step further. Know yourself. If you're < 25, you don't know yourself. Maybe you know who you are today, but you don't know who you're going to be when you're forty.

So let's say you meet some guy (who's 22, just like you). You're both into the same kind of music, you both like the same kind of food, you both like shopping at the mall and you both hate Barack Obama. You date for a while and get really involved in each other's lives. So now you're 24 and you're getting married. Cool. You're young, dumb and in love, so you get married.

Fast forward six years. Now you're thirty, you've got a three-year-old kid, and you don't understand why you don't get along with your husband anymore. It's because when you were 22, you didn't know who you were going to be yet, and he didn't know who he was going to be either. But you both decided that you liked who the other person was right then, so you did something stupid. Over time, you both changed into something that the other person didn't like very much. Now you're stuck in a loveless marriage, and worse, so is your three-year-old.

And yeah, your self-esteem shouldn't be defined by anyone but you. Don't let anyone else define what makes you love yourself. Whether that means being with a guy who literally tells you you're worthless, or building your entire existence around your sweetheart. Be who you want to be, then find somebody who wants that. In that order.

#8: Umm. Okay. I agree that you should generally be nice to everybody, but I don't see what it has to do with this topic.

I do have to take exception to #7. Don't learn about "things guys like." Seriously, the next time somebody tries to tell me how different men and women are, I'm going to punch a baby (not mine). Men and women aren't different. PEOPLE are different. Everyone is different. I know plenty of (straight) guys who like Twilight, and plenty of (straight) girls who play World of Warcraft because THEY like it. My mother-in-law has gotten me hooked on more sci-fi shows than I've gotten her on. It's like a competition. And she didn't start loving Star Trek to get any guy to notice her.

But there is a certain amount of sitting through "Gilmore Girls" or being forced to watch March Madness in any healthy relationship (no lie; I love Gilmore Girls. My glasses got a little foggy when Rori decided not to go to Harvard. And Kerry goes ballistic if she misses a playoff game). We do these things because sometimes it's important to spend an hour doing something you don't like because someone you love wants you to. Ever take your grandmother underwear shopping? I have. That’s a story for later, but it just further illustrates my point.

If there's something that your significant other is into, try it. Maybe you'll enjoy it too and that will be one more thing you can do together. But don't go bowling three times a week if you don't like bowling. You're doing it just to impress him. If that makes him feel special, you're robbing the cradle and that's not cool.

I will make this admission: there's nothing more intriguing than a girl who is into whatever I'm into. In high school, that meant music and sci-fi. Now it's Ryan Reynolds and photography. If there's something that you like to do that's "not girly," let a guy see you doing it and he'll want to know more about you.

Here's another insight into how guys think: any girl who can admit that another girl is attractive is instantly awesome. Seriously. This works on me, and I'm married with no interest in other women.

So I'm watching "Kill Bill" with a bunch of my friends. One of my bros says "Damn. That Uma Thurman is one fine-lookin' woman." Okay. That's something a dude says. Then my sister (my literal sister) says "yeah she is. Especially in that yellow motorcycle outfit." No kidding, every head in the room turned. It doesn't make you a lesbian to acknowledge when another woman is attractive. But in every guy's head, it means you might be into that. And any guy that says that isn't at the very least intriguing is a bald-faced liar. And I mean ANY guy. If your Great Uncle Charlie says it, he's lying to you. If your gay best friend says it, he's lying too.

#6: To start with: "I don't know what I would do without you" is pretty much the single best way to get any guy worried that you're taking this relationship a lot more seriously than he is. I don't know about other guys (in this specific instance), but I have a very detailed plan of exactly what I would do without Kerry, and we've been together for over ten years. If you've been with a guy for a year or 18 months, you can say things like that, and you should. If that scares him, he's too immature to handle an adult relationship. But if you're talking about a guy you've just started dating or don't know very well, this is one of the two best ways to get rid of him fast.

