No (superhero) justice for the ladies

While briefly online this morning I noticed on FB a bit of a rant by a friend where she lambasted the paltry appearance of Wonder Woman in the new Justice League merchandise at Target. (I presume she sought items with the Amazon princess for her daughter, but heck, her aim may have been for herself.)

On the site was the picture above of the JL featuring only Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash, leaving out WW altogether (but if one scrolls all the way over to the right one will find her, as shown below). My friend understood why (marketing towards boys), but still lamented that a strong female character couldn't be included with the other heroes. Would that really be so damaging to our nation's boys?

"See" you later

When people on TV sign off by saying "See you tomorrow" (or "next week" or whatever time period applies), it makes me wonder if they understand how cameras work. Then I wonder if they have some ties with the NSA we haven't learned about yet.

IS IT A CODED WARNING?!

Blink once for "yes," twice for "no"...

Arresting the Development of TV Binge-Watching

As the entire internet is duly aware, Netflix released new episodes of Arrested Development weekend before last. In quasi-preparation for that debut my wife and I spent many hours in the preceding weeks re-watching the first three seasons through that online provider, being reminded of how much we enjoyed it back when it first aired (even the uneven third season), getting through the original finale in the late afternoon on Memorial Day.

Between then and the next weekend we have watched... three of the new episodes. And without spoiling anything (as we've been trying that to avoid by not reading reviews yet), our impression is... it's okay, with its moments, but generally unimpressive.

I'm not sure if having binged on those first three seasons raised our expectations for the "fourth," or if we simply tried watching them at inopportune times (twice my wife and I have started to drowse during them, on a warm, sunny afternoon, after eating), or if it's still too soon for us to judge (without seeing all the new episodes yet), but I can already say it's not inspiring us to want to keep watching the way gorging on the episodes from roughly a decade ago did.

Perhaps we are watching them ten years too soon. Maybe then the single-characters-focused, overlapping narratives will seem like genius.

But not watching them all in one big viewing gulp.

Ginning up the nostalgia with supermarket muzak

Hearing the Gin Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy" in the supermarket recently I was reminded of seeing the band (with my friend Frank) at the former Long Beach-based club Bogart's before that song hit it big (about 20 years ago). Then I thought of the age of the track and grasped that in relative temporal terms hearing it now is the equivalent of hearing Loggins and Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance" (a hit about 40 years ago) while strolling through the aisles back during the time when "Hey Jealousy" was in rotation.

Before 'After Earth'

Coming to a theater near you today, latest Fresh Prince of Bel Air blockbuster aspirant, After Earth.

Judging from the trailer the premise laid out in the short preview appears to be: Humanity fled the planet a millennium earlier—presumably due to having screwed it up to the point where it was nigh-uninhabitable—and now the elder and younger Smith men are on a space ship that crashes to our species' point of origin. The flora and fauna have flourished in our absence. Then we see the two humans battling CGI animals who understandably see them as prey,  interspersed between scene snippets with the tag line "Danger is real. Fear is a choice."