RGTK movie - June 29

 Obligatory disclaimer: the carrion is back. Wait, what?

Let me try again. Since real life sucks, the original dead rat is gone, but there is a brand new one, either killed by some other animal, (or a human), or just drowned in the recent rains. Again, it is located on private property, where both people and their pets, (i.e., we are talking primarily dogs here), are walking by, so it is authentically curious to see how long this dead animal will last. And, moreover, the dead skunk – remember, we talked about it last time – may be gone, but not entirely: there are some pieces of it, especially the tail, remaining on the road. Fun! Looks like the public maintenance is going for a full year with it or something. Jolly good! Turkey vultures, where are you?

On a more whimsical note, let us talk about ‘Ruby Gillman, The Teenage Kraken’ film. Warning: spoilers will be done best to be avoided, but that is no guarantee!.. This movie is a partial spoof of Disney’s™ TLM, but unlike the latter, there is more subtext, and less confusion. More precisely, there are no animal sidekicks, which only distract from the main plot, and the movie does not play ‘musical chairs’ with where exactly it is located: it is located in a fictional U.S. city of Oceanside, period.

The characters… the characters are also all-American, even if they do come in all shapes and colors: the titular character, for example, is blue-skinned, (as is the rest of her family, at least on land), and no one cares about it to call them out.

Second, yes, there is a strong ‘pretty on the inside vs. pretty on the outside’ element in the film. However, since RGTK is able to keep that element subtle and in the depths, it works. On the surface, again, this is a spoof of TLM, but keep in mind that the titular character had to team up with her mother and grandmother to defeat the main villain (redacted). This is different from the TLM reboot, where Ariel does everything herself instead – in the original 1989 film the animal sidekicks helped Ariel to get to stop Eric’s wedding to ‘Vanessa’ in time, while it was Eric’s actions rather than Ariel’s that ended Ursula for good. Cthulhu ftagn!

…And as a response to Ursula going big in both Disney’s versions, practically everyone went big in RGTK – there is a feeling that the movie’s scriptwriters had fun with this one. In addition, again, we got teamwork vs. a single evil individual, something that Disney seems to have forgotten. It tried over in MCU with AoS, but that collapsed sometime after S4, really – and now MCU pretends that AoS never happens, given how SI flat-out ignores S.H.I.E.L.D. and everything else associated with it. Yes, there may be different reasons for that, but the result is the same – AoS and S.H.I.E.L.D. are gone for good from MCU.

Elsewhere, we got, yes, the PJ Masks, and in their previous incarnation they were all about teamwork – the three titular characters always worked together to defeat their opponents, who almost never worked together, and even when they did, it was never for long. Thus, the show’s audience learned about the values of teamwork… as well as any other values, and virtues of acting properly and nicely.

And then the show got ‘upgraded’ to ‘PJ Masks and Power Heroes’ that did… the same old thing albeit in a diluted version: previously it was all 3 PJ Masks helping a single new hero to become, well, more experienced and etc., and now it’s more of a one on one, with at least one of them Ivan/Ice Cub being something of a Marty-Stu instead… Where were we?

Unlike the previous two examples, RGTK manages to keep itself together and remain enjoyable. It is more substantial than the TLM-2023 film is, and is quite complex as well, for a children’s film. Quite enjoyable too, and – no one dies. This is also different from Disney films, where villain dying is almost a permanent feature. This trait has passed onto MCU, (SW – not so much), though lately they seem to be trying to buck it – as WV and the rest of MCU’s Phase 4 onwards elements showed – but at the same time, MCU has become more of a mixed bag success-wise… Anything else?

Well, until a turkey vulture arrives and eats that dead rat, nothing much. RGTK is a fun film to watch, and I recommend it, for one. Anything else is up to you.

For now, this is it. See you all soon.

SI, 'Promises' - June 28

Obligatory disclaimer: the dead rat is actually gone. Wait, what?

Let me try again: real life sucks, but for a while there was a dead rat, located not far from where the dead skunk had been lying, but because the rat – a female one, judging by its’ size – was lying on private property, it was gone in a matter of days going for weeks, rather than weeks going for months, as the skunk had been. Pause.

