2010 Baltimore Comic-Con

On Saturday, I had a really difficult choice to make. Was I going to head down to the Lincoln Memorial to observe Glenn Beck's and Sarah Palin's "Let's Piss On MLK's Memory Rally" or whatever it was, or go to the Baltimore Comic-Con, and spend a few hours surrounded by comic books, comic book creators, and fellow comic book geeks?

Actually, you know what? It wasn't a difficult choice at all. Especially since I had already purchased my ticket.

Stormtroopers greeted people as they entered the convention center. In Sarah Palin's ideal America, they would have greeted people at her rally, as well. Only the blasters would have been real, and liberals would have been deported to Alderaan and promptly blown up.

Aquaman gets a lot of crap about his super powers. But in the hopes of making himself more useful to the Justice League, he's apparently working on his passing-out-free-swag skills.

At one point, I was in the restroom and Aquaman came in to adjust his blonde wig in front of a mirror. If he'd also taken a leak, I think I would have had to get a picture from behind. I know it would have been weird and creepy and almost certainly illegal, but come on. Wouldn't Aquaman at a urinal have been the greatest photo ever?

I don't think Biggie would appreciate this likeness. Or that he's been marked down to only ten bucks.

This is the man who created* the Joker. I'd like you all to just look at this photo until you feel sufficiently awed. Then you may continue.

(*Well, depending on whose account you believe, created, co-created or had nothing whatsoever to do with creating. But since Bob Kane and Bill Finger are dead, I guess Jerry Robinson wins by default.)

Guest of Honor Todd McFarlane wore an Orioles jersey to the con. A personalized Orioles jersey with "McFarlane" on the back. How can someone who loves baseball so much commit the worst sports fan faux pas there is?

I don't especially like McFarlane's art or business ethics, but I'll give him this: The guy spent a lot of time signing stuff for fans and posing for photos. The line was ridiculous, but since they distributed tickets for his signing, I'm assuming everyone got taken care of. Good for him.

A few more thoughts:

-- I took a break around noon to get some fresh air. I was surprised to see a huge line of people snaking through most of the lobby, waiting to buy tickets. I'm guessing it probably took almost an hour just to get up to the ticket booth. Look, I hate paying Ticketmaster fees, too, but geez, if you go next year, buy your tickets ahead of time, people. At only $15 bucks each, even if something comes up and you can't go, you're not out that much.

-- There were a lot of kids at the show, which was good to see. One little girl, I at first thought was dressed at Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass, which would have been the most awesomely inappropriate parenting decision ever. But it turns out she was Raven. Still, it's something for parents to consider for next year. Think how great a Big Daddy/Hit-Girl father/daughter pair would be.

-- I've been to a couple of panels at previous Baltimore shows, but I've never gone to one of DC Comics's "DC Nation" panels before. Nor will I ever again. What a complete waste of an hour. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it would have been nice if the host, DC Editor Ian Sattler, had been more forthcoming or interesting. Instead, during the Q&A, we got exchanges like this:

Fan: "Hey, how about bringing back (some character or series)?"
Sattler: "Maybe. We'll see." Or just, "No."

Fan: "Can you talk about what's going on with (whatever)?"
Sattler: "Not yet, but soon."

Fan: "Can you ban Kevin Smith from writing any more Batman stories?"
Sattler: "That's mean. And no."

I get that San Diego is where all the big announcements are going to be made, and I don't expect Sattler to agree to greenlight a new Gotham Central series on the spot just because everyone in the room seemed to think he should. But it would have been nice to have walked out of there not feeling as if I'd just taken part in a really dull marketing survey.

-- It never ceases to amaze me how many hot girls are either into cosplay or can apparently be talked into it by their boyfriends. It also amazes me how many girls seem to approach it with the attitude of, "If I'm going to do this, what's the absolute sluttiest outfit I can go with?" There were a couple of mini-skirted Robins, a midriff-baring Supergirl, and a Black Canary who was getting a lot of attention in her fishnets, but luckily had a Green Arrow with her to ward off creeps. And Saturday wasn't even the day of the costume contest. I can only imagine what Sunday was like.

