Week Seventeen NFL Picks

9-7 last week; 118-122 for the season

Oakland at Kansas City (-2.5): Kansas City

Miami at New England (-4.5): New England

Tennessee at Indianapolis (-9.5): Tennessee

Jacksonville at Houston (-3): Jacksonville

Pittsburgh at Cleveland (+5.5): Pittsburgh

Cincinnati at Baltimore (-9.5): Cincinnati

Minnesota at Detroit (-3.5): Minnesota

New York Giants at Washington (+4): Washington

Chicago at Green Bay (-9.5): Green Bay

Dallas at Philadelphia (-6.5): Dallas

Buffalo at New York Jets (-1.5): New York

Carolina at Atlanta (-14): Carolina

Tampa Bay at New Orleans (-7.5): Tampa Bay

St. Louis at Seattle (+3): St. Louis

Arizona at San Francisco (-6): Arizona

San Diego at Denver (+3.5): San Diego

Panel of the Week

From Action Comics #896:

Best and Worst of 2010: The D.C. Universe

At the end of the year, some bloggers thank their readers for their support. Once again, I instead choose to pat myself on the back by listing my ten best blog posts of the year. But I'm doing it for you, the reader! So really, we all win. (But seriously, thanks for reading.)

10) Dear Covert Affairs...

9) Vote Santos!

8) Lady Gaga: The Comic Book

7) The Teabagger Justice League

6) SmackDown vs. Raw vs. Video game morality

5) Gary Coleman

4) How Not to Survive Your Horror Movie Experience

3) Dave Weigel and the dangers of Fight Club

2) "No, we've been losing. What I want is for us to finish dead last."

1) Washington Post Theater

Best and Worst of 2010: Comics

Standard annual disclaimer: Because I don't think there's any way to properly compare superhero comic books to the more mature stuff, this list is exclusively superhero comics, as they're just more fun to write about. Otherwise, though, Vertigo's The Unwritten far and away gets my vote for the best comic currently being published.

Best:

5) Justice Society of America (DC)

When you've read comics for a long time, it becomes hard to be impressed with an individual story-arc. But I loved "Fatherland," where a group of Nazi supervillains manage to conquer the world. Several years in the future, the surviving heroes must figure out a way to go back in time and stop them. Granted, this storyline owes a lot to "Days of Future Past," but there's enough great stuff--superhero concentration camps! Batman and the Joker executed together! Old, de-powered heroes forced to dress up in their costumes for the entertainment of the Nazi regime!--that I can overlook it.

4) Zatanna (DC)

2010 was a good year for DC superheroines. Sterling Gates continued his better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be run on Supergirl. Birds of Prey relaunched. Wonder Woman got pants. But all that paled in comparison to Paul Dini finally getting to write a Zatanna series that's fun, sexy, and manages to make the protagonist one of the more believable characters in the DCU.

Any time a writer gets a crack at a character that he or she seems to have a...let's say, infatuation with...the results can be hard to predict. Remember Devin Grayson's run on Nightwing? Or how Marv Wolfman essentially wrote himself in as Donna Troy's husband? Fortunately, unlike those instances, Dini is able to write a compelling female character without his own issues getting in the way.



3) Ex Machina (Wildstorm)

When it first came out, this series was one of the best feel-good comics out there. A cross between Superman and The West Wing, the story of Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero (and closet comic book geek) who becomes the mayor of New York City was an interesting treatise on both super powers and political powers, and how both can be used to help society. Gradually, this year especially, things took a darker turn, culminating in a fairly shocking ending that polarized readers. It took a while, but I decided I really liked it. It's not necessarily the ending I wanted, but it's certainly not the ending Hundred wanted either, which makes it all the more powerful.

2) Batman and Robin (DC)

I didn't always understand Grant Morrison's Batman stuff over the past year, but for the most part, I really enjoyed it. Batman and Robin was the best of the bunch, as former Robin Dick Grayson is forced to not only fill in for his presumed dead mentor, but figure out how to train his very own sidekick. Great moments like Dick panicking as he learns the Joker is trapped with Damien--and being worried about the Joker's health, not Damien's--made what could have been simply a lot of padding as everyone waited for Bruce Wayne to come back, into one of the best Batman runs in years.

1) Irredeemable (Boom!)

Traditionally, Mark Waid has been at his best when he examines the fun, aspiration aspects of superheroes, like in Flash and Kingdom Come. So it's an absolute blast to see something like this, which takes the traditional Waid superhero story and turns it on its head.

An ongoing series about a superhero gone bad seems like it should have started to run out of gas by now. And honestly, I'm still not sure it needed a companion series in Incorruptible. Instead, Irredeemable gets better and better, as the Plutonian continues his rampage and his former teammates and adversaries continue to try and figure out how to stop him. It's actually kind of hard not to root for the Plutonian.