Again, real life sucks, but when I tried to do something different and continue to watch Marvel’s™ ‘Secret Invasion’ series – the second episode, ‘Promises’. Again, so far SI feels like a prequel to something – there’s action going on, true, but mostly there’s exposition and talking; ‘Promises’ was driven less by action and more by dialogue, which is ironic, given how the writers are going on strike in Hollywood, and lately, (June 2023), quite a few actors, (even A-List actors) are threatening to do the same. This may be the reason as to why SI is being downplayed in the online news, especially since SI was using CGI artwork in its’ episodes – because otherwise my only idea is that USA, RF, UK, and several other countries will team up to take the Skrulls down. Put otherwise, this is a ‘Ms. Marvel’ situation – when an MCU (Disney+) TV series made such a tone-deaf semi-political SNAFU that everyone is doing his or her best to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Fun!

…On the other hand, what else is there to discuss? The evolution of the vulture birds? Thanks, but Mr. Keith L. has done it already, having written a very interesting and comprehensive book about them, (published and released back in 2022). In it, he discusses those overlooked and often neglected birds of prey, clarifying their relationships to each other, (which are more complex than how they look), as well as their evolution, ecologies, interactions with humans, and so on. Given that vultures are even less popular animals than the hyenas are, Mr. Keith L.’s achievement is quite something! Positively better and more interesting than SI is.

SI, on the other hand, is flat-out lackluster. Pardon me, but it is. My home city of Toronto has only turkey vultures out of all the scavenger birds, and only in summer, but even that is enough to see that SI may be joining ‘Ms. Marvel’ in MCU’s hall of fame as one of its’ aspects that is not so much as good or bad, but just lackluster – and we’re only two episodes in. Harsh, and yet I find myself almost wanting for some sort of a vulture to swoop in and to carry-off the streamable series into the land of the dead – but that is a different story…

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #102 - July 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but happy Canada day everyone, all the same. May those who are better off in life than I am; enjoy it all the same, wherever they may be! What next?

Let us get back to the vultures, but the Old World vultures this time. Since there is quite a few of them, let us use the already-mentioned cinereous vulture as a basic prototype.

Pause. What is cinereous, one may wonder? Apparently, it is a pale ashy color, more grey than black. There is a reason as to why the cinereous vulture is also known as the Eurasian black vulture – it is more black in color than pale grey, so maybe we should use its’ other-other name, the monk vulture, instead.

Why are we using the cinereous vulture as our Old World vulture basic bird? Because of ‘Planet Earth’, which we have also discussed before. In its’ ‘Temperate Woodlands’ episode, sir David had showed footage of a mother and cub Amur leopards frightening those birds away from a kill during a Siberian winter. Both leopards and vultures are usually associated with tropics, not a Siberian winter, so ‘Planet Earth’ showed that both leopards and vultures are made of harder stock than how we assume them to be. That said, the cinereous vulture’s closest relative is the lappet-faced vulture of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and neither of those places is known for winter snows, so there is that. What next?

Climatic outliers aside, the Old World Vultures do come across as slightly, bigger, tougher, and more varied birds than the New World counterparts are. They include such atypical creatures as the lammergeyer, which prefers to eat bone, the palm nut vulture, which eats palm nuts, and the Egyptian vulture, which uses rocks to smash open ostrich eggs and eat their contents. By contrast, the New World vultures don’t have such deviants, they all are scavengers and carnivores… as are the bulk of the Old World vultures as well; both the cinereous vulture and the lappet-faced vulture are known not just to scavenge, but to kill live prey as well, sometimes fairly big one, such as the wild lambs. Pause.

Let us get back to the taxonomy – whereas the New World vultures’ closest relatives are not fully determined yet, (but they may be storks), the Old World vultures are related to the hawks and eagles that we have discussed earlier… another pause.

Let us get back to the eagles – to the white-tailed eagle, for example. As we have talked about them, whereas falcons invested in speed, and hawks – in endurance and maneuverability, the eagles invested in strength, which cost them speed: their default method of movement is passively gliding via warm currents of air, conserving their strength for when they need to attack. The vultures utilize the same strategy, save that they do not usually attack live prey, but scavenge from kills of other carnivores, which are usually mammals.

Again, this is a mixed bag – for example, there is footage of vulture flocks actually scaring cheetahs away from their kills rather than patiently waiting for them to eat. Everyone dominates the poor cheetahs, it looks like! ….Normally, however, carnivorous mammals such as big cats, wild dogs, and – more rarely – bears will eat their fill, and only then will the various birds, including the vultures of both types, join in. The birds may be a more numerous and varied group of vertebrates at this point in Earth’s history, but the mammals appear to be the more dominant one for now. Pound for pound, mammals are more powerful and massive than the birds are, and so birds have evolved to take advantage of the more successful mammals, which includes the ancestors of the vultures, who had split from their eagle and hawk cousins sometime in the past to become almost exclusive scavengers; some of them – namely, the now extinct teratorns – were some of the biggest birds that’d ever flown… but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #99 - June 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but we will continue to talk about it anyways. Today’s topic are the falcons, including the great peregrine, and its’ cousin, the prairie falcon, but right now we will approach the falcons from the other end of the spectrum – the crested caracara.