The best one, though, was a girl dressed as Cammy from Street Fighter, whose "costume" consisted of what was basically a blue swimsuit and a small hat and not much else. As she walked around the convention floor, she was like a black hole sucking dudes in as they'd notice her, at which point their heads would whip around to look. Or stare. Or just openly leer. (I looked. I'm almost sure I didn't stare. I know I didn't leer. I think.)

I felt a little bad for her, as she couldn't go ten feet without someone asking to take a picture with her, which required her to stop and pose in a fighting stance. One guy even hugged her afterwards. Awkward. Though not quite as awkward as me overhearing a couple of vendors talking about her (barely covered) ass and what they'd like to do to it, after she'd walked by. Ugh. Comic book geeks are a sexually frustrated, cowardly lot.

-- Speaking of frustrating, I wish Artists' Alley was better this year. In theory, this should be one of the best parts of the convention. Independent creators releasing the types of books mainstream publishers aren't? Cool, huh? Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single thing that caught my interest. Lots of comics about zombies. Lots of comics that appeared to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer rip-offs. Lots of comics that appeared to be based on a really thin gag or premise.

To be fair, I didn't really give each table more than a cursory look. So it's entirely possible the comics had more substance than it seemed. It's just that if you stop and browse, you're guaranteed to get sucked into a conversation with the creator about his or her comic. Which makes it a little weird if you ultimately end up saying, "Well, thanks," and walk off without buying anything.

Maybe I'll go to the Small Press Expo next month and have better luck there.

-- I was probably going to skip Baltimore this year until I found out one guest in particular was going to be there. At last year's show, Neal Adams signed a copy of Batman #251, arguably the greatest Joker story ever. Which meant I just needed Denny O'Neil's autograph. Who, by some awesome cosmic coincidence, attended this year's show.

This now may be the coolest thing I own. When I get back from vacation next week, I'm going to have it framed. Hopefully, if my place is ever robbed, the thieves won't know anything about comics and just take non-cool crap like my TV and Xbox.

Panel of the Week

From Superman: Secret Origin #6:

Piranha 3D

While I was watching The Expendables last week, it occurred to me that as predictable and cliche-ridden as the script was, with a slightly smaller budget and just a few cast changes (ditch the Willis and Schwarzenegger cameos, and replace Stallone, Statham and Li with, say, Chuck Norris, Michael Dudikoff and Mark Dacascos) but everything else the same, the film would be indistinguishable from one of those direct-to-video action films that were popular in the early 90s.

Similarly, if it had been done on the cheap, Piranha 3D could have just as easily aired on SyFy at 9pm on a Saturday night, just like classics such as Raptor Island, Mega Snake and Shark Swarm. Like those films, Piranha 3D is completely mindless and derivative as hell, and is almost certainly not a film that its star really wants to be in. (Although, Elisabeth Shue can be comforted by the fact that she's probably the world's hottest 47 year-old.)

But because it does feature people like Shue and Adam Scott, and because the special effects and gore are so unbelievably great, and because director Alexandre Aja isn't embarrassed to shove lots of 3D boobs in your face, Piranha 3D is one of the more fun movies I've seen this summer.

Spoilers follow...

We all knew going in that Richard Dryfuss--sorta, kinda reprising his Jaws character--wasn't going to have a big role. But they couldn't have expanded it just a bit? They had to kill him off in the first five minutes? Don't get me wrong, it was cute and all, but having rewatched Jaws recently, Matt Hooper deserved a better death.

Other than that, if you can get past the overwhelming familiarity of it all, Piranha 3D is a pretty good film. It may not be big on things like "plot" or "characterization", but it's a veritable orgy of gore and violence, and that goes a long way with me. The best part about it was how the film constantly attempted to top itself. Someone gets eaten alive by piranha? Big fucking deal, ten minutes later, a paraglider gets the entire bottom half of her body torn off. Ten minutes after that, you see people stumbling out of the water, missing...I'm not even sure what the medical term is. They're not missing limbs, exactly. They still (sort of) have their arms and legs. But all the skin has been eaten away from them, leaving just a partial skeleton. Is there a medical term for that? If not, there should be.

Arguably, the film's finest moment is where a woman gets her hair tangled up in the engine of a motorboat. As the guy in the boat tried unsuccessfully to start the engine, I thought of a couple of ways that the scene could go. I wasn't even close. Once the engine did start, it violently yanks the girl's hair, peeling off the her entire face like a rubber mask. I can only assume the MPAA people who were in charge of giving his film a rating took a bathroom break during that moment.