Worst:

5) Marvel Zombies 5 (Marvel)

For the love of God, let it end. What began as a fun concept that wasn't afraid to slaughter Marvel's sacred cows in the name of a great story, becomes more like a zombie itself with each new installment: Mindless and apparently un-killable, the franchise gets further and further away from Mark Millar's and Robert Kirkman's original idea. Maybe killing off the original zombies like Spider-Man and Iron Man, wasn't such a hot idea. In the very least, the franchise wouldn't have a Z-list character like Machine Man headlining it.

4) Nemesis (Icon)

Speaking of Mark Millar, his follow-up to Kick-Ass burst onto the scene with the tag line, "What if Batman was the Joker?" before DC quickly put a stop to that. And to be honest, it wasn't a terrible idea, although it's not like we haven't seen numerous variations of this done before. But the execution. Good God.

The problem with Nemesis is that he isn't "Batman as the Joker." He's the Joker if the Joker were an unimaginative idiot. And while I'm not going to say I didn't get a chuckle at the tasteless gag of Nemesis forcing his adversary's son to impregnate his own sister and "rigging her womb to collapse" if the pregnancy was aborted, I did feel somewhat dirty afterwards.

3) Batman: The Widening Gyre (DC)

"No." It's a word that DC should learn to say to Kevin Smith no matter how many comics he sells. From bringing back--and apparently killing off--Silver St. Cloud, despite his unwillingness to let other writers use his characters, to making Batman look like a chump by revealing his identity to a supervillain, this whole thing was a mess from start to finish.

Of course, the series' shining moment was the unneeded and badly-received revelation that Batman peed his pants during one of the best parts in Batman: Year One. Whether you think it's a harmless gag or in profoundly bad taste, it demonstrates a disturbing lack of respect for other writers' work. I really liked Smith's Clerks comics. I wish he'd go back to writing them and leave characters that aren't his alone.

2) Batman: Odyssey (DC)

Neil Adams is a fantastic artist, responsible for countless classic Batman, Green Lantern and Green Arrow stories back in the '70s. And I really enjoyed getting his signature on a couple of comics, even if it cost me $10. But finally given the opportunity to write as well as draw, he's produced a Batman story that's practically unreadable.

It's hard to imagine that someone so closely associated with Batman could get the characterization so wrong. In a way, this is on the other end of the spectrum from Frank Miller's mercifully unfinished All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Where Miller gave us a borderline psychotic Batman in All-Star, in Odyssey, Adams gives us a trapped-in-the-'70s Batman who calls Aquaman "dude." I'm actually not sure I don't like Miller's take more.


1) Justice League: Cry For Justice/Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal (DC)

Even though they have different creative teams, these books are linked by both their common plot elements and general god-awfulness, so they get to share the top spot.

It's hard to believe Cry For Justice comes from James Robinson, the same writer who all but revolutionized modern superhero stories a decade ago with Starman. This is awful, cynical drek, which maybe could have been excused if DC had marketed these series as parodies of '90s superhero comics. And even then, readers would have been left wondering "Why?" I mean, Cry For Justice had virtually the same general idea as Extreme Justice, the poster child for stupid '90s DC books, yet somehow manages to be worse.

What was the lowest point between the two books? Hal Jordan admitting having a superheroine threeway? Hal asking Supergirl--with a straight face--if she's "hero or villain," (Just because you're in a comic book doesn't mean you have to talk like it) making her cry? Killing off Lian, who never really did anything to anyone except be adorable, and using her death as an excuse to go all grim and gritty? No, it would have to be Arsenal mistaking a dead cat for his dead daughter during a drug binge.

I don't entirely blame Rise of Arsenal writer J.T. Krul, since I'm not sure any writer could have spun shit into gold with the plot he was handed. But the end result still speaks for itself. A dead cat. I mean...really.

Look, bad comics happen. Due to the sheer number that are produced each year, every writer, no matter how great, occasionally turns out something so godawful that you start to question why you ever liked said writer in the first place. But when someone seemingly goes out of his way to make bad comics, it's much, much worse. Cry For Justice was horrendous, and Rise of Arsenal didn't need to be made in the first place. There's obviously a place for dark superhero stories, but that doesn't mean you can just shoehorn them everywhere.

Honorable Mention: Neonomicon (Avatar)

Okay, I'm breaking my superheroes-only rule, but Jesus Christ, this sucked. Which I might be willing to overlook, if it hadn't been written by Alan Moore.

The first issue is just boring, which isn't something you expect or want from a Moore-written horror comic. The second issue, though, is where the train completely comes off the tracks. There's an extended and highly graphic rape scene that's clearly meant to be unsettling. Instead, it just comes off as badly written porn.

With The Lost Girls and now this, Moore seems to have entered his "pervy period" as an artist. I can certainly understand how a writer of his talent can get tired of superheroes, but I hope he moves past crap like this and on to something better.

Best & Worst of 2010: TV

Best:

5) The Walking Dead

It's somewhat weird watching this, because I also read the comic book the show is based on, so I know a lot of what's going to happen. But at the same time, they're changing things up enough that I can still be surprised, like with the CDC stuff in the season finale. It also makes me hopeful that the show can avoid a lot of the problems that the comic has suffered from, such as Rick's annoying habit of always being proven right, and the often less-than-subtle use of zombies as a metaphor. A lot of people criticized the first season for its relative lack of zombie action, but geez, it's not like half the cast can get eaten every week, can they? Man, I can't wait until they get to the prison.

