Quarantine entry #77 - May 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Why? Because it changes, and usually it bad ways. Just look at how the Donald had handled his latest interview questions done by an Afro-American female journalist. Yowch! Now his life will turn to worse yet again – why does he still want to remain the POTUS, again? If he had left the office, especially before the COVID-19 start, he would have been forgotten by now, and the others would have let him go!..

…Or not, as Kendall Jenner’s case shows. Way back in 2017 she participated in an especially tone-deaf, (politically), Pepsi ad that included confronting a riot and resolving it with a Pepsi. Both she and the Pepsi Company ate crow over it and everyone forgot about it…or not, as now, given the real-life events, at least some people dragged the ad in question back into spotlight. Only… this particular Jenner had learned something from this mess of hers, and since then did her (relative) best to do damage control regarding this sort of thing – probably in case of an emergency. Well, there is an emergency now, but since KJ had did some damage control – more or less – people are not giving her as much flak about the ad-2017 as they could have done otherwise. Why couldn’t the Donald do something similar?.. Oh, wait, he is the Donald, never mind.

On the other hand, we have ‘Batwoman’ the DC TV series that recently has officially proclaimed that it will not recast the titular character, (who was played by Ruby Rose, remember?). Frankly, this makes ‘Batwoman’ a tie with ‘Swamp Thing’ and ‘Powerless’, and if the latter was something of an outlier in the world of DC TV series, then the former was certainly a good and an interesting show to watch. Ah well, everyone fails, especially if they do not have Disney to support them, as AoS depicts.

Yes, by now, not just AoS is finally ending, but the rest of the ‘old guard’ has ended as well. Yes, initially they were supposed to be replaced by ‘The Winter Soldier and the Falcon’, ‘WandaVision’ and the show about Loki, but then COVID-19 happened and everything just died instead. Pause.

Now, today I wanted to talk about stars, because yesterday we had a partial lunar eclipse, aka the strawberry moon, but regrettably, our part of the world – a suburb in the New York state – didn’t have too much in terms of the moon: the sky was partially cloudy last evening and night, yes, but nothing more, and the moon…before we went to sleep, admittedly, but still… didn’t look any different from how it usually looks… where were we?

Stars are huge giant balls of gas, as Pumba from ‘The Lion King’ used to say. Or was he Pumbaa? Frankly, I do not care, the rebooted ‘Mulan’ was supposed to come out in April-2020, but now there’s no sign or indication of it, or that it would ever come back to the big screen. Pity, the people are starved for shows… and then along came George Floyd and the idiot, who had killed him, and now people are out in the streets, and a similar situation is developing in Canada. What else?

…Sadly, it is very unlikely that the US-Canada border will be opened any time soon, simply because the Donald is himself, whereas in the North we got Trudeau, Scheer and Singh getting along only not. After the Donald’s latest messes, no one there wants to be associated with him, and, moreover? Canada still has not gotten its’ act together either, though, at least, in its’ case there’s no case of civil unrest actually beating COVID-19 as top news.

…Ok, this was a depressing thought, so I am ending my blog entry for today on this note. See you all soon instead!

C&D cancelled - Oct 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. This week – on Monday – us Canadians put its’ own spin on this thesis, by creating a minority government. It became obvious almost immediately, that Singh, and Scheer, and Trudeau, do not get along and probably will not, and so it is anyone’s guess where this arrangement, the minority government, will get. Probably nowhere fast, that is where.

…Ivan Andreevich Krylov, the man who had adapted the fables of Aesop and Lafontaine for the Russians during their imperial period, had one among their number titled ‘The Swan, the Pike, and the Crayfish’, in which the titular characters were hired to deliver a some sort of a load, (it is never defined just what it is), somewhere. The load is not heavy, but the swan went for the sky, the crayfish began to move backwards, (in Russia, it is a common folk myth that the crayfish walk only backwards, because reasons), and the pike went into the water. Whose fault it was, the fable rhetorically proclaimed, is not for us to judge, but the load never went anywhere. The Russians consider this fable to be one of Krylov’s best ever. For Canadians, the Trudeau Swan, the Singh Crayfish and the Scheer Pike can be much harder to endure, especially since they are not the only characters on Canada’s political Olympus, and our country’s political landscape has acquired other features by now. In Western Canada – there is a lot of resentment brewing towards Trudeau and his government because of oil, and ecology, and native rights, and what else have you. Miss Greta Thunberg left her mark there too, but now her ‘phenomenon’ is dying down: if Al Gore, in the years past, as America’s VP, could change the tide, then neither can Ms. Thunberg, no matter how much she was tried to be puffed up in the past weeks and months.

…And in the East we got the good old Quebecois separatism, which, apparently, also gotten re-started these days. Fun! I remember that, however, vaguely, back in the 90s, when my family just came to Canada, it was all the talk, especially among the Anglo-Canadians, but nothing came out of it back then; what will come out of it now is for anyone to guess.