Everything else, though...meh. I mean, it's all competently done, and it's a pretty good cast, with people like Shue and Scott, who you don't expect to see in a cheesy horror film, and people like Ving Rhames and Jerry O'Connell, who you do expect to see in a cheesy horror film, and some chick from Gossip Girl, who can't act, but sure looks good trying. But it's strictly by the numbers stuff. With so many straight-to-cable movies featuring killer animals, it would have been nice to see something a little different other than just better gore. Is it possible to take the killer animal subgenre in new direction? Eh, maybe not. But someone should probably try at some point.

Oh, I do have one more complaint, although this isn't aimed at the movie so much as it is the studio's marketing department. If you're responsible for creating commercials for a movie, do you really have to be told not to put the last shot of the movie in them? Isn't that basic fucking common sense? In the commercials, we see Adam Scott's character get knocked out of the boat by a large piranha jumping out of the water. So if you've seen the commercial, the whole time, you're thinking, "When is Adam Scott going to get attacked by the giant piranha?" When Christopher Lloyd tells the other characters that the piranha they've been fighting are just the babies, you know what's coming. And a second later, when Adam Scott sets up the gag, you already know what the punchline is.

Something similar happened a couple of years ago with Quarantine, where the last shot of the film--the main character being dragged off into the darkness--also managed to find its way into the commercial.

I think we can all agree that movie trailers and commercials generally give way too much away. The studios constantly the best parts of a film (the coolest shots, the funniest lines, etc.) in the trailer, because they figure that's the best way to get you to go see the film. And it's annoying, but I get it. If it's your job to get people to show up for a film, and it's a choice between giving too much away in the trailer or getting fired when the movie bombs, you're going to opt for the former. But for Christ's sake, can we please make the last shot--or really, the last five minutes or so--off-limits? Is that really too much to ask? And if we're being honest, here, that shot of Adam Scott being attacked by the large piranha? Not really even that great. Total waste of what would have been a decent surprise ending.

Script: C-
Acting: B+
Gore: A+
Overall: B-

Panel of the Week

From Highland Laddie #1:

Lobster on a truck

Here are the three longest lines I've ever waited in:

1) To get an iPhone 3G (roughly 5 hours)

2) To get Phantom Menace tickets (roughly 3 hours)

3) To get a lobster roll from Red Hook Lobster's new lobster truck today (roughly 2 hours)

The iPhone was worth the wait.

Because I've worked food service (albeit, not on wheels) and know all the headaches involved, and because it's their first day, I'm willing to cut Red Hook a certain amount of slack. The fact that they ran out of soda and chips before it was my turn to order didn't really bother me, even though they were supposed to be thrown in for free as a mea culpa for four days of aborted launches. Was I curious what Maine Root vanilla cream soda tasted like? Sure. Am I going to lose any sleep over not finding out? Not really.

Here are two things I won't forgive:

First, back when the line was about at its longest, a Red Hook employee came around, cheerfully assuring us that it would be a 20-25 minute wait, tops. As far back as we were from the truck and at the rate the line was moving, this struck me as overly-optimistic, but I figured she must have had some idea what she was talking about. Besides, it couldn't be that much longer than 20 minutes, could it? It turned out to be an hour and 20-25 minute wait. I'm not sure if she was lying to us or if she genuinely believed her estimate, but if we'd known the real time involved, it's a safe bet that a lot of people--myself included--would have bailed.

When you're standing in any line for a long period of time and start to suspect that you've made a terrible mistake, there comes a point where you have to decide to either walk and write off the time you've already spent there, or stay in the hopes of somehow justifying it. I guess it's human nature to not want to admit that you've wasted your time, hence why so few people left the line once they were in it. (I am sort of impressed by how many businesses in D.C. are apparently cool with their employees taking super-extended lunch breaks, though. Bad economy, my ass. The 90s are here again!)

Second, $15 for a relatively small lobster roll is absurd. The fact that it normally won't come with chips and a soda for that price, is even more absurd. Obviously, a lobster roll is going to be more expensive than something from Subway, but I'm not sure it should be that much more expensive. If you're inclined to spend $15 on lunch, you can get a pretty good meal at any number of restaurants downtown. Or a pretty good liquid lunch from any number of bars. It'll be interesting to see how well Red Hook does once the initial novelty wears off.

