In the past 10 days, I've watched the following movies in the following order:

• MacGruber (awesomeness in a film)
• X the Unknown (I started it thinking it was a Quatermass film. It isn't.)
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (the only movie on this list that I had seen before)
• When in Rome (Kristen Bell: 'nuff said)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (predictable but captivating)
• The Color of Magic (as funny as the book)
• Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (great action, lackluster story)
• Gamer (oh, so terrible)
• A Town Called Panic (delightfully absurd)
• The Girl who Played with Fire (not as good as its predecessor)
• Lucas (the football scenes are laughably unrealistic)

Between Rocky Horror and When in Rome, I started The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but I just couldn't get into it. Terry Gilliam movies typically look great and are too long. I learned a long time ago that if I can't get into a Gilliam movie early, it's best to bail before I've wasted too many hours. This one had so much incongruous cgi up-front, distracting from the awesome make-up and stage sets, that I decided to cut my losses at the 20 minute mark.

Also I had planned on watching The Losers before Gamer, but I instead watched the UGA vs. Florida game and got my fill of losing another way. Unfortunately, I also lost by watching Gamer, a pitifully stupid and stale remake of The Running Man.

This entire time I've been watching movies on Netflix, TCM, and FMC, the DVD of the remake Hairspray has been sitting on my kitchen table. Poor, unloved Hairspray.

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Going into today's game, Tennessee and Georgia were tied for worst in the SEC East. Fortunately for UGA, Tennessee seemed shell-shocked after their denied defeat of LSU last week. (Tennessee thought that they had won that game only to surrender the game to LSU on an Illegal Participation penalty.) Things did not go significantly better for Tennessee this week against a UGA team desperate for a win.

Even the normally affable, temporary Uga-substitute mascot Russ turned his back on the distraught Tennessee mascots (both Smokeys and their Davy Crockett-inspired "volunteer" flag-bearer) late in the 41-14 Georgia rout.

The normally rambunctious Volunteer fans were unusually subdued during the debacle. I'm not going to lie; that was very satisfying. But the best part was that the UT band only played "Rocky Top" 7 times during the game, establishing what must be a new all-time low.

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The single greatest comic book page ever published:

Seems that Stallone's Rocky was in talks to join Sgt. Slaughter and William "Refrigerator" Perry as a Joe in 1987, but negotiations fell through, leading to the publication of the above totally-awesome page in 1986's G.I. Joe: Order of Battle comic book. Details can be found here and here.

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Every comics blog has mentioned it. ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox consider it newsworthy. Highbrow magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly have devoted column space to it. Even The Times of India has reported the story that Archie Andrews is planning a wedding. The Toronto Globe and Mail has told me that where I stand on the Betty vs. Veronica debate describes my political proclivities. And, of course, wedding planning sites such as weddingbells.ca and onewed.com are very excited. Me? Not so much.

This smells to me of a sales gimmick. Not that Archie really needs one. His Double Digest sells well enough in toy stores, drug stores checkout aisles, and direct mailings to sit alongside X-Men comic books sold in more distinguished "direct market" outlets. Archie has, for the 68 years of his existence, played the roll of empty-headed teenager perpetually enrolled at Riverdale High. His biggest problems have always been which flavor malted to buy and how high to cuff his jeans. That's his niche, and it's why reader flock to his stories.

Marriage would mean a whole new paradigm for Archie: supporting a family, fretting about house payments, and struggling with his golf game. Change of this nature is not the sort of thing that the Archie audience (or the American audience, for that matter) typically wants when they tune in for fun and frolicking high school stories. Personally, I can think of only one instance where a a long-running, fitful courtship/love triangle has sorted itself out and maintained audience interest: Superman and Lois Lane.

Superman and Lois Lane were married in 1997 following 60 years of courtship. Superman's problems have always been more mature than Archie's: saving Metropolis from organized crime, preventing volcanic eruptions from obliterating villages, and traveling through time to repair the course of history are not even in the same class as remembering to keep your fly zipped after a bathroom break during the spring formal. Marriage is exactly the sort of real-world danger that confronts a Superman but is avoided by an Archie. If a man who can trim the hedges with heat-vision, listen to how his wife's day went from 20 miles away, and bring an entire milking factory home on his way home from the office still has a hard time keeping his rocky relationship with his wife afloat, what hope does Archie have?