4) The Good Wife

I only just started watching this a couple of months ago, and have been burning through the first season DVDs. Holy shit, did CBS mismarket this show when it first premiered. The commercials made it seem like it was a soap opera about a wife dealing with her husband's infidelity. And I guess it is that, but it's also an incredibly well-written legal drama and political thriller, and has a terrific supporting cast, including Michael Boatman, Josh Charles and Scott Porter. Going forward, networks should really use a "Trust us, it's not a chick show" disclaimer in promotional materials for shows like this.

3) The League

Its first season was a bit uneven, as the show struggled, with only six episodes, to balance the fantasy football elements with It's Always Sunny-like comedy. The second season was a huge improvement, in terms of both humor and--for those of us who care about such things--making the the fantasy parts more relevant. Ruxin might be the most consistently funny character on TV right now, and his speech after winning the championship ("This is exactly how I pictured it when masturbating! And you were all watching! Except Andre was wearing a stupid hat! Put it on so I can finish!") raised the bar for fantasy football gloating.

2) Doctor Who

I've never been a die hard Doctor Who fan, but David Tennant's last episode was nothing short of incredible, and any reservations I had about Matt Smith after his brief introduction were quickly dispelled once the new season started. Truthfully, though, they could just have Karen Gillan read the phone book for an hour each week, and this would still be one of my favorite shows.

1) Lost

I guess I get why people would feel the need to go back over the previous seasons and point out all the plot holes and inconsistencies. Months later, I'm still not sure how I feel about the big revelation at the end of the finale. But everything leading up to that was absolute gold, and even if the producers couldn't tie everything up perfectly, they did a good enough job. In the very least, the ending had the emotional wallop I was hoping for, as everyone got their happy ending. Well, some people got their happy ending.

Worst:

5) Outlaw

America wants to like Jimmy Smits, but sometimes he makes it hard. When the producers of this show were making their initial pitch, someone at NBC should have cut them off halfway through, keeping the stuff about a Supreme Court justice who likes drinking, gambling and womanizing, but dropping the part where he then quits and becomes a lawyer for the helpless and downtrodden. I'm pretty sure that first show would still be on the air.

4) The Marriage Ref

Apparently, there's a segment of America that's eager to make their personal lives fodder for celebrities to make dumb jokes about on national television. I guess in a culture that revolves around US Weekly and TMZ, it's only fair that celebrities get a chance to return the favor and make fun of regular people. But it makes for shitty television.

3) 100 Questions

It feels like we're past the point where a show can still be accused of being a Friends rip-off, but this still felt like a pretty blatant one. More importantly, why the hell should viewers care that some annoying British chick can't find a husband in New York? If the dating scene is so bad there, she can go back to England. And take her annoying friends with her.

2) The Decision

Some network needed to step up and give LeBron James a blow job, and naturally, ESPN couldn't get on its knees fast enough. Using disadvantaged children as props in the background was especially sleazy. Maybe if LeBron had announced he was staying in Cleveland, this whole thing could have been justified as a feel-good exercise. But then again, Cleveland fans couldn't have been more obnoxious during those Cavs/Wizards playoff series, so to the extent that The Decision caused them pain, good for LeBron.

1) The Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.

No one with even the slightest bit of class or influence in D.C. agreed to be on this show, so the producers were stuck with four supposedly successful businesswomen, and Michelle Salahi, who there seems to be something wrong with. And the worst part isn't that they were awful human beings--though, by and large, they certainly came off that way--it's that they were awful human beings who were boring. Even crashing a White House state dinner came off as not terribly interesting. If this show comes back, they should retool it so it just features the Salahis and their numerous legal problems. To paraphrase a joke from Patton Oswalt, they could be like the new Dukes of Hazzard, where each week they get into a mess and Waylon Jennings narrates, "There's just no way the Salahis are going to get out of this one!"

Best and Worst of 2010: Movies

Best:

5) Hot Tub Time Machine

This was like a collection of all my favorite things. John Cusack. The '80s. Chevy Chase. Time travel. Easily the funniest movie of the year, although, that's admittedly not saying a whole lot, given the competition. Regardless, it was a fantastic cast, and the surprisingly touching part where Rob Corddry admits that he was trying to kill himself at the start of the film, was one of my favorite scenes of any movie this year.

4) The Last Exorcism

I'm not sure the world needed another documentary-style horror film, and I'm fairly positive it doesn't need another one anytime soon, but I'm glad this one got made. Producer Eli Roth and director Daniel Stamm take what could have been a dull, predictable premise, and made arguably the second best exorcism film of all time. The ending, especially, packs a real punch, and if we lived in a world where actors in horror films got Oscar nominations, Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell would have legitimate shots.