But I guess the most important question is, was the lobster roll any good? Actually, yes, it was. I got the Connecticut style roll, and the three or four bites that one can reasonably get out of the sandwich that size were pretty tasty. But was it worth the money or the wait? Not even close. I don't expect the long lines to persist, but given all the things you can buy in the world for $15, I'm going to have to really be jonsing for lobster in a bun to go there again.

The worst part of this whole experience? It's going to be a long, long time before I can walk past the line at Georgetown Cupcake and feel smug about not being willing to wait half-an-hour for a cupcake.

I hope I get to play a Decepticon

Transformers 3, which will soon be filming in D.C., recently put out a casting call for extras. I applied yesterday. I have no idea if I'll be picked. You're required to submit a photo, and I used one in which I'm looking a bit disheveled. So if they do pick me, it'll likely be because the script requires a hobo, as opposed to a congressional aide.

As I wait to hear back from them, I can't help but think about the last time I was an extra in a D.C.-based film production.

Was it on an acclaimed television show, like 24 or The West Wing? No.

Was it in a hit motion picture, like Wedding Crashers or Salt? Not exactly.

Was it at least in an Eastern Motors commercial? I wish!

No, it was in this.

If you're 21 or younger, you probably don't know who any of the people in that poster are. But once upon a time, Hollywood was willing to pay them to be in movies.

Back in 1995, I heard on the radio that they were filming a new Sinbad movie at Tysons Galleria. It was summer vacation and I had nothing else to do, so I decided to check it out. I'm not sure what I was expecting. Like, if I'd be able to just wander onto the set or what. But that's pretty much what happened.

Along with the crew, there were a couple hundred extras inside. They were filming in different parts of the mall, so anyone who wasn't in whatever scene was being shot would just hang out and watch, and I just blended in.

Sadly--and I'm not being facetious here, this really did bum me out--I didn't see Sinbad that day. But I did see Timothy Busfield and the guy who tries to kill Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. I also learned three things about the movie business: 1) People working on a film crew will often go out of their way to be as big an asshole as possible, 2) A lot of extras suffer from delusions of grandeur and think they're about to be discovered, and 3) Every scene is filmed multiple times, and when things like props and large crowds of extras have to be reset after each shot, it's fucking boring as fuck.

I watched them film one scene four or five times. It took almost two hours. I was just about to leave when a PA came by and announced that the next two scenes would be shot around where I was standing, and that all of us extras needed to be ready.

Oh, I was an extra now? Cool! I decided to stick around.

Not long after, someone else on the crew came over and started telling extras what they'd be doing in the scene. Where to stand, where to walk, where not to walk, etc. He pointed at me, and then at a man and a woman who looked to be in their 40s. "Okay, you, you, and you...you guys are going to be a family coming out of that store." Then he dashed off to give other extras their directions.

While waiting, I got to know my movie parents. It turned out they were both hardcore extras, the kind who showed up for pretty much every film shoot in the area. The woman seemed nice enough, but I thought the guy was a little intense. He told me about a couple of other film sets he'd worked on, even though I didn't ask him to.

They filmed one other scene first, then it was our turn. We all got into place, the director yelled "Action!", and the guy from The Bodyguard sped by in his wheelchair. And then..."Cut!" The whole thing took about five seconds.

While they were resetting everything, I turned to my movie dad and said, "I think I looked right into the camera."

"Don't look into the camera!" he hissed. "Then they can't use the shot!" I realized that for him, being an extra was serious business, and that he was annoyed because he thought my camera-looking might cost him his moment of cinematic glory. I tried not to speak to him for the rest of time I was there.

We filmed it a couple more times. There was actually another camera off to the left that was much closer, so I was surprised when I saw the movie (yes, I paid to watch this in the theater just so I could see myself) that they used the distant shot that they did. So who knows, maybe my looking into the camera did cost that guy his shot at fame.

Here's the actual scene. It's in the first thirty seconds, so don't feel you have to watch the whole thing. Unless you want to see Sinbad fight Timothy Busfield.

