nine to the power of threesuperman cum jesus

So you know you're old when your bicycle technician is apologizing to you for f***ing up your bicycle and you realize that you were old enough to be his middle school teacher. By the way, there are three things I don't like to reveal about myself—my age, my height, and my weight. But, since the Barefoot wine was on 2 for $9 special at Food Lion, let's just come out and say it. I'm almost 27; I'm not quite 6'2"; I'm a little more than 190 libra. That was hard.


So, in bicycle news, I got a monster bonus—I guess it was a fixed amount of money per year that you've been at the school—so it's enough to buy a new bicycle. I'm going to get a real bicycle. I don't know where, I don't know when, but Performance Bikes is having a sale. I know I should support small local business. But when that leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere, whether it's on the shores of Lake Michigan or Lake Anna, it's time to try a national chain.


Anyways, speaking of Lake Michigan, although Phil is one of my sexiest friends, I took no pictues of him, Tom or Chewy. However, instead of uploading pictures to Bebo, I've uploaded them to Flickr on which I made an account for my EDLF 505 class. So, there are the pictures from the trip to the Midwest, enjoy.

On that note, Spencer and I repeated a tradition from last year, and went to see Superman Returns on opening night. So, I don't know if I'll give away any SPOILERS away, but I do want to say a few things about the Superman franchise and superhero movies in general. As per my discussion with Guamo and Chewy, Superman, of course, is too perfect a hero. In fact, Superman is so powerful of a superhero, that every Superman plot demands kryptonite to create any sort of conflict. As long as Superman is Superman, you know he's going to save the spaceplane, stop the robbery, etc... As per rewatching Batman Begins with Phil, Superman is not like any other superhero, in that he is not a man—hero being related to the Latin "vir" or German "herr" meaning "man"—but rather, he is an alien masquerading as a human, an alien with supernatural, godlike powers. To this end, Brian Singer decided to make a strong stylistic choice to identify Superman with Jesus, and less emphatically, Lois Lane with Mary Magdalene. Thanks to the Passion of the Christ, which I believe is directly referenced in the film, and The DaVinci Code, Singer's references are timely, if not well-thought out.

You see, as Spence and I discussed (or disgust, which is it, Eminem?) Superhero movies are our equivalent of the plays of ancient Greece. Surely not only Sophocles wrote a play about Oedipus. However, Sophocles was able to connect that myth to something timeless and enduring, just like Batman Begins was able to connect to the idea of "fear" and "terror" to the Batman myth. In fact, it seems like contemporary filmmakers are returning to a classic aesthetic, in which novelty is not nearly as important as fidelity to tradition.

However, making Superman into Jesus, although a reasonable mythological comparison, falls short theatrically. Superman is a lost soul. He wants to know who and why he is. Jesus is an answer if not THE answer. Yeah, I said it. The comparison is not really novel, but ballsy. The movie is an enjoyable and somewhat thoughtful spectacle. Going on opening night might have been too much if it were not a tradition. However, I have to say, although one has to pay a $2.50 service fee for Fandango, we did get to skip right past the line of sheep-like ticket buyers.

However, what is up with animals-rebel-against-their-human-masters-children's-movies these days? Is this some sort of Al Gore movie tie-in, or are we truly reaping what we have sown in terms of environmental catastrophe.

Since I've gone all over the map today, the only thing that can tie all of this together is a picture of Bush and Koizumi together at Graceland.