cybercharro

I just want to unplug myself from this reality. I don't want to even think about what is going to happen in the next your years. I want to be swept away into Dada discourse to escape this surrealist nightmare.

Quiero regresar a mi ciudad. Quiero caminar por sus calles y mirar sus arboles. Quiero deambular por sus jardines. Quiero ver en el presente mi pasado. Quiero volver.

The main plot of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" is that a blob of antimatter is destroying one parallel universe after another. Heroes from different earths join together to save the remaining five earths. At the end, only one earth survives, as it was meant to be.

The story explains how there was a boo boo during the creation of the world, and instead of a single universe, there were many created. This was the birth to the multi-universe. That explains why there is a Superman from the thirties, one from the fifties, one from today. That is why Superman and the gang never seem to age. They actually do age, but middle-age Superman lives in another earth.

The coolest part of the whole story is how the plot kills most of these superheroes. Finally, your fantasy of killing lame heores becomes true.

I like to read how creative people got their ideas. I like to read how my favorite shows were made. If you are like me, you enjoy this kind of thing. If you are not, DON’T DO IT!
You will discover that those great ideas and concepts that you loved were created for some mundane reason. Even worse, that the author is a moron. Well, maybe not a moron, but he is not as great as you once thought he was.

Take the teletransporters from Stark Trek. The coolest things. They made the other sci-fi series of the time look pathetic. I thought that Roddenberry was a visionary. Later I learned that he thought of it because he was too cheap to make a shuttle ship. The teletransporters saved him money.

In Star Wars, I thought that the smear under the floating desert vehicle of Luke Skywalker was some kind of magnetic field. Kewl! Instead, it was vaseline trying to hide the wheels of the car. Lucas hated this trick and "fixed" it on this later editing of the movies. More on Lucas later.

This post begins a number of short pieces about heroes. I am reading the 1980s classic "Crisis on Infinite Earths." The plot is about how the different parallel dimensions of the universe die, one by one, until there is only one single universe left. I will discuss more of this classic hokey plot line later.

This is one of the first times that I am reading super-hero comics after ten years of not reading them. In the mean time, I graduated from college with a degree in Classical Civilizations. I studied quite a bit about Greek and Roman mythology. Actually, there is no way that one can escape Greek or Roman mythology when one is studying their history and poetry.

What I realized was that the meat of Greco-Roman mythology is a lot like comic books that have too many words and no pictures. It’s fun. I had a lot of fun reading about dudes who married their moms, fathers who kill their daughters so that they can bring back the slut wife of his brother, and horny gods who rape virgins.

What a great major!

Maybe Silly Rabbit wants streetwalker’s “trix.” If so, what is he doing around children? Aughh! Silly Rabbit should be called Sickie Rabbit! I refuse to examine this line of analysis any further.

On the other hand, he could be too stupid to go to his community’s red district to find what he wants.

Silly Rabbit! Trix aren’t for rabbits, Trix are for kids!

What is the message that children get from the Trix ads? Let’s examine the symbolism behind Trix.

Rabbits symbolize masculinity and fertility, yet Silly Rabbit looks weak, a bit juvenile.

Trix stands for breasts. The children keep saying that Trix are for kids. What is for kids? Breasts! Bongos! Tits! There is nothing that is more for kids that women’s breasts.

Couldn’t Silly Rabbit qualify as a “kid” rabbit? No, he is slightly older than the children, either a teenager or a young adult. Besides, rabbits are not allowed to have Trix by definition. That is because they are a separate category from children, i.e. adults.

Silly Rabbit is eternally frustrated in his quest for Trix. At this point, it is obvious the meaning of the ads: Trix stands for the motherly love of women represented by the breasts. Silly Rabbit is a young male, a teenager, who yearns to have again that motherly love, but at the same time find breasts sexually stimulating. The slogan is a reminder for Silly Rabbit that he will never experience breasts as a child does.