Shortly afterwards, they stopped the filming for lunch. We were all told to go to a big room where there'd be pizza and prize drawings. This sounded good, but it also seemed like the kind of thing they might check names against a list for. It's not like I thought I'd get arrested for sneaking onto a movie set, especially since it wasn't actually trespassing, but the idea of public embarrassment was a pretty good deterrent. So I decided to split. I walked with the rest of the extras towards the pizza room and then just kept on walking.

If I do get to work on Transformers 3, I hope I get close enough to Michael Bay to strike up a conversation, at which point I'll ask him to stop producing awful remakes of great horror films. Given what I've heard about his temperament, I think he'll appreciate the feedback. Maybe he'll even be so grateful for setting him straight that he'll arrange for me to finally meet Sinbad.

Summer Movie Scorecard

Have Seen:

Toy Story 3: A
Inception: A-
The A-Team: B+
The Other Guys: B+
Survival of the Dead: B+
Iron Man 2: B+
Predators: B
MacGruber: B-
Salt: C+
The Expendables: C
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: C
Knight and Day: D+
Jonah Hex: F

Definitely Seeing:

Piranha 3-D
The Last Exorcism

Might See:

Get Low
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Middle Men
Machete

Panel of the Week

From Superman #702:

There goes my hero. Watch him as he goes.

Fairly major spoiler for The Other Guys below...

As anyone who's seen the trailers for the film knows, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg play a couple of cops who live in the shadow of the NYPD's hero police officers, played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, whose characters are basically parodies of those found in every buddy cop movie. But they're not quite parody enough that you couldn't easily imagine them headlining their own movie.

About ten minutes into the film, some jewel thieves have just robbed a store, and Jackson and Johnson chase them up to the roof of a tall building. The thieves escape via zip line to the street below and then cut the line, with Jackson and Johnson still up there. The two of them exchange some standard buddy cop movie dialogue, grin at each other, and then jump off the roof after the thieves, falling through the air in slow motion with the Foo Fighters' "My Hero" playing in the background. Seconds later, they hit the sidewalk and are immediately killed.

It's maybe one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever.

During the slow motion fall, my thought process--and I'm guessing this was similar to a lot of people's--went something like this:

Where exactly are they trying to jump to? Are they trying to jump onto the thieves' getaway car? Or some other vehicle in order to go after them? But unless that vehicle is a truck carrying lots of pillows or something in the back, that still has to be a fatal drop from that high up, right? Say, they're getting awfully close to the ground and I don't see a truck. Or any pillows. Wait, they're not the main characters, are they? So they're totally expendable, and come to think of it, they weren't even in the trailer all that much, so--[splat]. Oh.

The real genius of the scene is that the film never explains why they jumped. The narrator makes a couple of half-hearted suggestions, such as the belief that since they'd cheated death so many times before, something would just come along to save them, etc. But that's about it. At the funeral, other cops try to figure out what they'd been thinking. One of them mutters, "There wasn't even an awning..." which may have gotten the biggest laugh of the whole film in the theater I was in.

Throughout the rest of the movie, I couldn't get that scene out of my head. Partly because it was funny, but I also realized that I found it oddly disturbing on some level. The film took the preconceptions and expectations of anyone who enjoys dumb action movies, and used them to completely sweep our legs out from underneath us. We're not used to seeing our action heroes die. Even...especially...when they ought to. If Jackson and Johnson had been the stars of the movie, is there any doubt whatsoever that there would have been a truck full of pillows driving by at that precise moment? Or in the very least, an awning?

I also think the fact that the characters were played by Sam Jackson and The Rock had a lot to do with it. The scene wouldn't have bugged me nearly as much if it had just been two random actors. Jackson's on-screen deaths in Deep Blue Sea and Revenge of the Sith (uh...spoilers!) didn't bother me, but you sure as hell don't want to see the prototypical bad-ass Samuel L. Jackson character to go out like that. Johnson, I'm a lot less attached to, but I still like most of his films. So that was also weird.

And all this made me realize if there were action heroes in real life--be they cops or secret agents or superheroes or whatever--this is exactly how most of them would die, too. They'd get a little too smug and a little too used to cheating death over and over, and one day do something really stupid, only to get themselves killed. You have to figure that at some point when they were falling, Jackson's and Johnson's characters realized their mistake and gave each other a horrified, "Oh, shit. We're about to die," look. That moment of realization somehow seems like it'd worse than the actual moment of impact.