3) Toy Story 3

I was originally confused by so many grown men admitting that they openly wept at this movie and the memories it brought back of how they gave up their childhood toys. Then I realized the reason I couldn't relate is because I never gave up my toys. They're still in a box somewhere. So it sucks to be those guys. But this was a great film, easily the best in the series. Lotso and Big Baby may be the best villains of any film in recent memory, and in that one scene towards the end, I really and truly thought the movie might kill off all the characters. You don't come across many films that can achieve that level of suspense.

2) Inception

I sort of have a grudge against Leonardo DiCaprio, and have for a while, and here's why: Every other actor in the world sells out to some degree. It's just part of the game. They star in dumb romantic comedies. They play superheroes. They make cameos in films that are clearly beneath them (i.e., Matt Damon in Eurotrip). Not DiCaprio. It seems like all he makes are highbrow films with Martin Scorsese that seem mainly designed to finally get him a Best Actor award. So it was satisfying to finally see him in something so blatantly commercial. Oh, and the film's really good, too.

1) The Social Network

I don't care if most of it is made up. The fictional Mark Zuckerberg is probably more interesting than the real one, anyway. But it was fascinating to see the Zuckerberg character go back and forth between hero and villain, where you're rooting for him one moment, and appalled by him the next. The whole movie is almost a Bizarro World version of The Karate Kid, where the good-looking tough guys get bullied by the nerd. And it's always great to hear Aaron Sorkin's dialogue.

Worst:

5) How Do You Know

The entire premise of this film depends on the viewer accepting the idea that Reese Witherspoon's character--a gorgeous, overachieving athlete--would stay with Owen Wilson's character, despite the latter being a jerk who constantly assures her that he's cheating on her and sees no real reason to stop. Paul Rudd being dependably Paul Rudd-ish prevents the movie from being a complete waste, and it's fun seeing Adams Morgan and Nationals Park (although I was surprised by how little the whole baseball player aspect was featured, outside of an excuse to give Wilson's character a bunch of jock stereotypes as friends), but I can't think of a recent film with so little substance.

4) Charlie St. Cloud

Oddly enough, I like Zac Efron. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because he's a better actor than most of the ones that come out of the Disney kid actor factory. Maybe it's because he keeps playing saintly characters, like in Hairspray and 17 Again. Or maybe it's that when he takes his shirt off, he occasionally makes me question my heterosexuality. Who can say. Regardless, he deserves a lot better than crap movies like Charlie St. Cloud, which is so bad, you actually find yourself hating the ghost of a dead little boy. And that's not easy for a movie to do.

3) When In Rome

Whenever I meet an attractive woman with a great job, it seems like she has an equally attractive boyfriend who also has a great job. But in stupid romantic comedies, beautiful women with great jobs are all single and neurotic! In fact, Kristen Bell's character is so totally single, she had to fly to Rome to meet a guy, and then spends most of the movie freaking out over whether he loves her or is under the spell of a magic poker chip. Look, I like romantic comedies. But it seems like if you're writing the script for one and the plot requires a magic anything, you've already lost.

2) Clash of the Titans

I'm not even going to get into the whole 3-D mess, because I was smart enough to not pay to see this in the theater. But it's absolutely mind boggling how the producers managed to take a beloved classic adventure film, strip it of all the stuff that made it awesome, and churn out such a completely soulless remake. Perseus is now a whiny, petulant jerk, the CGI effects somehow look worse than stop motion animation from 30 years ago, and the inexplicable change to the relationship between Perseus and Andromeda basically undermined the entire point of the film.

1) Jonah Hex

My many reasons for despising this film can be found here. I'll just repeat what I wrote then: As far as comic book adaptations go, Jonah Hex is worse than Batman & Robin. I can't think of a worse thing you can say about a movie.

Panel of the Week

It's Christmas and I'm God knows how many miles away from a comic book store. So here's a classic panel from Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #8:

Week Sixteen NFL Picks

6-10 last week; 109-115 for the season

Carolina at Pittsburgh (-14.5): Pittsburgh

Dallas at Arizona (+6.5): Dallas

Detroit at Miami (-3.5): Miami

Minnesota at Philadelphia (-14): Minnesota

Washington at Jacksonville (-7): Washington

San Francisco at St. Louis (-2): San Francisco

Seattle at Tampa Bay (-6): Tampa Bay

New England at Buffalo (-8): New England

New York Jets at Chicago (-1): Chicago

Baltimore at Cleveland (+3): Baltimore

Tennessee at Kansas City (-5): Kansas City

Indianapolis at Oakland (+3): Oakland

Houston at Denver (+3): Houston

New York Giants at Green Bay (-3): Green Bay

San Diego at Cincinnati (+7.5): San Diego

New Orleans at Atlanta (-2.5): Atlanta

Best Worst EVER!!!!!