But enough of the depressing reality, let us talk about… television. Pause. No, let us not talk about the new ‘Watchmen’ TV series, which is already a shit-storm of alt-left, alt-right, fanboys, SJWs, and what else have you, and so far the series have only aired its’ very first episode. What will happen as more of its’ episodes is aired? More hubbub and controversy, and that is all that I care about. Why? Because I do not like ‘Watchmen’, I did not like the original comic series, I was not a fan of the film, and I am staying away from the TV series too. I had had this sort of bad excitement back with the SW7 & 8 films, and do not need its’ TV analogue too.

This brings us to Marvel, and – more bad news: C&D are cancelled. Why? Good question, and so far this is no concrete answer. The easy way would be to blame the latest Marvel shake-up, as Kevin Feigle begins to manage the Marvel TV, as well as the Marvel movies. But the more subtle signs that something wasn’t right there could be seen in S2, which was more jumbled and less tight than S1 had been, it felt almost like two seasons smashed together, just like how the ‘Fallen Kingdom’ movie felt like two movies smashed together, and SW8 – as a film that had fragments and elements of another film, especially in the end. Just like AC of MCU, or ‘Swamp Thing’ of DCEU, C&D may be just another TV series that got canned…just because. Maybe the numbers weren’t high enough… since the end of S1, as the S2/the series proper ended on Ty & Dy leaving New Orleans for pastures new. There are rumors of them appearing on ‘Runaways’ S3, but now it’s anyone’s guess if this’ll come to pass.

…Yes, in the comics C&D did come to NYC, but MCU is different from Marvel comics, and Ty & Dy’s departure from New Orleans felt like an end of something – in this case, it was of the C&D show proper. Ouch.

…Speaking of comics? The 2017 ‘Runaways’ comic reboot has amounted already to 24+ issues, while C&D – to 50% of that number, at best. Clearly, something was going on with C&D in the entire Marvel multiverse, not just to MCU, and now it has manifested itself: C&D is cancelled for good for now. That is real life for you. It sucks.

…You can argue that not all of real life is bad: the NatGeo site nowadays permits about 4 or 5 free articles a month, (the benefactors), plus there are some YouTube videos from that franchise that are appearing on YouTube on a more regular basis than once every week or so, (the generosity), so really, turn that smile upside down! Or not, because in Canada the political landscape has become an unpredictable and volatile cul-de-sac, (by Canadian standards, but still), and elsewhere it is worse. In the U.S., we got the brouhaha with the impeachment, now it seems to be going forwards, but it will make much fewer people happy than initially; and across the pond we got the Brexit, which is still going forwards…somehow, and increasingly more and more people are getting fed-up with it, especially in Great Britain proper. In under a week now there will be a lot of people unhappy with Boris Johnson and the rest of his crew, one way or another. Of course, the latter will have their own axes to grind and to bear once everything explodes, and that will just make everything worse, again, but hey! That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at C&D – it did not suck, so it got cancelled, and we just have to grin and bear it. End of the story.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

Pennyworth: Sep 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. With that out of the way, now, after Pennywise the clown we turn to Pennyworth the (future) butler, from one of the latest DC/CW shows, ‘Pennyworth’. ‘Based on characters from the DC comics’, this show features our titular character before he became a butler, but after he quit SAS and is trying to be his own man, whatever – and whoever – that is. He has met Thomas Wayne (and maybe Martha Kane, the future Mrs. Wayne), and became a piece in the struggle between the Ravens and the No-Names. Waynes are on the latter team, which supposedly makes the No-Names the white hats in this struggle… though in one of the early scenes of the pilot episode we learn that the Ravens want to destroy the government and built a fascist utopia, while the No-Names are going for a socialist utopia instead, so who knows? As ‘Native Son’ – a real-life American novel – shows, the American society was heavily involved with communism, and right now – in 2019 – it is still involved with socialism, (and maybe communism will come back? It is still better than the banana republic that the RF currently is). It would be interesting to learn that the Wayne parents were actually socialist/communist at heart… Bruce Wayne is notable apolitical. Maybe he/Batman is a communist as well? That would certainly be an interesting turn of events in the DC worlds…

Back to ‘Pennyworth’ the TV series. The premise above sounds interesting, but on TV, the Ravens at least are something else: as soon as I saw their leader make an appearance, I knew exactly who he was: professor Ratigan from Disney’s ‘The Great Mouse Detective’ animated movie. Seriously, you should look it up, it is one of the more obscure Disney films, but it is still good to see – and it is very British.

Pause. We try to move away from the secondary details, such as the black-and-red cloaks that even rank-and-file of the Ravens are wearing to the more important facts.

Firstly, ‘Pennyworth’ is visually overwhelming, as its’ set designers tried to cram as much of U.K. visual imagery into it, all done with rich, even lavish, details. That, coupled with all kinds of British accents, (Good God, Professor Henry Higgins), makes ‘Pennyworth’… simply overwhelming and tiring. ‘Swamp Thing’ may also be a CW/DC TV series, but it is more moderate…and enjoyable to watch.

