Spammy bids you welcome! Enter freely and of your own craving!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 4: Tuesday, July 25th (continued)
After several hours of gawking and photographing the animals, then a few minutes of fairly priced zoo cafeteria lunch, two more hours of driving took us southeast to the town of Austin, home of Hormel Foods and the world-famous Spam Museum.
Shark and Tornado. Tornado and Shark. Who’s the master and who’s the servant?
Because too many viewers patronized the first one! Thanks to America’s unreasonable groundswell of bemused support of the original Sharknado, Syfy and The Asylum felt emboldened enough to scrape together a few more quarters, call in some former celebrities for cameos, clear the browser cache in their visual-effects software, and make Sharknado 2: the Second One on purpose.
I can’t imagine why anyone would write a straightforward review of this, not even if you were a paid TV critic, unless you’re keen to address the arguments for or against the concept of meta-grade-Z flicks. I see both sides of the debate over which is morally superior, mocking unintentionally bad films versus mocking intentionally bad films, but I opted out of the debate and launched into an evening of fun, carefree live-tweeting without contemplating my justifications or pondering the ramifications of encouraging Syfy’s agenda.
Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience. MAJOR SPOILERS ahead…
The Princess Diaries 2 turns 10 this August! But you already knew that, right? The stars, left to right: Callum Blue, a.k.a. Zod from Smallville; Academy Award Winner Anne Hathaway; and Starfleet Captain Chris Pine.
Forty-five years since the moon landing! Twenty-five years since Ghostbusters II! Fifty years since this battle! Ten years since that album! Eighty years since this one comic! Thirty-five years since that one thing happened that we wouldn’t mention if this weren’t a slow news day!
Now more than ever, you can count on your favorite sites to devote bandwidth every week to someone’s memories of events that occurred exactly on This Day in History multiples-of-five years ago. If it happened nine, thirteen, or twenty-two years ago, don’t waste our time. But fifteen years ago? Those precious moments need to be documented. Interviews need to be conducted. Reviews and opinions from that year need to be revisited and recontextualized. The important thing is that we need to be writing about stuff everyone loved way back when, instead of wasting a lot of time searching for new stuff in the world of today. Nostalgia rules! Discovery drools!
For once, I’m getting a few steps ahead of their game. Instead of waiting for them to tell me what to celebrate, like some kind of chump who doesn’t own a calendar or know how to Google, I’m planning my own social schedule in advance so I can be first in line to define “the Good Ol’ Days” for everyone else with a big, boiling bowl of Remember When bouillabaisse. And you can join me!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 4: Tuesday, July 25th
Our hotel in Bloomington rewarded us with the largest breakfast buffet of the whole trip. The offerings weren’t all that different, with the notable exception of a positively luxurious three waffle-makers. Their buffet was much more spread out and streamlined, rather than crammed into a leftover nook like those of the previous hotels. Although they offered three times as many tables and chairs as we were used to, they were also just as crowded as the pool had been the previous night.
Once we were tanked up on too much sugar — I know I was, at least — we drove due south to Apple Valley, home of the Minnesota Zoo. This part was a concession on behalf of my son, the wildlife lover. We always schedule one vacation stop for his appeasement, though a zoo was a welcome change of pace from the ride-alike amusement parks of previous years. (Fun opinion I wish I didn’t hold: Six Flags parks are as interchangeable as McDonald’s franchises.)
Lakes and birdies, hand in hand: Minnesota’s nature scene in a nutshell.
Toby Kebbell takes over for Claude Akins as the Koba of a new generation. So far I’ve seen no hardcore fans protesting the decision to change Koba from gorilla to ape.
Many of us here on the internet openly lament Hollywood’s fixation on sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots as their creative crutches of choice. Implicit in our grumbles is the broad assumption that all of those recycling methods are inherently bad by definition. We’re sometimes quick to forget within the space of 140 characters, for the sake of the snarky punchline, that such vehicles don’t have to be all bad. Their success rate is disappointing, but it’s far from 0%.
Last weekend, six of the top ten films on the box office chart were sequels. One was a sequel and a sort-of relaunch; one a sequel to a spinoff; one a sequel to a remake; and two were just plain sequels. And then there was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a loose do-over of 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes with the additions of one large MacGuffin and some expensive set pieces, any one of which probably cost five times Battle‘s miserly budget. Also, they smartly ditched the humans’ sci-fi B-movie costumes.
So Dawn is a sequel to a reboot and it’s a remake. Its pedigree is an anti-art hat trick. Somehow it’s also one of the best films of the summer.
