Tagged: wrong

Mindy Newell: Mirror Images

Throwing my $0.02 in on Martha Thomases’s column last week concerning big boobs, ‘roidal musculature, and body image…

Readers of this column know very well my love of Kara Zor-el, i.e. Supergirl, as she was portrayed during the Silver Age. Debuting in Action Comics #252 (May 1959), Kara’s look was designed by Al Plastino with her continuing adventures drawn by her quintessential artist, Jim Mooney for the next ten years. I was 5-going-on 6 in May of 1959, and Kara, depicted as a healthy young girl just entering adolescence, was athletic and slim, but not overly muscular, and especially not overly endowed in her chest area. It wasn’t just her powers or her ability to be Superman’s secret weapon that captured my imagination – I wanted to be like her when I grew up. Yes, I had dark hair and brown eyes and I was born in Brooklyn and not in Argo City, the last surviving city of the planet Krypton, but she was a role model for me in that I wanted to grow up to be athletic and slim and strong and capable.

In other words, Kara gave me a healthy sense of my body and what it could be.

A few years ago I was riding on the PATH train into New York City when an ad caught my eye, partly because I knew the doctor who was advertising on the placard and partly because of what he was advertising: a labioplasty. This is a plastic surgery procedure for altering shape of the labia majora and labia minora. Yes, as an operating room nurse, I have participated in these procedures, and I do remember one patient whose labia majora was “overly endowed” to the point that it was embarrassing to her when she wore a swimsuit.

I’m not talking about that type of legitimate need. But 99.9% of these women who underwent the procedure did it for purely “cosmetic” reasons. Of course I couldn’t say this out loud, but what I was thinking was “are you fucking kidding me?” (Honestly, girlfriends, have you ever fretted about the anatomy of your labia majora or labia minora?) Apparently these women believed there was something wrong with their natural formation – meaning that it wasn’t “perfect.” I always had a suspicion that these women caught their men looking at the Playmate of the Month or the Penthouse Pet of the Month and felt inadequate. But, although of course I couldn’t ask them, I also wondered if their men had complained. I doubt it. (Guys, do you fret about the shape of your woman’s labia majora or labia minora?) At least I’ve never had a man break up with me – so far as I know – because of that particular part of my anatomy.

But most girls don’t read comics, you’ll say, and if they do, it’s Betty and Veronica or manga comics. Well, first of all, I don’t believe that’s so true anymore. Like football, I think the fastest growing segment of the comics audience are girls and women. I’d like to think that most adult women are grown-up enough to understand that comics are fantasies, and that they are capable of ignoring the bubble breasts, wasp waists, and lengthy legs of female super-heroines (if the writing and story is good, of course) without going into hyperventilation and toxic shock about their own anatomy.

But young girls, even if they don’t read super-heroes, are exposed to it when they visit their local comic book emporium. And exposure is 9/10ths of the law when it comes to thoughts about body image and self-respect and self-actualization.

Martha is right about comics being a small part of the media culture’s obsession with how women should look. But some companies are doing it right – Dove ran a very successful campaign featuring women whose body types ranged from svelte to chunky. And More magazine ran a feature a few years ago on Jamie Leigh Curtis with pictures of Ms. Curtis au natural – no makeup, no Photoshopping, no special lighting, no Spanx or body tape to hide or pull up sagging body parts. And by the way, it was Ms. Curtis’ idea to photo shoot herself as she is in “real life.”

It was part of an issue whose entire focus was accepting yourself.

Accepting yourself. It sounds so easy.

But it’s so hard. After all, we can’t all look like Wonder Woman, unless your name happens to be Lynda Carter.

But it’s worth every minute of sweat and every tear that’s shed.

Damn it, I gained a pound.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

A NEW LEGACY ARRIVES!

The first book in the new Destroyer spin-off series by Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch, Legacy: Forgotten Son is now available in paperback. Learn more here.

PRESS RELEASE:

FORGOTTEN SON BY WARREN MURPHY AND GERALD WELCH

It’s the second coming of Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch is riding shotgun!

