Curb Your Enthusiasm: Ass is ass

 

Leon is a force of nature, an agent of chaos and an absolutely perfect judge of human character.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: George is getting upset!

 

Larry is absolutely terrible at playing the ultimate fictional version of himself, and that joke works on so many levels that I'm still figuring it all out.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Come to this side, and I'm yours

It's another busy week, so it's just all my favourite bits from Curb Your Enthusiasm (and one from Peep Show) for the next seven days. Keep it together, your own way. I have to follow the path of Larry.

Doom Patrol: Jane can tell you what you need to hear

 

The TV version of Doom Patrol's Jane is very one-note - and that note is ANGRY - but the comic version has the ability to say the exact right thing at the exact right time, even if what she is saying is really, really horrible.

It's such a rush!

In an era of big hair and bigger shoulderpads, the bit in the Rush Hour video where Jane Wiedlin winks at the camera while she absolutely shreds her guitar solo is hands-down the sexiest moment of the 1980s.

Back on the Legion

I don't buy nearly as many comics as I once did, but I always get one regular monthly superhero comic at a time, because that's all I need. I don't need the 52-part crossovers, I don't need 20 Batman comics, I just want the one comic every month to scratch that superhero itch.

For a long while it was the Waid/Rivera/Samnee Daredevil, which was good fun, and for a little while it was the Morrison/Sharp Green Lantern, but that didn't do anything for me. Now I'm back on the Legion, and getting the current comic by Bendis, Sook and chums.

There have been a lot of reviews and comments about the current Legion of Super-Hero comics that have pointed out its flaws - it's a startlingly superficial comic with a lot happening and no real depth to any of it, and they're all right. It's utterly weightless, and that's fine. I'm not going to find deep meditations on the human condition in the Legion of Super-Heroes (although that sometimes genuinely happens), but I am going to get lots of slick super-action.

That's what I want in my superhero comics, and it's what I get with the current ultra-compressed Legion comic. I've bought and read every issue so far - except for #6, because speculators fucking ruin it for everybody - and I honestly couldn't say what happens, plot wise. There's a few sweet lines I could quote, some new character traits that Bendis is bringing to the table and some terrific scene transitions and that's about it.

It's dense and packed and overloaded, and if I gave a shit about the big over-plot, I'd be in trouble. But I'm just here for the sweet super-punching action, that gorgeous overloaded art and smart doses of character action - the new Brainiac 5 has finally realised that being an entitled jerk just makes his job harder, so uses weapons-grade empathy to achieve his goals.

It's actually rare for a mainstream comic to be so intentionally superficial - lots of them manage it by accident - and it doesn't taste like the regular DC Universe slop, so I will eat it all up. I'm on until Bendis wanders off, leaving behind a million plot threads, and someone else comes in with a tight editorial leash and flattens it all down to the regular kind of DC comic with bullshit emotive arcs and endless goddamn soul-searching. 

It's inevitable, but it's worth reveling in this tight future, for a little while longer.

We're all the mum in Jaws sometimes

It feels so harsh, when Mrs Kintner slaps the shit out of Sheriff Brody in Jaws after her young son becomes shark food. Doesn't she know he's the guy that has been trying to close the beaches, who did everything he could to prevent needless deaths?

But of course Mrs Kinter - played with bottomless grief by the late Lee Fierro - doesn't know that, all she sees is a sheriff who failed to save her boy. And it's just one tiny moment of universal humanity in this great, great movie.

For Brody, the slap stings because he thinks he deserves it, that he could have done more. But it still feels harsh, because there are other people in that very room who are far more deserving of blame. He did what he could.

And yet, we all do it sometimes. We all look for blame in the wrong places and jump to conclusions and while it's not as horrific as Mrs Kintner, we all blame the wrong people sometimes. The person at the end of the help phone line who doesn't make the rules and is not getting paid enough to take your complaint, and we often don't know the full story.

When the full story does come out, those resposnsible for tragedies should always face judgement, (although that goddamn mayor is stil there in Jaws 2, which also tells you something about the way the world works.) But it's human nature to lock onto the most obvious target.

And while it makes us so much more complex than the mindless feeding machine prowling around offshore, it still stings like a sharp slap to the face.

(This post is not a confession for anything, and I'm not thinking of a specific example of inappropriate blame. I just really fucking like Jaws, even the painful bits.)

Relaxing on Heat

There is something weirdly relaxing about looking at the behind the scenes photos from Heat, and seeing these tightly coiled archetypes relax into actual humans. I could look at these pics all day long, or at least until I see the heat coming around the corner...

Love and Rockets: Is that fog rolling in?

In Palomar, the streets are ancient, and the grudges are even older. It's a place where strong women go to figure out their next step in life, even if they don't realise it (and often by they've been fucked over by men doing awful things in their name). Some of them stay, some of them move on, some of them do both at the same time.

Gilbert Hernandez keeps abandoning that strange little town, somewhere south of the US border, but also keeps going back there, and there's always something worth going back for. The old gang are mostly still there, just older - Chelo, Carmen, Heraclio and a few others - and the new visitors in town can still see the old ghosts.   

As both of the Hernandez brothers get older and older, they've had there vivid characters return to their origins, and comment on how things have changed, and say hello to the future as the dip into the past. You might not always be able to go home again, but it's still good to check in on this place, where time means nothing, and those grudges and ghosts stick around.