On to the actual point: "make him feel needed." Yeah, okay. I guess. I've just watched this bit five or six times and I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it. But lemme tell you how I feel about it. You don't need him. Making him believe you do is a lie. I'm against lying in general. But hold on. It's true: everyone wants to feel needed and useful, and if you "need" him and he wants no part of it, he's obviously not the right guy for you.

If Kerry hands me a jar and says "open this for me," I give her a look and I say "no." I do that because I watched her take it from the cabinet and hand it directly to me. She didn't try to open it herself and she's just relying on me to do things for her that she could probably do very well herself. And that's not healthy.

On the other hand, if you tell a guy "I need to talk to you about something important," and he gets all uncomfortable and doesn't want to, is that the kind of guy you want to marry? Strictly speaking, that's not the topic for today, but do you really want to date someone you know you don't want to marry? Just sayin'.

So I guess I feel two different ways about this one. On the one hand, don't act needy and helpless, because you're not. On the other hand, if you do act that way, the way he reacts to it will tell you a lot about him and your relationship.

And I wouldn't be me if I didn't rant a bit about #5. "Chivalry," as he calls it, is a lie and a con game. I open doors for everyone, and I stand up when ANYBODY enters the room, because I'm not an asshole and I'm not trying to get into anyone's pants (at this point in my life).

If a guy opens the door for you, he's doing it to impress you and it's not really part of who he is. Don't encourage that sort of nonsense. If he opens the door for the old Korean man who's pushing on a "pull" door because he can't read the sign, he's doing it because he's a genuinely nice guy, and not just to impress you. If he pulls the car over in the rain to help a guy in a tux change a flat, he’s (probably) not doing it to impress you. He’s doing it because he’s an exceptionally nice guy (I probably wouldn’t pull over for that). Any guy who does something just to impress you isn't after your respect, your friendship, your well-being or any relationship that doesn't end twenty minutes (meh) after he gets your clothes off.

Having said that, that's what most guys think of girls who do things that are obviously designed solely to impress us. For example: playing Call of Duty. If you like CoD, play it. But if guys see you doing it, most of them are going to think you're doing it to impress them. About half of them will think it's cool and want to get to know you better. About a third of them will think you're a slut and try to take advantage of you. The remaining sixth of guys will think you're a slut and want nothing to do with you.

Trust me on this stuff: I'm a dude. I hang out with other "Christian" dudes and I know how we think.

I cannot argue with #4. Do I like seeing a naked female? Yes. Is it difficult to have a conversation with one? Absolutely. Dress however you want, but don't get pissy when people stare at whatever you're advertising and don’t really want to talk to you.

It's possible to be attractive without dressing like a whore (I would argue that dressing like a whore is seldom attractive). You know that song: "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man." While I'm sure that's not literally true (some girls aren't), it mostly is. And it's no less true in the other direction. A well-dressed woman is an attractive woman. Don't believe me? Go check out the photo gallery on the second floor of Building 15 at STCC. Bring a dude. Ever heard a man say he loves a woman in uniform? It doesn't get more formal than that.

#3: Ah yes. The obligatory Christian anti-Hollywood propaganda that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Okay, I'll bite, even though it is completely off-topic.

Hollywood does not insist that you act as eye candy. Check out this list. How many of those movies make you feel like women are being objectified? My answer: 3 out of 10. Gone With the Wind, Titanic and Snow White.

If you'd rather look at the top ten on this list, which is weighted very heavily towards more recent films, I'd say 4 out of 10. Titanic, Transformers, Pirates and Pirates. And the Pirate movies don't REALLY objectify women (even though they’re Disney, which is unusual for them), but I could understand an argument being made.

So if we're quite finished with THOSE shenanigans, on to #2.

#2: Can't be overstated. But it's not about "moving too fast." Move as fast as you're comfortable with. It's about not doing something you're uncomfortable with just to get a guy to like you. Like I said before, guys aren't stupid. We know when you're doing something just to impress us and we know when you're giving us what we want just because you want us to like you. When a girl does that, we treat her like she's the kind of girl who will do anything for attention. Because she is.