Forgotten Son is the first book in the new Destroyer spin-off series, Legacy. Violence is escalating at the US/Mexico border. Smugglers run rampant while decapitated heads decorate billboards like Christmas tree lights. But the cartels choose the wrong place to conduct their business when they decide to cross the Arizona border belonging to the Sinanju tribe.

That’s where Ex-Mossad agent Benjamin Cole comes in. Ben has just been tapped to head a secret new government agency responsible for stopping terrorist acts. He is only given two field agents, but fortunately for him, Freya Williams and Stone Smith are the daughter and son of a certain Remo Williams.

This is old-school Murphy at his best, with explosive action, biting satire and engaging characters. Welch, coming off strong from the first five books in his Last Witness series, brings a spark of magic to the mix, but you kind of expect that from someone who has an honest-to-God lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

Fans of the Destroyer are going to love Forgotten Son and if you’re one of the four people on Earth who have never heard of the Destroyer, then buckle your seatbelt, because you’re in for a ride. If this book is any indication of what we can expect from future Legacy books, then Forgotten Son will be long remembered.

Learn more about Legacy: Forgotten Son at www.destroyerbooks.com.

A NEW LEGACY BEGINS

The Destroyer’s Warren Murphy, along with Gerald Welch, launch a new Destroyer spin-off called Legacy.

PRESS RELEASE:
FORGOTTEN SON BY WARREN MURPHY AND GERALD WELCH

It’s the second coming of Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch is riding shotgun!

Forgotten Son is the first book in the new Destroyer spin-off series, Legacy. Violence is escalating at the US/Mexico border. Smugglers run rampant while decapitated heads decorate billboards like Christmas tree lights. But the cartels choose the wrong place to conduct their business when they decide to cross the Arizona border belonging to the Sinanju tribe.

That’s where Ex-Mossad agent Benjamin Cole comes in. Ben has just been tapped to head a secret new government agency responsible for stopping terrorist acts. He is only given two field agents, but fortunately for him, Freya Williams and Stone Smith are the daughter and son of a certain Remo Williams.

This is old-school Murphy at his best, with explosive action, biting satire and engaging characters. Welch, coming off strong from the first five books in his Last Witness series, brings a spark of magic to the mix, but you kind of expect that from someone who has an honest-to-God lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

Fans of the Destroyer are going to love Forgotten Son and if you’re one of the four people on Earth who have never heard of the Destroyer, then buckle your seatbelt, because you’re in for a ride. If this book is any indication of what we can expect from future Legacy books, then Forgotten Son will be long remembered.

Learn more about Legacy: Forgotten Son at www.destroyerbooks.com.

Martha Thomases: The Future Is All Right

Martha Thomases: The Future Is All Right

The electricity, heat, hot water, Internet and phone service all work today. Even my elevator works. Doing without is last week’s news.

This week’s news is the election. As I write this, people are voting. We won’t have results until tonight at the earliest. Since I’ve voted already, I’m going to try to ignore the media until the polls close. There’s nothing more I can do, and that is frustrating. I want to do everything, and I can’t. If you are a spiritual person, pray for me.

For the last few years, my Republican brother-in-law has been telling me that the problem with the economy (and Obama’s presidency) is “uncertainty.” Because job-creators don’t know what Obama will do, they hesitate to expand, to hire more people, because what if they make the wrong choice? As someone who started a business (albeit in 1979), I can report that I never knew what was going to happen, nor did I expect to. It was my responsibility to make things happen.

According to Aaron Ross Sorkin in The New York Times, the election won’t make any difference in solving this problem, even if things go my brother-in-law’s way.

What will the future bring? We don’t know. When I was a kid, I thought the future meant I’d have a jetpack, or a flying (electric) car, and my clothes would have those pads on the shoulders like everyone wore on Krypton and the Legion of Super-Heroes. My apartment would clean itself. I thought we’d get our meals in pill form. I thought we’d wear Dick Tracy two-way radios.

Instead, we’re still dependent on fossil fuels. That’s bad. We don’t have pills for dinner. That’s good. I couldn’t have predicted the local food movement, but I’m really happy because now I can tell the difference among 15 different kinds of apples.