"Troll 2 is a film that examines many serious and important issues like eating, living and dying. It's an important film which talks about the family, the union of the family, resisting all of those things that want to see it dead. People want to eat this family." - Claudio Fragasso, director of Troll 2, in Best Worst Movie

In general, I like the Internet. It gives us things like email and blogs, and easy access to airline tickets and pornography. But sometimes it annoys me. This is especially true when it comes to its propensity to declare something--anything, really--"The best/worst (fill in the blank) ever!!!!!" This is doubly annoying when the thing being declared has been around for ages, but then someone at, say, the Huffington Post will come across it, and make it sound like their crack investigative team discovered it in some tomb, dug it up, and is proudly sharing it with the masses.

Such was the case with the Troll 2 fervor this past year. Thanks to Best Worst Movie, as people across the country were discovering this quaint little film about a boy and his family who unwisely vacation in the town of Nilbog, and are attacked by goblins who want to turn them into vegetables to eat, and raving about it (well, you know, raving about it in the ironic, detached, hipster sense of the word), I, and I'm sure many others, were like, "Well, yeah, this movie has been around forever. Where the fuck have all of you been?"

And just to be clear, I'm not playing the film snob card here. It's not like I considered Troll 2 some sort of obscure movie, known only to me and a handful of other horror nerds. Hell, HBO used to run it ten times a week, back when it was so hard up for programming, a night of movies might well consist of Troll 2, The Beastmaster and Body Slam, the latter two co-starring Tanya Roberts. (I would trade the current highbrow HBO for the HBO of 20 years ago in a heartbeat.)

And the thing is, it's really not the worst movie ever. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's horrible. It's poorly written, abysmally acted, and this particularly infamous line-read deserves all the scorn in the world.

But there are worse films. Troll 2, for all its faults, has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has competent cinematography. It has a decent plot. (And frankly, given the thousands of movies that have been made about people-eating creatures, I can't think of any other one where the creatures first turn people into plants to eat, so that was kind of creative.) It has passable special effects for a really low-budget '80s horror movie.

And honestly, it kind of has a cool ending, which sadly, doesn't seem to be on YouTube. Not in English, anyway. But in a nutshell, Joshua, the kid in the film, walks into his family's kitchen and discovers a bunch of goblins eating the green pulp that used to be his mother. One of them looks up and says, "Want some, Joshua?" Joshua screams. End of movie.

I've gotten worse films from Netflix. Far worse. Some of them look like they were shot using a camera the director found at a garage sale. Some of them seem like they were made without an actual script. And then, you have movies like Batman and Robin or Battlefield Earth or Jonah Hex, which are also terrible, but had much better actors and a budget a thousand times bigger than Troll 2's. So if we're awarding titles like Worst Movie Ever, shouldn't those be considered before Troll 2?

On Rotten Tomatoes, Troll 2 has a 0% rating among movie critics, making it the lowest-rated film ever made. Roger Ebert said, "A critic could become the most-hated person in fan circles by awarding it even half a star and spoiling the perfection of that zero." I really hope someone does, because it's not the worst film ever made, no matter how much the Internet wants it to be.

Hustling and the importance of good schtick

I was waiting to cross the intersection at K and 14th earlier today. A cab was turning onto the service road, and this guy--tall, black, and missing most of his teeth--walking from the opposite side of the street, motioned for it to go ahead. Then, just as the cab started to turn, the guy jumped in front of it. The cab hit its breaks, and the guy happily shouted something like, "Don't hit me! It's my birthday!" and cracked up as if it was the funniest thing ever.

Walking over to the corner I was standing on, he said hi to me. I said hi back. He pulled out a stack of D.C. Lottery play slips and tried to hand me one. I declined. He kind of laughed and said, "Hey, don't be nervous."

This kind of bothered me, as the subtext of accusing a white guy of being nervous around a black guy is pretty obvious. You don't have to be racist to not want to be hassled by someone asking you for money on the street, as he was clearly getting set to do.

That's when his pitch took a weird turn.

"Hey, I'm a Christian and I voted for Obama. You too, right?" he asked.

It's not like I was especially impressed with his divining skills, since "Christian Obama-voter" describes thousands of people in D.C. But I acknowledged that he was right on both counts.

"Cool! You and me, we're like brothers from another mother."

"Okay," I agreed.

"You and me, we're like car seats."

"Uh."

"We go way back!"

Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I've never heard that one before. So I laughed. Then, in case I didn't get it, he pantomimed leaning back in a car seat. By now, I was genuinely amused. Still wary about the inevitable request for money. But amused.

"What are we like?"

"Car seats."

"Cool. Where are you from?" he asked.

"Here."

He looked at me skeptically. "Really?"

"Yeah." (Okay, fine, so technically, I grew up in Fairfax County. It still counts. Get over yourselves, D.C. snobs.)

"That's awesome. So listen..." he said, getting down to business. I realized the pitch was starting.

He pulled out a CD still in its shrink wrap and pressed it into my hand, and explained that he was collecting money for a charity working to help the prevention of AIDS. As he explained this, he pointed over to the park, as if identifying other people he was working with, but I didn't see anyone who appeared to be collecting money.

"Now the CD is free. But if you'd like, we are accepting donations."