Honestly, you can skip this whole video and just go right to #1. If you act like you think someone wants you to act, they're going to like you right away. But once they get to know you, they might not definitely won’t like you very much any more. I know plenty of people who have gotten stuck in relationships and even marriages that were horrible because they pretended to be someone they're not just to get somebody to like them. It works. People will like you if you behave like they want you to behave. But if that's not who you really are, you're only hurting yourself.

There's a reason half of all Christian marriages end in divorce. It's because Christians tend to latch on to the first other Christian that comes along and consider themselves lucky that they "caught a good one," as if any Christian man and woman, when mashed together, are perfectly capable of having a healthy marriage. God will just make it work.

Again, I don't talk about things I don't know about (without telling you that I don't know what I'm talking about). I spent four years of my life at a Christian high school, and the attitude there was "go to college to get an education. Go to a Christian college to get married." I've spent almost all of my life as part of a church family, and every day (not literally every single day) I saw young people getting married for the wrong reasons.

To finish up: Oh my God I can't believe he really said it. Let me be clear: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "HAPPILY EVER AFTER." Even if there was, you wouldn't want it. "Happily ever after" is boring. It's antiques roadshow boring. It's mowing the lawn boring. It's Gone With the Wind boring. If you find a guy who's perfect for you, and you're perfect for him, and you fall madly in love and get married and just make each other perfectly happy every single day for the rest of your lives, you're are the most annoying couple on the block. You're the people everybody tries to avoid at the neighborhood BBQ, because you're just so fake. That just doesn't happen. If anyone reading this right now thinks their marriage is that perfect, they're not going to be married for very much longer. Any person who doesn't piss you off once in a while is a person you don't care about in the least.

Know what else isn't real? Prince Charming. Go watch Cinderella. Right now. I'll wait here.

Welcome back. Let me tell you the story of Cinderella and Prince Charming. They'll be blissfully happy for... a month. And that's being generous. But as soon as she realizes that he leaves the lid up, and he realizes that she doesn't wear ball gowns and glass slippers all the time, and that they got married without knowing a single thing about each other, the shit is going to hit the fan. In this particular case, not such a bad deal for either of them. They're royalty. They only have to pretend to be madly in love for the sake of the realm. Behind castle walls, they can do whatever (and whomever) they want.

But you're not royalty and neither is your "prince charming." You don't get to only see each other on formal occasions and then go to bed with stable boys and scullery maids. You get to make each other miserable for the rest of your lives, or you get divorced. And don't get me wrong. Divorce is an excellent idea in this case. But I've never heard of a divorce that anyone walked away from happy.

If you go looking for a husband, you'll find one. If you don't go looking for a husband, you'll find THE one. Become who you want to be, and someone who wants someone like that will fall into your lap. Hopefully literally, because that would probably be a great story.

OneMillionMoms

So something interesting happened just now. I read an article about onemillionmoms.com. It's a website devoted to OneMillionMoms, a "Christian" organization that sends e-mails to big companies that support things they think are bad. For example: Ben & Jerry's new "Schweddy Balls" ice cream flavor.

So I joined their club. I signed up for their newsletter and looked at their homepage to see what they're bitching about this week. turns out, they're bitching about Dancing With the Stars. Apparently, they're upset that the show took a couple minutes to explain the fact of Chaz Bono's transgender status, and exactly what that means. There's a link at the bottom of the page to e-mail the show's advertisers and express your discontent.

So I clicked it. Here's the standard e-mail that was pre-written so I could just enter my info and click "send":

As a mom and a member of OneMillionMoms.com, I am deeply disappointed that you are supporting the inappropriate, politically correct program "Dancing with the Stars" which airs Monday and Tuesday nights on ABC at 8:00 p.m/7:00 Central.

This show is extremely descriptive in its transgender discussions and its casual approach to homosexuality when children are likely watching.

The overtly-sexualized show is offensive in how it portrays this lifestyle as glamorous and in a positive light, when in fact it is damaging to impressionable young men and women.

You have choices about what you support, just as I have choices about where to spend my hard-earned money.

As a consumer, I am asking you to stop your company's advertising support of this show. My decision to support your company depends on it.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding my concern.