Then there are the things I didn’t even think about to form a prediction. Gay marriage became legal instead of marriage fading away as an institution. Instead of working a George Jetson three-hour work week, we expect employees to put in 50 hours or more. I don’t have a robot maid, but I could have a robot vacuum cleaner if I wanted. I could have a robot dog. I carry around more computing power in my pocket than there was on the entire Star Ship Enterprise. That’s dazzling, even if I use a lot of it to send photos of my cat.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That’s what makes life interesting.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

REVIEW: The Princess Bride – 25th Anniversary Edition

Hard to believe it’s been a quarter of a century since The Princess Bride was released to theaters. By then, I had adored William Goldman’s novel which was its basis and over time, as it hit cable then home video, it was watched repeatedly in my house. As a result, the kids grew up with it a part of their lives and they came to adore it with equal ardor. Sadly, when I tried to interest my eighth graders in seeing it recently, they stared blankly.

The conceit in the novel is that Goldman was giving us the “good parts” version of S. Morgenstern’s fantasy tale and that is adapted to the film as a grandfather (Peter Falk) reads the book to his sick grandson (Fred Savage). The rest of the fable involves the romance between beautiful Buttercup (Robin Wright) and dashing Westley (Cary Elwes) and the trials and tribulations that kept them apart – until the end when they finally kissed, one of the five greatest kisses ever recorded in history (or so we’re told). Between meeting and kissing, there are swordfights aplenty, death, resurrection, magic, cowardice, giants, tricksters, weird locales, and much more. Girls can love the romance, the boys can adore the action and both can laugh at the comical performances and clever dialogue.

Rob Reiner’s casting was pitch perfect as was his deft direction so all the elements came together to make an instant, enduring classic. With Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Andre the Giant, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing as it turns out and it’s a joy to see it one more time, in the 125th anniversary Blu-ray release from Warner Home Video. Reiner could have gone overboard with the humor but he reaches the edge of slapstick and pulls back time after time.

Given how often this has been previously released on DVD and Blu-ray, it’s comforting to see most of the extra features carried over here including both audio commentaries (Reiner and Goldman), The Art of Fencing (7:00), Cary Elwes’ Video Diary (4:00), a look at the Dread Pirate Roberts (12:00), twin pieces on the fantasy roots (26:00), a Makeup (11:00) piece; and “Untold Tales” (9:00). New to this edition is a 25th Anniversary Chat with Cary Elwes, Robin Wright and Rob Reiner (15:00) and Entering the Zeitgeist (15:00), examining the film’s role in today’s pop culture.

If you own one of the earlier versions, you may not need this but if you don’t have this on the shelf, this is well worth you (and your children’s) attention.

Monday Mix-Up: The Incredible Obamas

Here’s a pre-Election Day piece from Nikkolas and Nicole Smith, recasting Sasha, Malia, Michelle, and Barack Obama in the style of Pixar’s The Incredibles. I see only two things wrong with it:

1. The slogan should no longer be “Forward”, but “Excelsior!”

2. This piece is just crying out for Mitt Romney as Syndrome. Or perhaps $yndrome. And I suppose there’s space there for Joe Biden as Frozone. Of course, if you do that, you have to show Mitch McConnell as the Underminer…

Review: “Costume Not Included” by Matthew Hughes

It’s not easy being a superhero in the best of circumstances, so pity the poor man whose powers derive from a demon — and whose mother is dating one of the nation’s leading evangelical preachers. And when that young unfortunate’s name is Chesney Arnstruther, well…that’s someone whom you would not want to switch places with.

Chesney is the superhero of Costume Not Included, second novel in a trilogy called “To Hell and Back” — though it means that more puckishly than most fantasy books would — and I’ll direct you to my review of the first novel, The Damned Busters, for the precise details of how and why Chesney made that deal with the devil, how he did it without forfeiting his immortal soul, and why an actuary wanted to be a musclebound superhero in the first place.

There are two kinds of trilogy-middles: the ones that lose the energy of the first volume and mark time until the finale, and the ones that are happy to have gotten the scene-setting out of the way and leap into creating ever more complications to keep things interesting. Costume, luckily, is of the second type: the first book took a little while to get going, but this one hits its wry tone right up front and charges forward at exactly the right pace.