What is a caracara? It is a genus of birds in the falcon family and order; right now, there are two species of these birds – the northern and southern caracaras; both are crested, which is why the term ‘crested caracara’ is somewhat outdated and is not used too much anymore, especially by the scientists. Both of the bird species have crests; the southern caracara lives only in South America, while its’ northern counterpart is found from the northern South America to Central America, to parts of southern U.S. There was a third species of those birds, the so-called Guadalupe caracara, but it died out around 1900, so let us not talk about it for now.

Behavioristically… the caracaras are like the anti-falcons: they fly only when they have a clear designated goal before them, and otherwise, they prefer to spend their time on food. They are carnivores, of course, but whereas the falcons usually prefer to feed on other birds, (the hawks have a more mixed diet), the caracara has a much wider diet, and the northern species even eats fruits on occasion; the southern caracara – not so much. More usually, though, the northern caracara is a scavenger rather than a hunter, (and much ado had been made about the peregrine not eating carrion, as a rule), which makes it rather vulture-like in behavior.

This brings us back to the king vulture. Why? Because a certain William Bartram, an American naturalist, (1739-1832) has written and depicted about a bird of prey that – on the illustration – resembles a king vulture, save for a differently colored tail, but in text is more like the northern caracara instead, and here lies the conundrum. If we accept the possibility that the bird is a king vulture, then we have to accept that Mr. Bartram hadn’t talked about the northern caracara at all, and that doesn’t add up, because as far as scavengers go, the king vulture is a tropical bird, one that doesn’t come up to the U.S. at all, (unlike the American black and the turkey vultures, let alone the California condor), whereas the northern caracara does. And-?

And nothing; the paragraph above was aimed to show how convoluted and tangled the avian I.D. can be, even in the modern times, what with the modern technology and all, and back then, when everything depended primarily on the human eye – even moreso. In addition, that before we return to the fact that the caracaras are some of the least falcon-like falcons that have existed, (since the late Pleistocene epoch). Anything else?

Yes. Aside from caracara the genus, there is also caracara the family, which contains five genera of birds of prey that belong to the falcon group, and all of which are called caracaras; the term ‘crested caracara’ applies to only 2 living and several extinct species of the caracara genus, but as far as species go, many of South American birds of prey that aren’t eagles or vultures are called caracaras – about 10 species in total, and while they look somewhat similar to each other, they have plenty of differences too. That said, the separation of the black caracara and the red-throated one into two separate genera happened fairly recently, so there is that.

This brings us briefly back to the vultures. Do you remember when we have discussed the American black vulture, and briefly mentioned the cinereous vulture and the red-headed one, because they were also both called black vultures in the past? Well, the red-headed vulture was also called the king vulture in the past, but now this term is applied only to the American species instead, because of reasons…

Ah well, for now this is it. See you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #98 - June 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, however, let us talk about something else again. No, not about ‘Force of Nature’, a new Mel Gibson movie – that we will talk about separately; let us talk about… what?

I admit that I wanted to talk about the king vulture for today – we have discussed the New World vultures in general and the American black vulture in particular in the past, when something else came up: the Thylacosmilus.

In case you forgot, the Thylacosmilus was a prehistoric sabre-toothed mammal, and it was a marsupial, meaning that it was more closely related to the modern koalas and kangaroos than to the big cats, dogs, bears and so on. I also must admit that my perception of the Thylacosmilus is influenced by Mauricio Anton’s ‘Sabretooth’ book, but what else is there? Donald R. Prothero’s ‘Princeton Guide’? Yes, no, I will pass.

Back to the Thylacosmilus for real. People like Mauricio Anton and his sources had depicted the marsupial sabretooth, (aka Thylacosmilus and its’ closest extinct kin), as, well, a marsupial sabretooth, a marsupial counterpart to the placental sabre-toothed carnivores, (and there were quite a lot); right now, it is the word ‘carnivores’ that is key. The recent studies have implied that the Thylacosmilus had a different lifestyle from other sabre-toothed mammals, such as Smilodon, and used its’ sabre-shaped teeth in a different way; already there are theories that it might have been an insectivore instead – but how possible is that?