I thought it was nice of them to have something all ready to go, but you know me. I can’t let somebody else write copy for me. So here's the e-mail I sent:

As a soon-to-be father and a member of the church of the flying spaghetti monster, I will be deeply disappointed if you give in to the inappropriate, hateful demands of "OneMillionMoms," in regards to their petty outrage over the recent premiere of Dancing With the Stars.

They are essentially a terrorist organization, and want to control the way America thinks and prays by forcing Christianity on all of us.

This overtly religious group is offensive in that they portray something as innocuous as the transgender culture as sinful and damaging, when in fact it is completely harmless (except to their religious powerbase).

You have choices about what you support, just as I have choices about where to spend my hard-earned money.

As a consumer, I am asking you to pay no heed to the outcries made by this ridiculous group of uber-cons, though my decision to support your company will continue to be based solely on my own perception of the quality of your goods and/or services.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding my concern.

Sincerely,

Andrew Bowman

I thought it clever of me to use the resources of this terrorist organization in such a manner, and will continue to do so every week when they post a new "thing we've got our bras twisted about this week."

But that's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that I got a RESPONSE. Not from OneMillionMoms, but from Kohl's, one of the companies who's executives I supposedly e-mailed. Here's what the response said:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting us!

We have received your inquiry and are assigning it to a representative. You can expect to receive a response from us within one business day.

To help track your inquiry we have generated a reference number. Your ticket code is LTK5810322542X. Please use this code in any further communication.

I don't know what "executive" OneMillionMoms thinks they're e-mailing over at Kohl’s, but I'm pretty damn sure he doesn’t work in the customer support department. I'm not sure if OneMillionMoms are idiots or a front setup by said advertisers to stem the tide of e-mails from pissed off conservatives (which would be f*$@ing brilliant, by the way). Or if said advertisers have simply dealt with this so often that they now automagically redirect executive e-mail accounts to CSRs for triage.

Now that I know for sure that they don’t screen the e-mails people send from their website, I can do all kinds of crazy-ass stuff. In addition to sending encouraging messages to the people that they’re protesting, I could send… I dunno. Porn? would that be funny? Sending porn through the Customer Support system of several big companies in the name of OneMillionMoms.com? I’d have to create a dummy e-mail of course. Hmm… Anybody got any ideas?

Things I want my children to learn from watching South Park

I love South Park. I watch it all the time. It’s one of the two things (the other is Star Trek) that I miss by not having cable. I don’t remember the circumstances, but my mom recently told me she hates South Park. I think that’s sad. Furthermore, I think it’s because she thinks it’s about the outlandish antics of four nine-year-old boys from Colorado. It is. But only insomuch as Star Trek is about the outlandish misadventures of a prickish spaceship captain and his two best friends. That is ostensibly the one-sentence plot of the show. But Star Trek is really about tolerance, equality, doing the right thing even when it’s against the rules, and turning to thievery and brigandhood whenever things don’t go your way.

So it is with South Park. It’s incredibly cliché to say, but South Park is about America. It’s about all the things that make America great, and all the things that make Americans retarded. Seriously, if you’re bored one night and want some intellectual stimulation in humorous form, load up your Netflix instant queue and watch a couple episodes of South Park. Not the first one. If you don’t like it, you don’t get it.

So when my kids are… I dunno, in third grade, I’m going to let them watch South Park. They won’t get it, but they’ll love it. When they’re older, they’ll start to understand it, the same way I’ve come to understand Star Trek and advanced math now that I’m actually old enough for them. And here’s the (short) list of things I hope they learn from it:

Jesse Jackson is NOT the emperor of black people (no matter what your dad says). There is no one individual to whom you can apologize for saying “nigger” on Wheel of Fortune to make everything okay.

Cancer is a disease. Addiction is a choice. Pity the addict all you want, but understand that he chose to be where he is. You don’t just happen to become addicted to something just by minding your own business. You become addicted to something by intentionally doing it far more often than you should. Your only disease is chronic stupidity.