Really, how could you put down a novel that begins like this:

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Chesney Arnstruther said into the phone.

“I’m not speaking to you,” said his mother. “I’m telling you something for your own good, is what I’m doing.”

I’ve spent the last several years haranguing anyone who wanders into Antick Musings about how essentially funny and entertaining a writer Matthew Hughes is — see my other reviews of Hughes books, all of which you should buy, read, and love, in approximately that order: The Other, Hespira, Template, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Majestrum — so I’ll leave that part as read: Hughes came into the SFF field writing Vance-inspired far-future books, but his influences were always deeper than Vance (not that being able to write as smoothly and sardonically as the great Jack Vance isn’t a monumental achievement to begin with), and he’s since shown that his essential qualities shine through in a variety of subgenres.

So, anyway: Chesney is a superhero, and he’s been doing well at it. Too well, actually: he’s wiped out pretty much all of the Golden Age-style street crime (guys in suits and fedoras robbing banks, muggings, and so forth) in his city, and his deal only extends so far. He can’t directly stop the sources of crime — which, in best superhero fashion, lies with a shadowy cabal that secretly runs that city — and his put-everything-into-the-right-boxes mind is not happy leaving a job undone. (His new girlfriend, Melda, is also pushing him in slightly different directions; she’s like to see him have a higher media profile and perhaps make some money from being the Actionary.)

Adding to the complications is that his mother’s new boyfriend — that noted thriller writer turned TV evangelist, Reverend Hardacre — has his own new, and very odd, theory about the secret cosmology of the world, and it’s becoming more and more clear that Hardacre is right. And the Devil is not entirely happy with the deal with Chesney — that lack of a soul coming his way vexes him, and the Devil’s whole raison d’etre is to trick and twist and sneak — and the Devil has deal with other folks who may help him cause trouble for Chesney.

So complications — very idiosyncratic, unique complications, of the kind only Hughes could create — proliferate, until Cheney finds himself chased closely by a smart police detective, meeting a Jesus Christ, (not the Jesus — not the current one, at least — but a prior, historical version) and having himself proclaimed as a new prophet by Hardacre. But Chesney still has Melda, and his demon Xaphan, on his side, plus his own inextinguishable drive for truth and justice. And there’s still one book to come in this trilogy.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Matt Hughes is a great, wonderfully entertaining writer — his dialogue pops, his people are quirky and real, and his situations could be written by no one else in the world. If you don’t like his work, there’s got to be something wrong with you.

Martha Thomases: Say Good Night, New York­

Here’s where my plan went wrong.

Ever since Friday, the media have been telling New Yorkers to prepare for the storm. Be sure to have candles and batteries and water.

I do.

Still, I am not prepared. I am too high maintenance to function without electricity. If this was the NBC series, Revolution, I would have died before the opening credits began.

It is not until the power goes out that I realize how much I depend upon it. My hand automatically goes to the light switch when I walk into the bathroom. I know the coffee-maker won’t work, but I don’t know that the gas stove also requires electricity to light. I have to drink my coffee cold, like a Neanderthal. Luckily, I have a friend who only likes instant coffee, so I do not have withdrawal.

There is also no cable, no Internet, no cell service. My iPad is fully charged, but I can’t watch anything on Netflix because I can’t stream.

I can’t send in my column by deadline. With no subways or buses, I can’t go to a Starbucks for the WiFi because no place is open. I can’t even buy a newspaper.

Things are happening outside. I can hear sirens. Because I am old-fashioned and have a landline, I can talk to people. Friends and family from California, Michigan, Ohio and Brooklyn, all exotic foreign lands that have power, have called to tell me what is happening across town.

It would be a quiet day except for the wind blowing over the scaffolding on the building across the street. I have been reading the pile of graphic novels on my coffee table, saving my Kindle battery for later, when there is less natural light.

Then I will hunker down in the darkness, with candles and backlighting. I will eat my cold food and drink my room-temperature water.

There are rumors of light and power uptown. I may gather my devices for recharging and walk the three or four miles necessary to ascertain if this is true. If you are reading this, then I was successful.