Let us look at the modern mammals. Recently, we have talked about bears in general, including the sloth bear. While the giant panda is an obligate herbivore, and the polar bear is an obligate carnivore, the sloth bear may be the most specialized bear of them all, as it feeds almost completely on ants, termites, and the like. As a result, on one hand, it got powerful front legs and mighty claws, and on the other, it got a specialized muzzle and reduced teeth, but it can bite, and its’ canine teeth are especially well developed. Pause.

Now, let us look at the Thylacosmilus. Its’ paws and claws were more bear- than cat-like, with claws that were only semi-retractable and not as sharp as those of true cats, and its’ forepaws were powerful, but then again, this is a trait shared by all the sabre-toothed carnivores, including, the mammal-like reptiles, maybe. Its’ muzzle, however, is blunt, not long as that of the sloth bear. So-?

So nothing, let us look at the aardwolf as well. Despite its’ name, it is no relative of the aardvark, but of the hyenas, and in fact it looks like a small striped hyena on the outside. On the inside, however, it is no scavenger or grave robber, but rather feeds on social insects, termites and ants. Not unlike the sloth bear, it too has reduced teeth, but notable canine teeth for self-defence… and nothing else that would imply that it was an insectivore, rather than a carnivore, as the rest of the hyena family is. Thylacosmilus could have been like this as well. Anything else?

Sadly, no, but the carnivorous marsupials are a confusing group, as paleontologists are still unable to properly agree as to what and how they looked like, let alone their paleoecology. What else?

Let us get back to the king vulture, maybe? Well, these birds have appeared on the planet during the mid-Pliocene, when the last marsupial sabretooths were still living there, so the two might have met back then. However, the fossil remains of the king vulture from that period are scarce, so it is hard to say. What is known, however, that this bird is most closely related to the Andean condor out of the entire New World vulture family, and after the two species of condor, it is the biggest of the New World vultures; certainly the most colorful. An imposing bird, the adult king vulture has predominantly white plumage, which has a slight rose-yellow tinge to it. In stark contrast, the wing coverts, flight feathers and tail are dark grey to black, as is the prominent thick neck ruff. The head and neck are devoid of feathers, the skin shades of red and purple on the head, vivid orange on the neck and yellow on the throat. On the head, the skin is wrinkled and folded, and there is a highly noticeable irregular golden crest attached on the cere above its orange and black bill; this caruncle does not fully form until the bird's fourth year. A true king of the vultures, in fact. Anything else?

…For the moment, the king vulture is classified as ‘Least Concern’, as opposed to the Andean condor, which is ‘Near Threatened’ and the California condor, which is ‘Critically Endangered’; hopefully, this trend will continue, and the king vulture will remain flourishing for ages to come, and not vanish from the face of the planet as the various sabre-toothed mammalian carnivores did.

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

Quarantine entry #64 - May 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Well, it does not suck always, but ‘suckage’ is a relative term, so there is that. I mean, yes, several of the websites I frequent began to undergo technical works almost at the same time, but that’s acceptable, relative and understandable – Hell, if it wasn’t for the lockdown I wouldn’t even care about them so much, but there’s the lockdown, the self-isolation, the Donald vs. Trudeau manhood competition, and here we are, at the end of a line. We tried to work it out, time after time… where were we?

Well, yesterday was the World Turtle day or whatever, so I wanted to talk about turtles – and so I have. Maybe not too much, but there’s only so much you can spin around turtles when you feel forced, so today let us revisit someone else – the vulture.

The American black vulture, aka the Urubú bird, aka Coragyps atratus, the second vulture of the USA…or maybe the third, if the California condor is involved. This modern dinosaur is somewhat smaller than its’ cousin the turkey vulture, with a more delicate bill, (proportionally speaking), and more delicate constitution: the American black vulture is a tropical bird, whereas the turkey vulture was encountered, (including yours truly), in the Canadian south during the summer, where the climate certainly isn’t tropical.

Next, we get to the taxonomic aspect of this avian: we are calling Coragyps atratus the American black vulture because there are at least two other birds that are called black vultures…at least to a point. First, there’s the Eurasian black vulture, better known as the cinereous vulture, Aegypius monachus, (yes, it is called the monk vulture as well sometimes), whose claim to fame is a cameo appearance in Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ 2001 TV series, where a flock of those birds was scared away by an Amur leopard and her cub; given that the stage was set in Siberia, late winter/early spring, which added to its’ surrealness – you’re used to leopards scaring away vultures from kills in the African or Asian tropics, not amongst the Siberian snows… The point is that vultures as a group are tougher than they look, and should not be underestimated either.