Sometimes you need to risk physical injury to take a stand for what's right. When you do (or don’t do) something because someone threatened to hurt you if you don’t (or do), you’re worse than they are. They’re bad. No doubt. But you’re just enabling them and sending the message that that kind of shit will work. You give Americans a bad name and you’re the reason the rest of the White world hates us.

Watching the Food Network all day doesn't make you qualified to do anything except talk about how badly Bobby Flay needs a new haircut. It doesn’t make you a gourmet chef. It doesn’t make you a food critic. it means you know what food looks like that somebody else thinks is good (or bad).

Sometimes it's more important to live your life than to photograph it.

Putting someone else's wiener in your mouth absolutely makes you gay. Putting your wiener in someone else’s mouth makes you equally gay.

When Kyle's mom gets a bug up her ass about something, get out of the way or you'll only make things worse. Fighting her will only strengthen her resolve. Just pretend to give her what she wants to shut her up.

Jesus was a cool guy. It's his modern-day followers who are assholes.

Don't ever do anything just because "it's the way things are done." Don’t ever do something just because everybody else is doing it. If all your friends start doing crack, it’s time to find some new friends. That really sucks, but life’s a bitch sometimes.

Sometimes it's good to apologize, even if you think you didn't do anything wrong. Even if you know you’re right and the other person is wrong, sometimes it’s worth saying you’re wrong just to smooth things over (sometimes).

When a man undergoes gender transformation surgery, he doesn't become a woman. He becomes a man who looks like a woman. A man who undergoes species transformation surgery isn’t a dolphin. He’s a man who mildly resembles a dolphin. You’re born a man or you’re born a woman. If you don’t like it: tough shit.

Americans have big penis. Much bigger than Japanese penis.

Being gay isn't a choice. If you think it is, try it. What’s your favorite color? Mine’s green. I don’t want it to be green. I want it to be purple. But when I’m asked to choose the color something’s going to be, I generally want it to be green. I also like having sex with women. It doesn’t matter how much I might want to like having sex with other men: I won’t like it.

It's not okay to say "nigger" outside of academic debate. If there are no black people around, it’s probably okay. But you better make damn sure. Because Daddy’s not going to save you when you get in trouble for it.

Sexual education is a thing they do at school because most parents are woefully unqualified.

Gingers aren't real people, by reason of the lack of a soul. In the hierarchy of living things, gingers are on the somewhere between intelligent animals (gorillas, dogs, dolphins, etc) and other Human Beings. Don't mis-understand: They're Humans, just not people.

Sexism and racism are wrong in any form. It's not okay to say it's bad for a man to sexually harass a woman, but perfectly acceptable for a woman to likewise harass a man. Either it's okay or it's not (and that depends on your definition of harassment). It’s not okay that there are clubs explicitly only for black people, but if white folks have such a club, it’s (literally) a federal matter. That’s not okay. You can’t fight fire with fire, and you can’t fix racism with more racism.

English is a living language. It evolves and grows as society changes. Look up the etymology and history of "fag." Really look it up though. Don't just assume you already know what I'm talking about.

Hippies are a blight on our country even today. We must all take responsibility for ending the threat they pose to our capitalist way of life.

Remembering Star Wars Galaxies

Image via Wikipedia

There are two things I always remember on July 4th every year. First is my great-grandfather. We always have fireworks on the 4th for his birthday. The second thing is the fireworks at the Theed spaceport on Naboo.

On the 4th of July, every hour on the hour, we used to get together at every spaceport in the game and shoot of fireworks. It was a great event. Low-level crafters got some xp by making fireworks, and made a little money selling them. It was a great community event and I’m both sad and happy that this will be the last time it will ever happen.

I’m sad because it’s something that I used to do with all my friends and it’s over now. I’m happy because the abomination that has been called Star Wars Galaxies for the past few years since SOE wrecked the game I loved is finally getting the axe.