This is one of those posts where I've gotten this far and then suddenly realize that it doesn't really have a point or an obvious conclusion. So I'll just end by saying that from now on, I only want to see Samuel L. Jackson die heroic deaths on-screen. Like, you know the end of The Running Man (the book, not the movie) where Ben Richards crashes the airplane into the network's headquarters (uh...spoiler!), grinning and giving Killian the finger right before impact? That's the only way I want to see Sam Jackson die in films from now on.

The Real Shark Chum of D.C.

I tried watching The Real Housewives of D.C. last week. I didn't make it very far before I was diving for the remote. As annoying as the people on The Real World D.C. could be, I was at least occasionally able to find aspects of them that I liked, whether it was Andrew being a comic book geek or Emily's maturity or Ashley's breasts.

But here? Most of these women are awful human beings with no apparent value to society whatsoever. And watching this show, one might conclude that's partly because they have no sense of self-awareness, but I think it's just the opposite. I think most of them went out of their way to be even more obnoxious, in the hopes of becoming this season's Omarosa. And yes, I realize I'm mixing reality shows, but since Omarosa is the only one from The Apprentice who you still hear anything about, I think you get my point.

But I had nothing else to do on Sunday, and I get the sense that people will be talking about this stupid show for the foreseeable future, so I forced myself to watch the first episode.

Countless other D.C. blogs have already done recaps and weighed in on the episode, and I doubt I'd have anything to add that hasn't already been said. So instead, I'm going to take this approach:

Let's say that I'm in a small boat with all five Real Housewives of D.C. We're a few miles from shore and heading in, but hungry sharks are swarming all around us. Occasionally, one will violently bump up against the boat, shaking us, and it seems inevitable that sooner or later they'll tip us over. My only chance for survival is to toss one of the housewives into the water every so often so the sharks will stop to eat her and leave the boat alone long enough for us to reach shore. Or at least until they catch up to us again and I'm forced to throw another housewife overboard.

This is the order in which I'd feed them to the sharks:


1) Cat

Retarded Opening Credits Quote: "I'm here for a good time, not a long time."

Annoyance Factor: 10/10


Perhaps because she's British, she doesn't quite seem to understand that while the President of the United States may not be royalty, he's also not some schmuck who can drop everything to go to her wedding. And let's be honest, even if Obama had absolutely nothing else to do on her wedding day, he still wouldn't have gone. I love how "Obama and his crew knew about the romance from day one" was immediately followed up with "But I have yet to meet him."

Main reason to feed her to sharks: At one point, she asks for a "refund of the last 18 years of her life." I'm sure her kids really appreciate that.

Any possible redeeming factor that might make me decide against feeding her to sharks: I don't like Tyra Banks or sake, either.


2) Lynda

Retarded Opening Credits Quote: "I give people enough rope to hang themselves, and the smart people don't."

Annoyance Factor: 9.5/10


This just goes to show that old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is bullshit. I hate Michaele Salahi. Lynda hates Michaele Salahi. Lynda and I should be friends, right? No, because in her jealous crusade against Michaele--someone who no one, ever, should be jealous of--she somehow comes off even worse.

Main reason to feed her to sharks: It's not like D.C. actually needs a modeling agency. I mean...it's D.C. In lieu of one, I'm sure designers can just use hookers they find on Craigslist.

Any possible redeeming factor that might make me decide against feeding her to sharks: None, but her death would probably make Michaele really happy. So from that standpoint, I'd have to think about it.


3) Michaele

Retarded Opening Credits Quote: "People have a hard time saying no to me, and that's my blessing."

Annoyance Factor: 7.5/10

With Michaele Salahi, I'm forced to confront an annoying truth: If it wasn't for that whole White House party crashing thing, I'd probably like her. Sort of. I mean, in the very least, she seems nice. Spoiled. Entitled. Vapid. Egomaniacal. And one of those people who only appears to be interested in charities if there's some sort of fancy event involved. But kind of nice.

Main reason to feed her to sharks: Her husband. Dude, we know you're not the "captain of the United States polo team."