Archie has more in common with Spider-Man than Superman, and Spidey's marriage to Mary Jane Watson was such a dead-end for stories that Marvel spent decades trying to separate the two, eventually resolving the problem by having the Devil annul their marriage. Could Archie end up one day performing satanic rituals to undo the terrible decision he's made? Could be. Stranger things have happened.

[Sorry for the delay on this post. Internet was down. Again. It's a very inasupicious beginning for Superman Month.]

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I've been defending Tennessee Head Coach Phillip Fulmer this year. I figured that he's won a lot of games and doesn't deserve to be fired for one bad season. But after Tennessee's dismal performance against Georgia yesterday in a 26-14 loss, I'm not so sure anymore.

Tennessee looked completely listless. Georgia Southern had more fight in them than the Volunteers showed against Georgia. Tennessee's two scores came only after great defensive plays fired the team up briefly. Otherwise, Georgia appeared to dominate, and Tennessee didn't seem to care about their own fate. Even their typically boisterous fans didn't seem to care. I mean, the Tennessee Band only played "Rocky Top" 7 times during the entire game! That's like 50 times less than their average.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not cheering for the Vols. But I do lament the sudden disappearance of a former rival. Where's the satisfaction in kicking a wounded puppy? Get well soon, Tennessee. I hope to savour our victory against you next year.

P.S. Sorry, but I forgot to take a camera to the game! I've got no excuse. I dropped the ball. I promise to try harder next week against Vandy.

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I swear, after super heroes, the internet is the best thing to EVER happen to mankind.

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Through complete happenstance while searching modern history for a cartoon as stupid as Marvel's truly wretched animated Iron Man series from 1994, today I discovered a cartoon from 1967 about a super-powered President of the United States straight-forwardly titled Super President. The premise of this cartoon was that President James Norcross was bombarded by cosmic radiation and granted the fantastic ability to modify his body chemistry. Like all good public servants granted amazing powers, President Norcross donned a costume and fought super-villains as Super President. (Calling himself "Super President" may seem like a really bad way to maintain his secret identity, but what would you expect from someone whose job prerequisite depended on name recognition?)

You can't tell it from the clip above, but Super President was voiced by Paul Frees. You may recognize his voice as the narrator of the animated Disney educational film Donald in Mathmagic Land. Or maybe as the voice of the immoral K.A.R.R. on television's Knight Rider. Or maybe as the voice of the sentient supercomputer in the sci-fi feature film Colossus, the Forbin Project. (I think those pretty much sum up my personal stages of development via popular entertainment.) For those of you who prefer your entertainment less math/science oriented, maybe you know Mr. Frees' voice as that of Boris Badenov, the nemesis of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Anyway, what got me most about Super President is that an acting, elected head-of-state is acting as costumed crime-fighter. Presumably, he can authorize himself to do this, but who's running the country while he's battling space aliens? I would think his term would suffer from a lot of pocket vetoes. And fund-raising would be especially difficult, as, in true comic book fashion, villains would always be stealing from the donated funds, requiring an embarrassing unexplained absence while the candidate looks for an empty bathroom stall to don his tights.

I always figured that despite his moral perfection and unerring ability to make the right choice, Superman could do more good as a freelance policeman rather than a politician because of his unique abilities. Surely, I figured, all that bureaucratic red tape could keep Superman's hands tied. Being a politician means negotiations and diplomacy, two things that I had previously seen as obstacles to getting a job done the Kryptonian way: with super speed. Just being elected requires the super ability to compromise your own beliefs to appease the electorate and the political machines. How can Superman, who is always right and honest, make the necessary campaign promises that will enable his own election? (I don't think the phrase, "never mind that now, Jimmy," is going to work in those confrontational televised debates.)

But maybe I'm wrong; maybe he could do both. If Super President Norcross can pull it off, it should be a walk in the park for Clark "doesn't he look a lot like Superman with glasses" Kent.