In the aftermath of the huge security scandal when the Playstation Network (and every other network operated by Sony Online Entertainment) was hacked and user data stolen, Sony has finally decided that SWG just isn’t worth the money to keep the game’s servers running. Right when I was about to give it a second chance. Oh well. I’m sure I’m better off not ever trusting Sony with my credit card information.

Oh well. Back to dreaming of the day when SWG emu will finally be released and I can play good ol’ Galaxies again. For free. Without the fear that anyone will break it again.

Windows Live Writer

Don’t use it. It sucks. Hard. I just wrote up a big long blog entry, then the thing just quit on me. Didn’t save my document first; just quit. Gave me a friendly little message saying “Hi! Fuck you! I quit! Okay?! Bye!” Piece of shit. This is not the first time this has happened. Don’t use Windows Live Writer. I’m just so pissed off right now I can barely spell.

Anybody know of an alternative? I need a Windows application that will publish to my blog. I need it to process html and java so I can put embedded objects (like YouTube videos) in my blog posts. It would be nice if it could put metatags on my posts as well, which Live Writer has never been able to do.

Movie Time

Image via Wikipedia

So yesterday Kerry and I watched movies on Netflix all day. Two of them were The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Kick-Ass. Both pretty awesome; both featuring Nicolas Cage. I’ll start with Kick-Ass.

Part Daredevil, part Superbad. Kick-Ass is a “superhero” who doesn’t actually have any super powers. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but he’s just barely super-human. Not because of any gamma radiation or mutated animal encounter.

But before I really get into it, here’s the first thing: I don’t care what anybody tells you. This movie is NOT FOR KIDS. If you’re not old enough for high school, you’re not old enough for Kick-Ass. If you’re not old enough to buy beer, you’re not old enough to watch Kick-Ass without your mommy. This is a grown-up film for grown-up Humans. Not surprising, since the graphic novel it’s based on is similarly targeted. Mark Millar doesn’t write comic books for kids, and movies based on his work are likewise rated for big boys only. If you wouldn’t let your 9-year-old watch Wanted or 300, you shouldn’t let him watch Kick-Ass. Just because this movie is largely about an 11-year-old girl doesn’t mean 11-year-old girls should watch it.

At any rate, Kick-Ass chronicles the adventures of a high school kid who doesn’t understand why there aren’t real superheroes. Scratch that. He understands why there aren’t real superheroes. He doesn’t understand why there aren’t more people who try to be superheroes. Batman, after all, is a totally plausible story. No super powers; just insanely rich with a highly developed sense of justice. Ditto Punisher. Along for the ride are the team of eleven-year-old “Hit Girl” and ex-cop “Big Daddy.”

As with anything written by Mark Millar, the story seems to derive directly from common childhood fantasies, tempered with an adult sense of how the world really works. There’s no real Batman largely because nobody with enough money to be Batman gives a shit about the crime in New York City. Expert martial artists (who don’t have Batman money) don’t dress up in costumes and fight crime because they can make a lot more money as hollywood stunt men. Or because they’re afraid of guns. But wouldn’t the world be a more interesting place if people like that did that sort of thing? Not all of them; just one or two here and there. I mean: wouldn’t a lot of petty criminals give at least a second thought if there was a real Batman?

That seems to be the rationale behind Kick-Ass. Also like other things written by Mark Millar, people die in Kick-Ass. And they don’t get shot ambiguously just off-camera. They get stabbed, sliced in half, blowed up in a microwave and thrown off buildings. Oh yeah. And they get shot.

The one detrimental thing I would say about Kick-Ass is that it’s too much about the hero and not enough about the alter-ego. Spiderman was great because it wasn’t really about Spiderman. It was about Peter Parker. Kick-Ass is a movie about high school nerds who never get shoved in their lockers, pantsed in gym class or thrown in a dumpster by the football team. They talk about “we’re such nerds and the cool kids always pick on us.” But there’s precious little footage of anyone actually getting picked on.

Here’s an analogy: What if Harry Potter just happened to take place at Hogwart’s, and you never heard about any of the actual school things that happened at the school? Would it still be a good story? Sure. But it wouldn’t be as good. One of the large factors that made Harry Potter great was its new twist on an old story. It’s the same basic story as Ender’s Game, Horatio Hornblower, Glee or Dune (say “Star Wars” and I will kick your ass. But yes, that fits too). It’s the same old “growing up different” story in a fantastic setting.