I will feel like Kamanda, the Last Girl in Earth.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman, “Team” Player

 

LOST NOVELS OF ARNOLD HANO DEBUT!

3 Steps To Hell

Rediscovering the Lost Novels

of Arnold Hano

Stark House Press, in the business of reprinting some of the best mysteries and supernatural fiction of the past 100 years, is pleased to announce the publication and launch of 3 STEPS TO HELL, an omnibus of three hard-hitting novels by Arnold Hano. 

Many know Arnold’s name as the editor of noirmeister Jim Thompson at Lion books – Hano was the man who guided Thompson during his most productive period.  Others may know Arnold penned A Day in the Bleachers, the seminal book about baseball from a fan’s perspective centered around “The Catch” by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series. But what few may not be aware of is that Hano, under his own name and several aliases, wrote novels featuring driven, flawed characters.

3 Steps to Hell reprints for the first time three of Arnold’s books.  The Big Out was his first novel and was set, appropriately, in the world of baseball.  The story features major league players, gangsters, bribes and the outlaw teams of Canada.  In So I’m a Heel, a WWII vet, with plastic for a jaw shattered by a sniper’s bullet, seeks to blackmail a rich man over his terrible secret, but the scheme goes way wrong.  And in Flint, a western inspired by Jim Thompson’s Savage Night, a tormented gunslinger takes on one more job to kill for money. 

This edition also features an introduction by crime novelist Gary Phillips (The Warlord of Willow Ridge) and a Q & A with Arnold conducted by his longtime friend, playwright Dan Duling.  3 Steps to Hell can be obtained via your local bookstore or direct from Stark House Press —http://www.starkhousepress.com/hano.html

Dennis O’Neil: Tribes

Be prepared

And be careful not to do

Your good deeds when there’s no one watching you…

Tom Lehrer, Be Prepared

Back about a half-century past, when the streets of New York were grimy and enchanted and I first tiptoed into the supply side of popular culture, I would occasionally ride the subway to alien parts of the city to socialize with science fiction fans. Nice folk, these were. Sometimes they’d ask me about the science fiction books I was reading – and I read a lot of them in those days – and we’d chat. But, I eventually wondered, why weren’t they reading the stuff that I was? Didn’t they identify themselves as science fiction fans?

My memory is, as always, hazy, but I think I finally decided that what they called fanac had become more important than the fiction that had originally inspired it. The clubs, the meetings, and amateur publications – fanzines, of course – and the conventions occupied their leisure minds and the genre that was identified with the fanac – fan activity, as you have by now guessed – had a lesser place in their concerns. It was useful – it provided a reason for the gatherings and magazines – but the fanac was the thing. Fandom took on a life of its own and there was nothing wrong with that.

Much, much later, when I was seeing socially a lovely young woman who was part of that world (and whom I should have treated way better, and if she’s reading this, I apologize) I realized that fanac served noble purposes: it gave the participants private mythologies to share and elaborate; it gave them a social sphere in which to meet and sometimes mate like-minded others; it gave them places to go and things to do. In short: it gave them a tribe.

I remembered my fanacking friends and their tribal rites when, a couple of days ago, I read that over a thousand Boy Scout leaders were accused of sexual misconduct and their supervisors very seldom blew the whistle on them. Getting to be an old song, isn’t it? Clergymen and educators, make room on the bus for the BSA, and it’s off to hell we’ll go…

Evolution wants us to have tribes and most of us need them. The problems arise when the tribe becomes, to its leaders, more important than the reasons for which the tribe was formed: the football program is a vital part of the university and any young athletes who are harmed are collateral damage, and that is too bad; the church is God’s earthly avatar and its well-being, including its reputation, must be protected at all costs; and don’t the Scouts teach our youth proper values and skills and surely a bit of psychological damage here and there is justified by all the good…

Yeah.

Let us agree: we need tribes. But now, let us ask most earnestly: what do the tribes need?

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Meaning of Life – Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions, presented by Jay Garfield and available from The Great Courses. If you take only one philosophy course…

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases’ Wartalk