Secondly, the premise. On one hand, it brings to mind MCU, and more precisely… not exactly, AoS, but AC, which was set in the beginning of the Cold War, 1950s and 60s, and was featuring not just the titular character, who was also British, remember, but also Jarvis, the human, who was British and a butler of Howard Stark… who would eventually marry a woman named Martha, and whose younger version is rather reminiscent of this younger version of Thomas Wayne as well. Bring on the copyright issues? We will just have to wait and see.

Thirdly, MCU’s AC aside, ‘Pennyworth’ is also reminiscent of ‘The Three Musketeers’, especially the Soviet version, which closely followed the original novel…unlike the later Western adaptations, some of which went steampunk and ended with the British launching an air fleet of zeppelins in order to invade France. Yes, the original novel also involved the French-British conflict over La Rochelle of that time, (the reign of Louis XIII, if anyone cares), but still, zeppelins. There was a reason as to why that movie, though it ended on a cliffhanger, never got a sequel.

Back to ‘Pennyworth’. The titular character and his two friends are three of the musketeers, with Thomas Wayne becoming a fourth. Alfred’s new girlfriend, Esme, is Constance, a chambermaid and go-to-girl of the queen and d’Artagnon’s love interest. She has been already kidnapped by the show’s version of the milady de Winter… period. Just like Constance – spoiler alert – Esme is going to die, though later on in the show; why? Because otherwise Alfred is going to marry her, and screw the Waynes. On the other hand – more spoiler alert – Al and Martha are going to develop some sort of a relationship, at least for a while, so maybe Al is actually Bruce’s real father instead? Got to admit, didn’t see that coming, especially in the canon, (fanon is other thing entirely, fair enough), but regardless, Esme is a dead girl walking because reasons; another one of them is that she’s a civilian and Al and his mates are about to join DC’s rip-off of S.H.I.E.L.D., whatever that is going to be, but anything but civilian, period.

And then there are the ravens. No, not the fascist utopists who are the main villains of ‘Pennyworth’ so far, but the actual birds. Now, in North America, there are several species of ravens/crows, (aka corvids), but the most common is the American crow, (Corvus brachyrhynchos). From beak to tail it measures about 46-50 cm and weighs up to 500 g – a very formidable bird, I’ve seen it kick the metaphorical shite out of the red-tailed hawks in my neighbourhood, for example; but-

-But in Europe, the raven is the so-called common raven, (Corvus corax), and that includes the U.K. – the tower of London has a lot of semi-domesticated ravens, because supposedly if they are gone, London will fall. (I do not know if Martin’s Westeros has anything similar to that concept). If the American crow looks impressive, the common raven doubly so: it is even bigger than the American crow is – about 60-65 cm long, and it weighs up to 1.2 kg, making it the biggest and heaviest bird in the Passeriformes order… aka perching birds or songbirds. Think of that next time you want to get yourself a pet canary! …This brings us back to ‘Pennyworth’, as we saw several times flocks of ravens flying around the show’s London. In Toronto, for comparison, the sight of several American crows flying around can be very impressive, as they are big birds that can catch one’s attention especially if they start to croak, and common ravens are even more so, but… unlike their smaller cousins – the American crow, the hooded crow of Europe, the carrion crow of Eurasia, they are solitary birds that don’t like humans very much, which is why the raven is also called the northern raven, and it prefers to live in remote places – Scandinavia, Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada, for example. They just do not form flocks and do not live in London, England, in a natural state. A flock of wild common ravens in London would certainly be a newsworthy event, Cold War or not. Atypical for a comic-book TV series, ‘Pennyworth’ tried to get involved with the natural kingdom, and as usual for such franchises, it is an especially bad idea. Even ‘Swamp Thing’ does not try to go there, and it is actually partially set in a swamp!

…The reason, of course, is that in a certain movie-verse iteration of ‘Sherlock Holmes’, Moriarty had a pet crow or raven, (yes, a single pet bird). As the leader of the Ravens (we are back to talking about the human secret society) has shown, the cast and crew of ‘Pennyworth’ has also tried to go for that look for him, but instead they ended up with Ratigan. Yes, Ratigan was also based on Conan Doyle’s canon Moriarty, sort of, but that probably isn’t the direction that ‘Pennyworth’ wants to go, given that the relations between DC and Marvel (Disney) are not so good, eh?

Will I be watching ‘Pennyworth’ in the future? Probably not – if I want to see a fictional take on the Cold War, there is AC, which is not overwhelming, but is actually just right, (especially S1 – S2 is more ambiguous but still fun to observe) and it does not go for ridiculous either. Yes, ‘Pennyworth’ is DC, but so’s ‘Swamp Thing’, for comparison, and it is nowhere being as over the top as ‘Pennyworth’ is – but that is my opinion, and it is subjective: if anyone disagrees, I will be happy to hear from them.

…This is it for now; see you all soon!