Pop culture comes in different grades. There is the purest pop culture, lowbrow pop, which requires no work from the observer. Enjoying the painting of the dogs playing pokers is immediate; no need for an MFA to enjoy this beauty.

Then there is a middlebrow pop. At this level you still can get the point of the work quickly, but you need some background information to fully enjoy it. Pieces at this level have references to other works of pop culture. The Red Hot Chilli Pepper's 1988 album cover of naked men walking on a street makes a point right away, yet it only makes total sense if you know the cover of the Beatles' Abby Road album.

Highbrow pop is not immediate. It is pop in its techniques and origin, but the observer needs to be trained to enjoy these works. The comic strip Zippy the Pinhead is an example; many people do not understand it.
Its intentions are those of high art, but it still looks too crass to fully belong to that category.

Of course there is a continuum from pure pop to high pop, but this classification can be useful for further discussions.

The Wonderful Word of Disney was terrible while I was growing up. For some reason, they would barely ever play any cartoons. Instead, they had many live action movies and kiss-ass documentaries. They would never show cartoons. Never.

I assume that they were saving them for good. Ass!@#$%^.

Most of the documentaries were on how Walt Disney was a wonderful guy. He dreamt; he fought; he succeeded. Wasn’t he wonderful when he created Mickey Mouse? Wasn’t he daring when he made the first full-feature animated film? There were many interviews with fat, bald guys saying how --guess what? — wonderful Walt was.

The best thing about the documentaries was that one could see a few seconds of cartoons. The worse thing about the documentaries was that one could only see a few seconds of cartoons. To this day I have never seen all of Steamboat Willie, Ass!@#$%^.

The live action movies were the worst. There were, by far, two categories: bear movies and horse movies. The bear movies were for boys; the horse movies were for girls. Disney executives believed that having a bear would excite you if you were a boy; having a horse, thrilled you if you were a girl. The bear and horse were such powerful magnets, that Disney never bother working hard on the plot or character development; they had a bear and a horse, right?

My mother, aunts, and uncles would rhapsodize about how wonderful Disney cartoons were. Every week I prayed to God that Disney would show those cartoons. Such is the faith of children that I did this for years. It never happened. Ass!@#$%^.

Arnold Shwarzenegger, in “Pumping Iron,” psyches out his opponents by asking them if they are nervous and critiquing their workouts. This occurs throughout the entire film. He even tells a story about how he intentionally gave poor training to a German bodybuilder.

Ken Waller also psyches out a competitor by hiding his T-shirt. This is all the wrong he does in the movie.

Arnold is loved; Ken is hated. Arnold bothers others with a smile in his face; Ken is portrayed with an evil grin. A smile made the difference!

Arnold is just too likable.

I watched “Pumping Iron.” I loved the documentary, but I do not get the sport. To me, they all look very muscular; so muscular that I cannot tell one body from another. The narrator said that the judges look for symmetry, bulk, and pose. To me, they all looked symmetric and bulky. They all seemed to do the same poses.

The poses are the most intriguing. They would bend their arms, and the crowed went wild. The competitors would talk on and on about their poses. I could not see what was going on.

I guess if I ever try bodybuilding, I would understand. Since I will never do it, bodybuilding competitions will remain a mysterious rite for the rest of my life.

Late Boomers and early Xers were going to show their parents how to educate children. They got educational toys. They got flash cards. They got violin lessons, soccer practice, and art enrichment. They went to the board school to demand more homework. They thought it was an excellent idea that a preschooler should do community service before they get promoted to kindergarten. Most of their children have had a structured life.

And these are great children. Most of them are respectful, dutiful, and civically oriented.

They are more conservative than Xers and Boomers, even the children of liberal parents. This is the result of their upbringing. They love their parents, their community, and their country. They may parrot back liberal sentiments, but by doing that they are honoring their parents.

What kind of negative traits will they have? I do not know. I am eager to see.