Roundabout Way to Mokele-Mbembe

Oh jeeze, try to follow this stupefying line...

At Free Comic Book Day, I picked up this for nostalgia reasons:

Remember the show? I do. Cass asked me, What's this? And I said, besides a very cool David Mack cover, it looks like a comic based on a television show from the '80s that I remember fondly. I tried describing the show to him: a regular guy is given a super-suit by aliens and has difficulties controlling the powers as he navigates his new responsibilities. A super-hero show a bit ahead of its time.

But, it turns out, William Katt, the actor who played Ralph Hanley (originally Hinkley, but changed after the Reagan shooter, er, de-popularized the name), got involved in the production of this upcoming series. His face is so ably painted by David Mack right there. 

I went and looked up some info on Katt, and was reminded about a movie where he played Sean Young's husband, and she was a biologist and explorer on the hunt for a monster in the African hinterlands. 

Oh, yeah, I thought when I saw the name on Katt's filmography, I remember that movie. I was very fond of it, and was trying to describe a scene to Cass later: "So, there's an African dude, a local who's all sick, and they ask him what's wrong and he motions to his stomach, and then they ask him what he ate, and in the dirt he sketches it, his food---and it's a brontosaurus!"

Nevermind that Cass was like, "What?" and I remembered that we use terms like sauropod now instead of the recently abandoned 'brontosaurus,' but eventually he got the idea.

Sean Young plays an American researcher in search of mokele-mbembe in the movie titled "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend." She and Katt end deep in the central African rainforest saving a baby sauropod, while the father is killed by a national military and the mother is caught.

It's silly and mostly forgotten today. But when I was looking up info on the movie, the name mokele-mbembe was hyperlinked to its own background, which was extensive.

Apparently, mokele-mbembe is similar to Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Loch Ness monster, in that it's a cryptid, that is, a legendary animal that's unverified by current evidence. Instead of a hominid, it was described variously as larger than a hippo but smaller than an elephant, or half-elephant/half-dragon, or four-legged with a very long pointy-thing on it's face. That last one I think was translated by someone else as 'four-legged with a very long neck.'

It turns out that a few very serious expeditions to search for evidence of a living mokele-mbembe have been outfitted in the recent past, all with the thinking that the animal is a sauropod relative. And you may think: Okay...that's kind of...interesting.

But, it needs to be said: These expeditions were outfitted and funded by recent-Earth creationists, an apparently well-heeled group of very religious christians, either incidentally or purposefully ignorant to the realities of geology and deep time, who were trying to prove---by way of finding a living sauropod---that the Earth was only 5 or 6 thousand years old.

They were, um, unsuccessful in their expeditions.

Most historians of linguistics and the area think the legends that form the basis of mokele-mbembe are based on the black rhino, an animal that hasn't lived in the jungle areas where the stories come from since before written history. That at least passes the sniff test: big animal, once did share the space with humans, left before stories were written down so those stories had to pass by word of mouth and oral tradition...those dots are easier to follow.

Anyway, seems like a roundabout way to get to "once again irritated by purposefully ignorant religious people," but here we are. Maybe I'll show the kids the Baby movie, or the Greatest American Hero show, but both of those are only available on streamers like Tubi or Pluto.

So, there's that.

Yeah.

Had to Join the Fun

 Happy Birthday Homer!

That's, er, 70 years old today. Wow.

I was Bart's age when the show first aired, and now I'm older than Homer is regularly shown to be, depending on the season, 36 or 38 years old.

And, I have a son a few months younger than Bart is. Hard to wrap my brain around that stat, by the by.

Crazy how time flies when...your favorite show is on television for...36+ years?

Mission Impossible Notes

While visiting Solvang one of the past trips, likely the most recent Thanksgiving, Cass and Uncle Val were perusing the menu on their enormous television. Cass probably said, "Whoa! What's that?" and Uncle Val surely said, "Aw, Cass! That's Tom Cruise and he's awesome. This is a Mission Impossible movie!" and he hit play. I came in later and the 7th film in the series was playing, Dead Reckoning is its subtitle.

I caught most of it, and knew about some of the scenes (like the motorcycle off the cliff), and can say I enjoyed it, mostly. It doesn't really have a conclusion as much as it ends, and the credits roll, and we get ready for the second half, the 8th film in the franchise with the ominous subtitle The Final Reckoning.

I came across some think pieces about the badassery of Tom Cruise in the ridiculous stunts throughout both this franchise as well as other Cruise-related films, and felt compelled to go back and rewatch this series.

But "rewatch" isn't accurate, since I hadn't ever scene any of the Mission Impossible movies. I did watch the 1988 reboot series, with Stefano's son Tony DiMera in the rubber-mask-on-face role and Peter Graves as the boss-man, and enjoyed the espionage content as much as any ten-ish year old.

But by 1996, when Mission Impossible the First was released, I was deep into my classic-movie rabbit-hole and had a Tom Cruise-shaped middle-finger blotting out projects he starred in. Even Corrie saw it and, against type for her, remembered a fair amount of it.

It was after the think pieces about action set pieces that I perused the Web...could I find a box set of DVDs reasonably priced...where were they streaming...and then last month, Corrie and Cass announced: Mission Impossibles, 1 through 5, leaving Netflix on April 30th.

Since we only watch the television in earnest on weekends, after 3pm, let's say we had some intense Tom Cruise afternoon/evenings. Brian dePalma, John Woo, Joss Whedon...directors from all over the "action" world come in and do their thing. Jon Voit, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg (playing the Ving Rhames role), Alec Baldwin(?), Jeremy Renner(??), even Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emilio Estevez?