Any possible redeeming factor that might make me decide against feeding her to sharks: She likes to hug.


4) Mary

Retarded Opening Credits Quote: "I don't make money. I spend money."

Annoyance Factor: 6/10

I've known a few guys who suddenly start "talking black" when they find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being near black people. I've never seen a middle-aged woman do it, though. Forget her drunken rambling about integrated hair salons, her habit of calling Stacie "girlfriend!" every ten seconds was even more irritating.

Main reason to feed her to sharks: Who the fuck brings a bottle of wine to a family portrait session? When you need alcohol to make it through spending time with your kids, it's time to seek help.

Any possible redeeming factor that might make me decide against feeding her to sharks: She's hot for a woman her age, except in natural daylight. I'd also feel bad for her husband, who came off a thousand times better than she did. Although, who knows, maybe he'd be glad to be rid of her.


5) Stacie

Retarded Opening Credits Quote: "D.C. is my town. And I thrive in it."

Annoyance Factor: 5/10

I wouldn't be surprised if this changed, but for now, she seems to be the only halfway-decent human being among the women. Plus, once we reached shore and the authorities started asking questions about why the boat left with five housewives but only came back with one, I think her apparent dislike of the other woman would cause her to back me up when I claimed they all just went swimming and never resurfaced.

Reasons to feed her to sharks: Well, she did sign up to be on The Real Housewives of D.C.

Any possible redeeming factor that might make me decide against feeding her to sharks: Not a fan of Cat or George W. Bush.

Panel of the Week

From Secret Six #24:

Dear Covert Affairs...

I like you.

As with any show airing on USA this time of year--or really, any time of year, I guess--I'm not sure you're actually a good show, per se. But like most shows on USA, you're a fun show. "The girl next door is the CIA's newest secret agent!" That's a great tag line. And one I hear on the radio every ten minutes, so if you get cancelled, you can't say it was because of a lack of promotion.

And hey, I really appreciate you jump starting the career of Piper Perabo, who I've always dug and figured was destined for better things after Coyote Ugly and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, but it didn't really turn out that way. In fact, the whole cast is ridiculously good. Peter Gallagher, Kari Matchett, Christopher Gorham, Anne Dudek...your cup runneth over.

I do have an issue, though. And it's not like you're the first TV show guilty of this, but you are the most current one, so that's why I'm picking on you.

I understand that you're on USA and that means you have no real budget to speak of. It's not like you're The West Wing, which came to D.C. three or four times a year for location shooting. Toronto is pretty much it for you guys. And for the most part, it's a fine substitute.

I also get that you're written by Hollywood writers who, for all I know, have never been to D.C. or are even able to find it on a map. So we get standard Hollywood stuff like Annie living in Georgetown, which is evidently the only neighborhood in D.C. that Hollywood writers have heard of. Or the somewhat implausible notion that after a long day's work, CIA employees at Langley head all the way into D.C. for happy hour. Because I guess Virginia doesn't have bars.

All that's fine. But look. Crap like this has to stop:

This is from the pilot episode. Annie and Auggie are at the D.C. medical examiner's office and ask an employee to take their photo so they can get his fingerprint on the camera so they can...well, it's not important. What is important is the blatant abuse of green screen technology here. The United States Capitol is not a couple hundred yards away from the D.C. medical examiner's office. (To be honest, I had to look up where the D.C. medical examiner's office actually is, but I knew it wasn't here.) It's not even a couple of hundred yards away from the building on the left side of the photo that's posing as the D.C. medical examiner's office. This is a completely manufactured background.

Now, this isn't about geography. Not entirely. No one expects TV people in Los Angeles to know or care about where stuff in D.C. is and isn't. I mean, I survived a whole season of 24 that featured things like five-minute Metro rides from D.C. to Crystal City, and fancy outdoor dining in a part of the city where there is no dining whatsoever. So this doesn't bother me too much.

No, it's about respect for the audience's intelligence and attention span. And the idea that just because you can fake an image with the Capitol in the background doesn't mean you have to. I mean, we get it. The show's set in and around Washington, D.C. We don't need constant visual reminders.

Wow, the Capitol sure gets around! Thank God, too, because until I saw it there, even with the overhead establishing shot of the city that aired seconds before this scene, I wasn't entirely sure the characters were still in D.C. I thought maybe they'd traveled to Omaha or something.