I feel like Kick-Ass is a growing up story where nobody actually does any of the usual kinds of growing up. Don’t get me wrong: all the characters learn things, and by the end of the story they’ve all grown. But we don’t follow anybody from childhood to adulthood. Nobody graduates into a new, profound understanding of humanity; nobody has a seminal moment of “so THAT’S how the world works.” It almost feels like an introduction to the beginning of a growing up story.

I guess that’s not really a negative; just something that struck me as odd about the movie. Maybe it’s different in the book. I’ll have to read it. Without having read the book, I give Kick-Ass five stars. Once I read the book, I’m sure I’ll downgrade it to a three.

Now, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. There have been a lot of reboots and retellings as of late, and why should Uncle Walt be left out of the fun? Granted, this is the first full-length feature in the franchise, but we all know the original apprentice had big ears and a pointy, blue hat.

In contrast to Kick-Ass, this movie absolutely is for kids. I would feel totally comfortable letting a 9-year-old watch the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They might not follow it all the way through, but there’s certainly a lack of objectionable content (it’s Disney; It’s kosher).

To sum up, the film follows the adventures of David, the apprentice of Balthazar, a former apprentice of Merlin. David is a molecular physics major who plays with tesla coils a lot. Balthazar is a very old wizard who’s spent centuries searching for the perfect apprentice.

One of the cool things about this film is how magic is portrayed similarly to the way it is in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. “A carefully placed thumb on the scales of the universe.” Magic isn’t really magic. It’s just science that most of us can’t grasp. That was kinda cool.

The effects are well-done, the acting was good (Alfred Molina is always awesome), and the plot was good as well. The dialogue was a little dry, but it was okay.

And yes, there is a mop scene with lots of water splashing all over the place. Fantasia fanatics: be placated.

Heroes

Image via Wikipedia

Once upon an NBC, there was some great television. It was the best rip-off of X-Men that has ever been. It was about a group of what can only be described as mutants that were supposedly the next step in Human evolution. Loved that show, almost cried the day it got cancelled.

Anyway. You all know I only blog about something that’s pissing me off. So here it is. The entire series is now available to watch instantly on Netflix. Awesome. I’m watching it right now, as a matter of fact. One hiccup. Those sons of bitches “fixed” it. Nothing major, but totally breaks my immersion in the show.

When the show was on TV, every episode started with a monologue, usually by either Sendhil Ramamurthy or Erick Avari. That was all the recap anybody ever needed. Apparently, on the DVD edition of the show, the producers decided that wasn’t enough.

So now there’s an actual recap before the monologue, in which some dude with a deep, gravelly voice (that’s getting old, by the way) begins HIS monologue with “previously on Heroes.” But it doesn’t just end there. He does a full voice-over during the whole half-minute clip show. Aggravating: especially since they do a recap DURING THE SHOW. It’s okay if you don’t remember what you just watched five minutes ago, or an hour ago, or yesterday, because they’re going to do a flashback DURING THE SHOW. That’s one of the things that made Heroes great. You could miss an episode and not worry that you’d miss some crucial event, because anything that was important enough would get into a flashback, or (and this was my favorite method) they would replay the last scene of each storyline.

But I digest. My point is this: Heroes ain’t broke and never was. It was the awesomest show on television as long as it was running. It was deep, it was followable, and it shared none of the pitfalls common to contemporary science fiction (horrible acting, brain-dead director, artless writers, overbearing producers, crap story). I’m just perturbed that the producers felt that the show didn’t stand well enough on its own and needed to be appended in the form of a voiced-over recap at the beginning of each episode. And I’m further perturbed that they didn’t get any members of the actual cast to just throw off a quick “previously, on Heroes.”

Look. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched Heroes, and maybe I’m remembering it wrong. If I am… my point still stands. This blog entry is just a few years late.