I looked at the CD. It's called Requiem Mass, and appears to be a collection of Gregorian Chants. Not exactly something I was into. But maybe the combination of it being Christmas, the money (ostensibly) going towards fighting AIDS, or just the guy's good schtick, made me slightly more generous.

But not too generous. I stuck my hand in my coat pocket, where I knew for a fact that I only had two dollars, pulled the money out and handed it to him.

"This is all I have," I said apologetically, as if I was really disappointed I didn't have more to give.

"Thanks." He frowned. "It's just that for the CD, we're actually asking for a three dollar donation..."

"This is all I have," I repeated.

He started to say something, but stopped. Instead, he just said, "Okay. Thanks very much." Then there was a pause. "Hey, you don't really want that CD, do you?"

"I do," I assured him. I actually wasn't sure whose property it was at that point, but I didn't want him trying to take it back, so I stuck it in my pocket. Truthfully, I didn't want it. But a deal's a deal. And frankly, I was a little annoyed that the CD had gone from free, to an unspecified donation, to a fixed donation of $3 (which obviously would have been more if I'd given him $3 instead of $2), to where now I was being asked to give it back.

"Okay, man, thanks a lot," he said. Then he again pulled out the D.C. Lottery slip and handed it to me, and we parted ways.

So, I'm two dollars poorer, but that money either went to fighting AIDS or something far less noble, but I'll never know, so let's just go with AIDS. And I have a free CD of Gregorian Chants that I'll probably never listen to, and that even I'm too cheap to re-gift to someone.

And most confusing of all, I have a D.C. Lottery play slip. Why was he handing thouse out? Is it magic? Is this guy maybe an angel who's giving out winning play slips to people who were willing to give money to a good cause? If so, does the magic still work, even though I only gave two dollars instead of three? Am I really not cheap enough to re-gift a CD of Gregorian Chants? Because the more I think about it, the more I think I might be. And does the $16.95 price tag that's on the back of the CD that I didn't notice until just now mean it might be stolen property?

Whatever. The point of this story is, if you're going to ask people for money in this world, it's no longer enough to have a hard-luck story or make a dubious claim about collecting for a charity. You have to be entertaining. And maybe offer a free CD. But mostly be entertaining.

"We go way back." Heh. That shit still cracks me up.

Panel of the Week

From Highland Laddie #5:

Week Fifteen NFL Picks

10-6 last week; 103-105 for the season

San Francisco at San Diego (-10): San Diego

Kansas City at St. Louis (+1): St. Louis

Houston at Tennessee (-1.5): Houston

Jacksonville at Indianapolis (-5): Indianapolis

Arizona at Carolina (-2.5): Arizona

Cleveland at Cincinnati (-1.5): Cleveland

Buffalo at Miami (-5.5): Miami

Philadelphia at New York Giants (-2.5): Philadelphia

Washington at Dallas (-6): Washington

Detroit at Tampa Bay (-5.5): Tampa Bay

New Orleans at Baltimore (-1.5): New Orleans

Atlanta at Seattle (+6): Atlanta

New York Jets at Pittsburgh (-6): Pittsburgh

Denver at Oakland (-6.5): Denver

Green Bay at New England (-11): New England

Chicago at Minnesota (+6): Chicago

Free parking

One day when I was 16, I went to Giant with my dad. The store was really crowded and the check-out lines were long and I was bored, so I did what any good son would do: I told my dad I was going to wait in the car, leaving him to carry out the groceries on his own.

The parking lot was also crowded, and as I left the store, I noticed a car following me to our parking place. "Well, he's going to have a long wait," I thought to myself, since it would be at least ten minutes until my dad got through the line. I assumed that once the driver realized I wasn't leaving, he'd move on. I got into the driver's seat, turned on WHFS, leaned back, and closed my eyes.

After a few moments, I heard this loud, obnoxious honking from behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and saw the driver of the car who had followed me (who was actually a she) with an annoyed expression on her face. She threw up her hands as if to say, "What the hell? Are you leaving or what?" I shook my head, and her expression changed from annoyed to incredulous, as if I'd intentionally tricked her, and she sped off through the parking lot to find another space.

Ever since then, being followed to my parking space in a crowded parking lot or garage has been one of my biggest pet peeves. And of course, this being the holidays, is when it tends to happen the most.

Now, is this somewhat irrational? Yes. In retrospect, when I saw the car following me in the Giant parking lot all those years ago, should I have let her know that I wasn't leaving? Sure. Should I have gotten the fuck over this by now? Absolutely.

But I haven't.

I hate the feeling of someone else trying to establish ownership of something that I haven't given up yet. I hate the feeling of being followed through a parking garage, as if I'm a really slow gazelle being stalked by an even slower lion. Most of all, I hate the feeling that once I get into my car, I can't take a minute or two to pick a playlist to listen to, or check my email on my phone, lest I get honked at by an impatient driver again. Which has actually happened a couple of times.

A couple of weeks ago on Black Friday, I went to Tysons Corner. When I got there around 9 am, there was plenty of parking. When I left a few hours later, the place was a madhouse. The entire garage was full and there were easily two dozen cars prowling around, hunting for an empty parking space.