Then there was the end of last night's episode. Annie's just returned home from overseas. Which means she'd probably fly into Dulles, but let's give the show the benefit of the doubt and assume that she'd landed elsewhere and caught a connecting flight to Reagan-National, which is considerably closer to D.C. Still...

Come on! This view doesn't exist! And it's totally unnecessary! We don't need to see the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in the background to know that she's home! You just told us she was! I guess I should just be glad the Capitol didn't get jammed in there, too.

I know it must be really tempting to manufacture shots of various D.C. landmarks to make up for the fact that you can't afford to film the real things. But at a certain point, it gets distracting. In the very least, can you be a little more creative? There's more to Washington architecture than just the same three or four structures over and over.

Okay, that's it. Enough grousing. Oh, wait, one more complaint. More of a suggestion, really. If you could have more flashback scenes of Piper Perabo running around the beach in a swimsuit, that'd be awesome. The last couple of episodes didn't have them, and frankly, I kind of miss them.

Metro fight!

Going down the escalator at L'Enfant Plaza, you could hear the shouting way before you saw what was going on.

On the lower platform, two guys--both black, but one younger and dressed in a coat and tie, and one older and dressed in a ratty tank top--were verbally going at it. It was mostly the guy in the ratty tank top (who seemed to be both crazy and homeless) who was making threats and issuing insults. The guy in the tie wasn't rising to his level, but he was responding with just enough vigor to make it clear that he wasn't going to let himself be pushed around by this loser.

So they jawed back and forth for a few minutes. Lots of "Fuck you"s, threats of violence (from the homeless guy), and abundant use of the n-word (again, from the homeless guy), etc. Eventually, when he realized the other guy wasn't going to take the bait and slug him, which I suspect is what he was after, the homeless guy gave up and walked away, muttering things like "I'm going to kill that motherfucker," "They don't know I got a gun," and weirdest of all, "White people are all fucking faggots."

(As a straight, white guy, this was obviously news to me. I mean, sure, the Old Spice guy makes me have...you know. Strange...uncomfortable feelings. But he does that to every straight guy, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.)

I should mention that as he walked away, several people on the platform were laughing at him. So that probably didn't do much for his mood.

The train eventually came, both men prepared to board it, and based on the looks the homeless guy was giving the other man, it seemed likely that the feud was going to continue on the train. I was waiting for the train going in the opposite direction, so I mentally said goodbye to my new friend.

Then, just as he was about to step on board the train, a woman on the platform walked past him. I'm not sure if she made a comment, simply made eye contact with him, or if he just exploded all on his own, but he shouted something at her, she responded, and then he hit her in the face. It wasn't a punch, exactly, but it wasn't a harmless slap, either.

This turned out to be a really big mistake.

If you've seen enough episodes of Cops, you know there are two kinds of women in the world: The kind who take it when hit, and the kind who hit back. This woman fell into the latter category. Once she got over the initial shock, she started fucking wailing on the guy. He was down on the ground in seconds. He'd been holding a small bag that seemed to contain several porcelain statues, and that also hit the ground, breaking the statues into a thousand pieces all over the platform.

She had two male friends with her, one of whom was using a cane. They also got into the action. So did the cane. It's fair to say the guy got the living shit beaten out of him. And justifiably so.

The brawl only went on for about thirty seconds before the woman and her friends cooled off. Well, her friends cooled off, anyway. One of them had to stop her from taking the cane and continuing to beat him with it.

Incidentally, you'd think that between the loud argument and now this, Metro personnel would be all over the place. But no. When a fifteen year-old kid tries to sneak in through the gate instead of the turnstile, two or three transit cops are all over it. But if a fight breaks out? We're on our own.

Anyway, the woman and her friends quickly boarded the next train. The homeless guy--his tank top now even rattier for having one strap torn apart--was still stalking around, muttering, and picking up pieces of porcelain off the platform. Several minutes later, the transit cops arrived and took him away.

I guess there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from this incident. Don't be an asshole, don't hit women, especially don't hit women who have friends with her, etc. But the one I choose to take away from it is that what Metro really needs is a citizen vigilante force. Even if they weren't allowed to carry guns or tasers, wooden sticks are evidently all they'd really need.