(And just in case you're wondering, while Super President may be a bad cartoon, it's still better than Iron Man.)

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Statistics indicate that once every two minutes, someone in America is sexually assaulted. While that sounds bad, it's tempered by the fact that most of those victims are probably in a relationship with Charles Bronson.

In Death Wish, Charles Bronson is a New York City architect whose wife is murdered and whose daughter is raped by a band of hoodlums that includes The Fly's Jeff Goldblum. In Death Wish 2, Bronson's family relocates to Los Angeles, but his daughter is again raped and this time killed by a different band of hoodlums that includes The Matrix's Laurence Fishburne. In Death Wish 3, Bronson returns to New York City where his new neighbor's wife is raped and killed by a gang of hoodlums including Bill & Ted's Alex Winters. In Death Wish 4, Bronson's back in Los Angeles, where his girlfriend and her daughter are killed by drug dealers who include Star Trek Voyager's Tim Russ among their numbers. In Death Wish 5, Bronson is again in New York and he again has a fiance who is killed by mobsters including Medium's Miguel Sandoval.

No doubt, there are several lessons here, not the least of which is that New York and Los Angeles are both dangerous cities. If you want to keep your family safe from muggers and rapists (and drug dealers and mafioso), move somewhere else. Another moral here is that if you see a face you recognize in a crowd of thugs, that person is probably going to rape and/or kill you. (The real message may be that you shouldn't have a love affair with Charles Bronson, but seeing as how he's been dead for half a decade, I figure that one's just common sense.)

Why do I mention this now? Because I just heard that Sylvester Stallone, fresh off his zombie movies Rocky Balboa and Rambo, is looking to remake the first Death Wish. (Can Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot Again or Over the Top 2: WAY Over the Top be far behind?) Running out of his own material to re-tread, Stallone is moving on to others' franchises. Watch your back, Schwarzenegger.

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In today's newspaper, I saw an advertisement for the new movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters. The ad included this endorsement: "Perversely entertaining,...whups the ass of TMNT!" -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.

If you ever make a movie, give Peter Travers a few bucks, and he'll say something good about it for you to put in your promotional advertising. I don't know what Mr. Travers' personal taste in films is, but he seems to have something banal to say about everything, no matter how bad a movie it is. And I'm not alone in noticing this. Travers is oft called a "blurbwhore," and hollwoodbitchslap.com names their annual award to the critic most often quoted in promotional advertising the "Peter Travers Whore of the Year Award."

To get a handle on how many movies Travers shills for, take a look at the five other ads published today that used Travers' comments:
300: "Prepare your eyes for popping -- they just might fly out of their sockets!"
Disturbia: "A nail-biter. Cool stuff. Cool movie."
Grindhouse: "This tour-de-force gets you high on movies again!"
Hoax: "A devilish satire with mischievous wit."
Hot Fuzz: "A blast!"

Well, guys, perhaps you shouldn't all chose to quote Travers in the same week. It sort of weakens his endorsement if he endorses everything, doesn't it?

His blurbs tend to be very, um, visceral, clearly tailored for an audience desperate for thrills. His blurbs might not tell you anything about the movies themselves, but at least they're entertaining. Recent favorites of mine include the following:
King Kong: "What you will see will spin your head six ways from Sunday." (Ouch. Look away!)
Mission Impossible III: "The movie to beat in the race to push your pulse rate past the danger zone." (Past the danger zone? Watching this movie will kill me?)
Poseidon: "Hits the action button and never stops!" (Never stops pushing the action button?)
Rocky Balboa: "Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas." (Sweet.)

(P.S. Note that Peter Travers has never reviewed the movie TMNT, at least so far as I can tell at Rollingstone.com. Therefore, how would he know if ATHF whups its ass? Sounds good, though, doesn't it, Peter.)

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Last night I watched Rocky IV for at least the XVII-th time. Every single time, I pull for Ivan Drago, the charismatic Russian fighter with a superhero physique and totally kick-ass hairstyle. ("If he dies, he dies.") And he just keeps losing. One of these days, I'm going to remake Rocky IV and Drago is going to win. Then no one will have to suffer through Rocky V anymore, because Rocky will be dead.

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