Not five seconds after I set foot in the garage, one of the drivers rolled down her window and shouted out, "Hey, where are you parked?"

"Way over there," I said, pointing. She evidently decided "way over there" was too far, and moved on. A moment later, another car fell in behind me. I thought about asking for a ride, since we were both going in the same direction, but I guess that's frowned upon in our society. So I walked and the car just slowly trailed after me. And when I finally got to where I thought my car was parked, I realized I was on the wrong floor of the garage. I gave the driver a kind of apologetic half-shrug. He gave me a dirty look, rolled his eyes, and drove off.

Well, Jesus Christ, dude, I'm sorry. But you know, this obviously wasn't my greatest moment, either, and a little understanding would have been nice. We all make mistakes, right? I hope he got into a car accident and died on the way home.

I walked up to the next level, now in a bad mood. I'd been up since 3:30 am and I was kind of annoyed with the world in general, and holiday shoppers in particular. On the bright side, I could see my car.

Instantly, a minivan pulled up next to me, and a woman rolled her window down. "Excuse me, sir? Are you leaving?"

"No," I lied. I don't even know why. It just kind of came out. Then I noticed that she had four little kids in the minivan with her.

Naturally, I felt like a complete asshole. I mean, even with whatever stupid pet peeves I have regarding parking lots, not giving my space to a woman with kids was an inexcusably shitty thing to do. So I had a choice to make: Do the mature thing and say, "Wait, I'm sorry! I meant, yes! I'm right over there. Follow me!" or not say anything and let her drive off?

Obviously, I didn't say anything and let her drive off.

And no, I'm not proud of this. But I do think I deserve credit for consistency, even in the face of overwhelming temptation to do the right thing. And I'm sure that woman found a parking space. Eventually. Besides, have you seen today's modern minivans? They're practically entertainment centers on wheels. I did those kids a favor. Maybe.

This is probably one of those things I need to work on.

Panel of the Week

From The Flash #7:

Week Fourteen NFL Picks

 8-8 last week; 93-99 for the season

 

Indianapolis at Tennessee (+3.5): Indianapolis

 

Cleveland at Buffalo (+1): Buffalo

 

Cincinnati at Pittsburgh (-8.5): Pittsburgh

 

Oakland at Jacksonville (-4): Jacksonville

 

Tampa Bay at Washington (+2): Washington

 

New York Giants at Minnesota (+2.5): New York

 

Atlanta at Carolina (+7): Atlanta

 

Green Bay at Detroit (+6.5): Green Bay

 

St. Louis at New Orleans (-9): St. Louis

 

Seattle at San Francisco (-5): Seattle

 

New England at Chicago (+3): New England

 

Denver at Arizona (+5.5): Denver

 

Kansas City at San Diego (-7): San Diego

 

Miami at New York Jets (-5.5): Miami

 

Philadelphia at Dallas (+3.5): Philadelphia

 

Baltimore at Houston (+3): Baltimore

SmackDown vs. Raw vs. Video game morality

A couple of weeks ago, as part of my gradual evolution into a wrestling fan, I bought SmackDown vs. Raw for my Xbox. I generally don't go for fighting games like Tekken or Mortal Kombat, because A) They get repetitive, B) Eventually, I get to the point where I'm not good enough to progress any further, and C) I don't have the attention span necessary to memorize the various combinations of buttons you have to know in order to pull off the more complicated moves which are necessary to progress (see Point B) so the game doesn't become repetitive (see Point A).

But I figured a wrestling game might be different, and so far it has been. There's enough variety to keep things interesting, even though I actually wouldn't mind it being a little more difficult. I played a Royal Rumble match last weekend, and personally eliminated 15 wrestlers. That doesn't seem right.

In the game, as in real life, there are both male wrestlers (called "Superstars") and female wrestlers (called "Divas"). I hate these terms, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll use them anyway. You can play as a Superstar in any of the many types of matches that are available in the game. You can play as a Diva in any match except for a first blood match, where the goal is to be the first to draw your opponent's blood. (Fun wrestling fact I read about when I was a kid: When a match called for a wrestler to get bloodied in the ring, he'd carry a small razor blade in the waistband of his trunks and at a certain point, surreptitiously take it out and cut his forehead or nose open. I have no idea if this still goes on, but I'm guessing being a wrestler back in the day was a lot crappier than it is now.)

After playing the game for a while, I started to get a little bored just beating up guys like John Cena and R-Truth over and over. I looked at the roster of wrestlers, and decided it might be fun to go for what would have to be the most incredibly lopsided match in the history of wrestling: An intergender match between The Undertaker and Kelly Kelly. The former is six feet, ten inches of solid muscle, whereas the latter is five and a half feet of blonde hair and silicone. In real life, even the WWE writers would have a hard time coming up with a way for this match to last longer than a minute. I figured I could win in half that time.