The flow of women isn't quite James Bondian, but it's a thing, and you hope they develop someone beyond "hot for Ethan Hunt" or "someone for Ethan to be hot for." Is his wife (Michele Monaghan) someone who fits that bill? Nah...I guess the best foil would be Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Maybe Agent Carter from the last two...?

Anyway, after four or five of these movies, while talking with Corrie, I realized that I didn't have a favorite. None of them were, for me, like, this is the one I'd watch again for pleasure, or, this is the one that hits all the right story beats.

That changed, though, for me. I do have a favorite now, and I'll give the reasons, similar to my bullet-point thesis about why Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is the best Mission Impossible movie. It's number 6, so there's a ton of history built up, but watching them in order in close time to each other helped with the characters.

• It has Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg and nobody else on the team burning up time---no Jeremy Renner, no extra helpers beyond perpetually wobbly Alec Baldwin;
• It has two ladies for Ethan Hunt (Cruise, if you didn't know by now) to be complicated with, both his ex-wife (Michele Monaghan) and a MI6 British counterpart Ilsa, who both have complicated feelings for him, and he can't have either, nor does he really want either;
• The bad-guy group again has a stupid collective name (the Apostles)
• The bad-guy brains-of-the-op is smug and revenge hungry, but doesn't give me anxiety like the late, great Hoffman;
• The bad-guy muscles-of-the-op is awesome and menacing;
• Cruise ready to go with the CIA op team in the catacomb is peak "Ethan Hunt is still, actually, the good-est good-guy" moment.
• It has dual simultaneous nuclear bomb-disarming teams working against the clock (naturally) while Ethan chases down the other badguy in a helicopter. It's a helicopter chase scene.

I don't think I've ever wanted one helicopter to ram another helicopter as bad as when I watched this scene. There have been a few times in my life when I've wanted to holler and cheer while watching a scene. This helicopter scene as as close as it's been in a while. (In the first Expendables, when Sly dumps the fuel on the badguys on their fly-by and then blasts it just to ignites it? That was one...)

The Burj-Kalifa excursion; the motorcycle off the cliff to parachute to the train; the bar is set pretty high, and while the helicopter chase from "Fallout" isn't the same as these two scenes, it's part of a satisfying whole. Which led me to:

• Fallout is the 6th film, meaning you know the goodguy team will win---those stakes are pretty nonexistent. I mean, "They're gonna nuke the food supply for two-billion people!" is a pretty good pickle to have to solve, but you never think they won't, and I'm fine with that. It's in witnessing the execution that the fun happens.

To recap: two complicated love-interests with no actual romance happening; no extra people on the team; awesome badguy boss that doesn't give me anxiety like PSH; helicopter chase scene while everyone else is diffusing nukes; Angela Bassett.

Maybe Final Reckoning will be the bestest best. I reserve the right to change my opinion, but it's a tall ask for this viewer to be better than Fallout.

May the 4th

We've got March 14th (Pi Day), and now we claim May 4th as Star Wars Day, or at least we lean into it some more. At first I was confused. Why May 4th? Say it out loud, I was told: "May the 4th be with you."

Ohhhhkkkaaaayyy. 

And now Disney+ is also leaning heavily into it, with their splash screen heavy duty with Star Wars stuff. Awesome...now we, the capital-N Nerds have at least two days.

There's also, going on year 20-ish, Free Comic Book Day, the first Saturday in May. At our local shop it was quite well-attended:

Cass and I waited in lone to make a donation to a local food bank and grabbed some free stuff. This year it looked like there was a competition going on:

Some of the comics were labeled "Free Comic Book Day", while others were labeled "Comics Giveaway Day." Um...what?

It turns out the FCBD label and logo was owned by Diamond Distribution, who had a de-facto monopoly over the distribution of most of titles available. It began to unravel when DC Comics broke away, and once Marvel joined them, their days were numbered. Diamond went under and the distribution rights went (mostly) to two different companies, Universal and Penguin, but only Universal has the rights to the logo and name, so, to compete, Penguin's distribution arm went with CGD. 

Is this the only year we get this competition? Are we, the readers and fans, the true winners?

Can we claim Life Day, November 17th, too?

Happy May Day

May 1st is the International Labor Day, and for the workers in the world, Huzzah!

And, for the day (kinda like on 420 this year) as an adjacent topic, let me share something I think gets lost in the American educational system, or, really, the teaching-history part of school, age 5 to 18 (besides the Parkers and the Harrisons): the founding of Haiti.

I remember lessons on the Mongols and the Mughals, but not the Franks nor the Saxons. We got some Mesopotamia history (good) but almost no Mesoamerica (lame).

Did you know that Haiti was the only country in the world that was founded by a rebellion of enslaved people? Enslaved Africans and natives from the island, called Haiti (or 'Ayti') in Taino, had a successful insurrection and threw out their French oppressors. 

Is it shocking that we were never told about that in school? The enslaved rebelled, successfully, and founded a nation. Is it shocking that few countries came to its aid when the Spanish side organized and engaged them in war? Is it shocking that in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, the international response seemed like a shoulder shrug and a juvenile, "Sucks for you, bro?"

I think we should find a way to celebrate Haiti and its founding as an important step in the Enlightenment era. It was the first country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery, obviously; but they're also the most likely to be declared a failed state...obviously, especially when no one wants to help.

Also, I want to learn more about Simon Bolivar and South American revolutions---which all happened after Haiti, by the by.

Anyway, maybe this is all stemming from witnessing the slow motion dissolving of the American democratic experiment, aided and abated by a pro-fascist group of terrified bigots. Maybe we all should fly the flag of Corsica, the large Mediterranean island that is currently a French holding, but remains a difficult place to colonize and/or subdue. The flag is called "the Moor's head," and represents marginalized people battling occupiers:

Anyway, Happy May Day!

And, if you're interested...