I'm Going to Talk about Dolls

I know this is a weird post coming from a 20-something male, but I think this subject deserves to be broached. Who better to than a guy in his 20's?

Probably anyone born with lady parts in the last fifty or so years, but who cares? I'm writing this and they aren't. Na na na na boo boo, stick you head in doo doo (or don't, I'd imagine that would be unpleasant... you know, because of the smell [also the consistency]). Is that correct usage of the brackets? As parentheses inside of parentheses?

Well, good thing I started this post off with a bang...

Anyhizzards, the other day, I walked onto my porch after work and immediately flopped down onto the couch. My work, though not terribly difficult (nor is it demanding at all),  tends to, for some reason that is a mystery to me, completely wipe me out. So, I sink deeply into the couch only to find, to my rather pronounced dismay, that the remote control has been placed out of my reach, by at least five inches.


I am a modern Tantalus.

In complete refusal to move my body any amount of inches to retrieve the remote, I looked at the TV which was tuned to Nickelodeon. Nick (as we cool kids call it) used to be a bastion of quality children's programming. They were shows with characters that children could relate to and incorporated humor at which even the parents could snicker in amusement. 


Pictured: Everything great about my childhood.

Now, Nick is home to some of the most banal, uninspired rot that television has to offer*, at least in terms of non-reality shows (shows like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom are in their own special circle of TV hell). I'll admit, I have sat through my fair share of  recent Nick shows (iCarly on more than one occasion has induced a chuckle), but, for the most part, what passes for humor on these shows is an insult to children and adults alike.

Pictured: One reason why the youth are terrible.

But I have seriously digressed, especially since there was no show on.

There was however a commercial for Bratz, a line of dolls who dress inappropriately and have disproportionately large heads and feet for some reason. Also, they have a serious case of fish lips, like the fish that plays the sax in The Little Mermaid. They are hideous and if they were to ever come to life it would be one of the top 6 scariest things I could think of to happen.

They look like aliens from the planet "We Give It Away for Free."

The commercial, though, is what really got to me (besides the body image issues that these dolls probably engender). It wasn't the visual content either, that was just a young girl playing with her doll, standard fare. It was the background music.

This woman was... singing? I mean, she was saying words kind of sing-songy. She was "singing" things like "Fashion!" "Style!" "Girl!" and other random girl-child-centric words. The words made sense in the context of the commercial... kind of, but if you took them out of that context, they would make no sense. Alone, it sounds like the disjointed ramblings of an aging woman strung-the-hell-out on acid lamenting the fact that she didn't make it as a fashion designer. Subliminal messages.

Donatella Versace looks like a Bratz doll.
Coincidence?

Sadly, I can't find that specific commercial, but here is another commercial that does basically the same thing. It's an average commercial of little girls playing with dolls, but the background music is priceless. Though, admittedly, the lyrics are dead on.

I just don't understand where jingles went wrong. Remember this, this, this, and this? All of those songs are quality. Well, maybe not quality, but, lyrics-wise, definitely better than, "Out of bed princess!" and "Quick! Wake up your roommate!"

So, this pretty much turned into a rant about how much better things were when I was a kid. Maybe they were, or maybe I was just so happy about everything back then that all of my rememberances have that dreamy haze quality. I guess we'll never know (the world will never know?).

*Except for Avatar: the Last Airbender. Have you seen that show? It is amazing! ... The Legend of Korra is pretty good too.

The Worst Superheroes Ever?

I have a confession to make.

I am a nerd.

I know what you're thinking, "This guy?! A nerd?!" Anyone reading this wearing a monocle just heard a splash as their eyepiece fell into their champagne. Anyone reading this not wearing a monocle (i.e. everyone I know personally) probably just fell asleep a little during the second sentence because duh.

I began with a small aside to give context to the rest of this post. Obviously not much context, but enough that as a reader, you can think to yourself either, "I am not a nerd, so I'll go watch something on hulu+ instead" or "Tally-ho! I shall continue on what is sure to be an epic quest!"

To business!

I always thought of the Fantastic Four as the leftover night of superhero comics, the extras from every other Lee/Kirby collaboration, everything that Marvel hadn't "eaten up" yet. Punny?

They have the basic structure down, they're just regular people with super powers. They fight and pal around; they have break-ups and make-ups (outs).

These two pretty much cornered the market on make-outs.

A close second.

But, today, I defy you to name one super hero who doesn't. Comics in general have made a move from fanciful tales of unrelatable heroes with black and white morals to relatable antiheroes bathed in grey areas. Long gone are the days when Captain America was busting Nazi skulls just because they were evil threats to the "American Way."