I tried to set up the match, only to discover that the game wouldn't let me. Intergender wrestling, it seemed, was verboten. A quick Google check revealed that was indeed the case. Apparently, previous editions of SmackDown vs. Raw let gamers indulge their Andy Kaufman-esque wrestling fantasies, but the past couple have not.

Now, obviously, I can see the WWE's point of view. The company has been trying to repackage itself as family-friendly entertainment, and if they're toning down the violence on their TV broadcasts, it makes sense that they'd do the same with their video games.

But at the same time, it kind of irks me.

I realize this runs the risk of coming off as though I'm upset that I'm not allowed to beat up women, which would be kind of weird. I'm really not. Don't get me wrong, I still think an Undertaker/Kelly Kelly match would be a blast, but in the same way that it would be funny if you had the option of playing as the New England Patriots against a high school football team in Madden. Or like in Grand Theft Auto, how you're able--encouraged, even--to run around, happily murdering innocent bystanders and police officers. Using overwhelming force against mostly helpless opponents is a hallmark of video games. In other words, game ethics are not the same as real-life ethics.

So what annoys me is the idea that a video game, in general, would attempt to force a sense of right and wrong on its players.

This is hardly the first time it's happened, of course. Going all the way back to text-based games like Zork, if you tried to do something violent to someone who didn't deserve it, you'd likely get a horrified response from the narrator, letting you know that wasn't going to happen. And in later games, if you tried to, say, shoot people you weren't supposed to, the bullets might just pass through them. But that had just as much to do with the limitations of technology at the time, as it did trying to make you act like a good guy. Those games weren't sophisticated enough to deal with the in-game consequences of you acting like a psychopath, so the simplest answer was to just not let you.

But here, it also seems more than a little hypocritical. Consider, that while playing a Divas match, you can do the following to your (fellow female) opponent:

-- Pull a sledgehammer out from underneath the ring and attack her with it.

-- Beat her with a metal folding chair, including trapping her leg in between it, and bringing all your weight down on it.

-- Punch her in the face repeatedly, prompting one of the ring announcers to comment, "I think I just saw a tooth fly out!"

-- In an inferno match, toss your opponent out of the ring into fire, where she becomes engulfed in flames and needs to be put out with fire extinguishers.

If you do any of these things to someone in real life, chances are you'll be charged with assault, if not attempted murder. But in the "WWE Universe," it's all perfectly legal. So since we're dealing with an alternate reality where normal rules of violent behavior don't apply anyway, isn't it absurd for a video game to make you follow any sort of rules that are designed to enforce morality?

Additionally, mixed tag team matches, where each team consists of one Superstar and one Diva, are allowed. When you or your opponent makes a tag, the other Superstar/Diva is forced to go tag in his or her teammate, so both legal wrestlers are the same gender. If you, controlling your Superstar, strike the opposing Diva while she's standing on the apron and the ref sees you, you're disqualified and the match is over. But if the ref is distracted (or you've knocked him out) and doesn't see you hit her, you can get away with it. Seems like a weird technicality to include, given how stringent the rules about this sort of thing are, otherwise.

So basically, you can do all kinds of horrible things to female characters in this game--things that would maim and kill in real life--but only if you're also playing as a female character. And like I said, I understand why this safeguard is in place, but given how relatively violent the rest of the game is, it just seems arbitrary and useless.

No impressionable young mind that would play SmackDown vs. Raw and otherwise be unaffected by what's in it, would start hitting women simply because he could do so in the game. Just like how playing Mortal Kombat in arcades didn't inspire millions of young boys to try and rip women's spines out, despite the fact that across America in the early '90s, Sonja and Kitana were probably getting Fatalities performed on them every ten seconds.

A couple of months ago, there was a bit on Raw where The Miz and Alex Riley came into the ring and savagely beat up Daniel Bryant. It was pretty shocking in its brutality, especially since the show was in the middle of its big, "Hey, look how great and family-friendly the WWE is! Vote Linda McMahon for Senate!" push. I'm not saying that sort of thing is going to warp young minds, either, but it's certainly more likely to do so than a virtual Undertaker wrestling a virtual Kelly Kelly would.

Panel of the Week

From Batman 80-Page Giant 2010 #1:

Week Thirteen NFL Picks

6-10 last week; 85-91 for the season

Houston at Philadelphia (-8): Philadelphia

Buffalo at Minnesota (-5.5): Buffalo

Cleveland at Miami (-4.5): Cleveland

Jacksonville at Tennessee (-3.5): Jacksonville

Denver at Kansas City (-8.5): Kansas City

Washington at New York Giants (-7): Washington

Chicago at Detroit (+5): Chicago

San Francisco at Green Bay (-8): Green Bay

New Orleans at Cincinnati (+6.5): New Orleans

Atlanta at Tampa Bay (+3): Tampa Bay

Oakland at San Diego (-13): San Diego

Carolina at Seattle (-6): Seattle

Dallas at Indianapolis (-5.5): Dallas

St. Louis at Arizona (+3.5): Arizona

Pittsburgh at Baltimore (-3): Pittsburgh

New York Jets at New England (-3): New England