Director Zack Snyder just shared the following image online from this weekend’s big San Diego Comic Con: the public’s very first look at Gal Gadot as the very first big-screen Wonder Woman, as appearing in next summer’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Frankly, Snyder’s trademark monotones aren’t doing her any favors. I can’t tell if her costume really is all leather-armor brown, or if it’s seven different Day-Glo colors of the rainbow but shot through an unappealing Instagram filter. The sword and warrior’s stance are nothing new to comics readers of the last three decades, but older folks whose Wonder Woman memories begin and end with Lynda Carter might be in for a bit of a shock.
Three more important questions remain to be answered in the months ahead:
(1) How’s her personality?
(2) Is her part an overhyped cameo or an ample supporting role?
(3) Will we ever see WW starring in her own film in my lifetime? Or is she doomed to play second-fiddle for the manly heroes, as if she were just a brawnier Lois Lane?
He’s back! And this time, he’s still weird. Duh.
For those just joining us: last week saw the daily release of eight new videos from the great “Weird Al” Yankovic, whose three-decade music-parody career is cherished by my generation and responsible for inspiring roughly 104% of all internet musical humorists. These and a few other tracks are now available on his latest album, Mandatory Fun, which is on my want-list for immediate purchase as soon as I dig up some spending money.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Our nothing day suddenly seemed worthwhile!
After plowing through several more small towns and self-described villages on the Great River Byway, some of which had smaller populations than my son’s elementary school, we eventually passed through a downpour and over the border into Minnesota, where our hotel awaited us in Bloomington, a suburb/town/city/city-state on Minneapolis’ south side. Rather than soak ourselves even more thoroughly in a potentially vain search for local cuisine, we grabbed dinner at the Outback Steakhouse conveniently attached to our hotel. Their shared roadsign gives the Outback top billing over the hotel, suggesting that their symbiosis suffers from a peculiar imbalance. We had to dip into other monetary reserves to supplement the food budget that Crabby’s so thuggishly devastated the night before, but we appreciated the immediate faux-Aussie relief.
Once the rain abated, we made one last jaunt out to downtown Minneapolis, which I fully lapped twice (pausing only for an unfair giggle at the expense of St. Olaf Catholic Church — blame The Golden Girls) before I got the gist of the layout and parked in a garage that offered a cheap fare if we were in and out in less than thirty minutes. From our space we sprinted toward the eastern end of Nicollet Mall along 7th Avenue to photograph one of Anne’s must-see stops: the statue of Mary Tyler Moore. TV Land had it installed four years ago, one of several fictional historic landmarks they’ve commissioned across America.
Not nearly enough pundits are complaining about Marvel’s all-new White Power Iron Man.
For those just joining the fray: pictured above are the new incarnations of Thor and Captain America that Marvel Comics will be introducing later this year. A recently depowered Steve Rogers will be passing on the Captain America mantle to a black man, most likely his old partner the Falcon. Meanwhile, the Norse god Thor will be transferred into a female identity under as-yet-unrevealed but probably magical circumstances.
The media thought these developments were so vital to our nation’s integrity that I first heard the news from morning-radio DJs while we were on vacation last week in Minneapolis. If commercial radio thinks it’s big news, then clearly it’s Big News whether I agree or not.
In what may or may not be a similarly themed development, the media was alerted today that Hollywood A-lister Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has reached a deal to star in a film based on a DC Comics character to be named later this week. All hints seem to point toward DC’s Captain Marvel, a.k.a. SHAZAM!, whose skin tone doesn’t match his. Preparing their rebuttal days in advance of the official announcement, comics fans nationwide have rushed to brainstorm their list of nonwhite DC characters that the Rock should be allowed to play. How nice of them to be so vigilant in helping the major publishers keep their cross-media adaptations demographically unmodified. And all without being asked first or getting paid for the job.
It’s my understanding that certain loud, obnoxious parties are up in arms on message boards and social media and such, because How Dare They or whatever. Fortunately these overhauls bounced harmlessly off me and my not-so-fragile peace of mind. And here’s why…
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 3: Monday, July 24th (continued)
Another few miles down the Great River Byway brought us through the town of Alma, home of a business calling itself the Beef Slough Store. I had a hard time imagining what they would sell or who would buy it. Several light-pole posters along the highway advertised an upcoming production of Urinetown: the Musical. I had to wonder if Alma was one of those Small Towns with a Deep, Dark Secret that ambush unsuspecting travelers in one too many movies or Twilight Zone episodes.
After a quick pause to refuel in the town of Nelson, our next scheduled sight a mere half-an-hour away from the Rock in the House was the Pepin Historical Society and Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. Both are located not far off the shores of Lake Pepin, which we never actually saw.
You can guess which one of us was most excited about this stop. No, not my son.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 