Today, every hero has to have baggage. Even Cap' (tain America, for the uninitiated) had to be depressed up; it was the death of Bucky, his sideckick, that sent him over into real-feelingsville (even though, as it turned out, Bucky's was just a comic book death.) Captain America had to carry around the guilt and whatever! Very sad.

"BUUUUUUUCKYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!"
is a terrible name.

So, as with all modern heroes, the Fantastic Four have baggage. They got their powers by accident and they aren't sure they even want them, they don't always get along, blah, blah, blah.

But wait! I said they had powers! That must be awesome! Right?

Wrong.

Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) can stretch really far. That's okay I guess, except that people in real life can do that too. So that goes on a list with things like super accounting and super laundry-folding.

For Justice!*

Now, I realize that most superpowers are basically just amped up versions of actions that people can perform, but I feel like stretching is just so... boring.

He can touch his toes without bending over... so, that's cool... I guess.

Besides boredom, it's been done a million times before (or at least twice.) It's important to note the dates on the two guys in the links, though. The Elongated Man debuted the year before Fantastic Four. Plastic Man? TWENTY YEARS! So, not only is stretching a boring power, it's been used to death!

So, who's next?

Susan Storm (The Invisible Girl) can turn invisible which is useless, unless your foe is also deaf, and project force-fields like Bella in Twilight (except Sue's actually stop physical attacks and not just mental ones.) BOOM! Twilight reference! I went there!

Here is a picture of some guys footballing.
This is to put points back onto my man-card.

Then, there's Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) who besides having a name that is meant for adult cinema, can set himself on fire (by saying, "Flame on" ... um). I'd like that to sink in for a moment. He lights himself on fire. Did you catch that? It's like when your uncle decides it'd be a good idea to shoot off some fireworks in his backyard on the 4th of July.

If your fireworks make it into the air, you're doing it wrong.

Then, there was one. My personal favorite, Ben Grimm (the Thing).

He is super strong and made of rocks. I'll give them this one. He's basically the Hulk with maybe the worst catchphrase in history, "It's clobberin' time!" While maybe cutting edge in '61, in any year after that, it may be one of the least fear-inducing catch-phrases ever.

Besides Tyroc's "Light's, Camera, Blacktion!"**

The Thing is terrifying and ashamed of how he looks, but who cares when "It's clobberin' time!" is what comes out of his mouth right before he punches you. He'd evoke more fear by throwing a basket full of kittens at the criminal.

NOOOOOO!!!

The Thing is literally the only hero in this team that can get any butts kicked, and he has to ruin it with that bit of verbal diarrhea (which is a difficult word to spell, it's like vacuum).

But enough about the heroes, right? The villians have to be fairly awesome to make up for all of that... though, they could be terrible because the team itself couldn't save its way out of a paper bag.

Their arch-nemesis has some great powers. He can... do a lot of awesome stuff. I don't want to write it all here because I'm lazy. If you really want to know, look at that link. Do some homework... Jeez.

But his powers aren't the problem. It's his name... Dr. Doom.

Dr. Doom? Really? Why not call him Terrible McEvildoer and take care of any residual confusion as to whether he's a good guy or bad guy. Dr. Doom is probably just his bad-guy name, like Venom or Mr. Freeze. Right? Nope. His real name is Victor von Doom. He is a genius and acutally has a PhD. His name is actually Dr. Doom. He is also the leader of Latveria.

Looks home-y.

A man with the name Victor von Doom not only got into college, but became the head of a nation. Think about that for a moment. He not only managed to get into college with the last name Doom, but was able to attain and mantain leadership over an entire nation. I have a hard time believing that the manager at McDonalds would hire someone with the last name Doom let alone that people would let that guy stay in office.

You're extremely well qualified... But it's your last name. It's a bit... murder-y.

And, there you have it, what I've always thought about the Fantastic 4. Out on the internet for probably tens of people to read. Thank you, internet.

*As I was searching for pictures of laundry folding, I could only find pictures of women doing the folding. So, I guess great job Google for making folding the laundry sexist. Also, I would like to point out that justice is capitalized because in my mind I thought about superheroes personifying justice. In my mind, that woman folding laundry is folding for Justice the personification, not the abstraction... God, I'm a nerd.

**I realize I went all blacksploitation-y there for a second. But that is Tyroc, who in a quote by Jim Shooter, who tried to introduce a black superhero, "...I always wanted to have a character who was African-American, and years later, when they did that, they did it in the worst way possible....instead of just incidentally having a character who happens to be black...they made a big fuss about it. He's a racial separatist....I just found it pathetic and appalling." So... he was offensive before I got to him.