However, the other… the other-other black vulture is the Indian black vulture, better known as the red-headed vulture, Sarcogyps calvus, and it isn’t doing so well, being critical endangered in the wild and all. It is found only on the Indian subcontinent, with small separated populations in South-east Asia from India to Singapore and it is not doing so well. Pity, because with its atypical ‘ear lobes’ on the sides of its’ neck, the red-headed vulture might be the more formidable vulture out of the three; it might’ve been the vulture mentioned in the Hindu epic ‘Ramayana’ – as the king of Rakshasas, Ravana, was carrying Sita to his island kingdom, the vulture king tried to stop him – and Ravana carved him like a Christmas turkey, as the unlucky avian was that outmatched. Dying, the vulture fell to the ground, where he was found by Rama and Laxman and told them everything, which helped them find Sita and rescue her that much faster.

Back across the oceans, the American black vulture has also left a mark in culture – in particular, in one South American native adaptation (or original take) of the ‘Noah and the Great Flood’ myth, this bird used to be a white dove instead – but when it was released to see if the waters have receded, it didn’t go back but began to feed on carrion… and eventually transformed itself into the black vulture, (of the Americas). Sometimes, myths and legends call take as strange a path as taxonomy does.

Speaking of taxonomy? The red-headed vulture is also called the Asian king vulture sometimes, but the real king vulture is also found in the New World, as it is a cousin of the American black vulture instead. Although it isn’t as impressive as its’ condor cousins, the American king vulture, (Sarcoramphus papa) is a very extravagant bird of its own, and may be the most colorful of all the vultures… but we’ve digressed.

For now, this is it instead. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #34 - April 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life still sucks, but at least I have seen a chipmunk. A wild one, so yay! I can now die happy. Not, because the world is still out of balance, the dateline for ending the lockdown/quarantine/etc. in May seems to be going nowhere, and now, Ford’s – that the Ontario premier we’re talk about – mother in law is sick. I do not like him, but, still, I will not deny it either – this got to smart! What next?

Well, after the urial fiasco, I wanted to talk about something else, and decided upon the vulture. No, I am not talking about the Marvel villain, though MCU’s take on him in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ was quite interesting, and if anyone remembers the ‘Morbius’ trailer, clearly, he is not done with anything or anyone yet. That said, with the COVID-19 lockdown still in action, it will be quite a while since we will see anything of ‘Morbius’ the movie, so let us not and say that we did.

As for the real-life birds… what about them? The term ‘vulture’ applies to scavenging birds of two, or even three, families, as the ‘New World’ vultures, (such as the condors and the king vulture), aren’t really related to the ‘Old World’ vultures, (such as the lammergeyer and the cinereous vulture). The two vulture groups don’t even look very similar to each other – just compare a New World vulture, (say, the black vulture), to an Old World vulture, (for example, the white-backed). The two birds do not really look anything alike; their similarities are more in behavior, but-!

But, firstly, the two groups of aerial scavengers differ in that the New World vultures have a very developed sense of smell, (a rarity amongst the modern birds), while the Old World vultures hunt… well, scavenge, through the sense of sight alone. (Just look at the YouTube video on the Inside Edition channel, where a turkey vulture is circling above NYC – that’s a bird that is a) on a mission and b), guided both by sight and smell. I have seen turkey vultures live in Canada, (albeit southern Canada, but still), and, yes, they are a gruesome sight, much less comely than a chipmunk is, but we digress.

The thing is, that secondly, Old World vultures don’t look identical either; some of them, like the abovementioned lammergeyer (aka the bearded vulture), or the so-called Egyptian vulture, look very different from the rest of them, which is why the Old World vultures are sometimes classified in two families, or at least – two subfamilies, one with the lammergeyer, the Egyptian vulture, and the palm-nut vulture, and the second with the rest of the Old World vulture birds. Both subfamilies belong to the Accipitridae family, which makes them a part of the Accipitriformes order, which contains not just the vultures, but also the various hawks, kites, buzzards and eagles. (It is a tangled mess). Pause.

The New World vultures, on the other hand, belong to the Cathartidae family, which is a part of an entirely different avian order. There is no clear idea as to which birds are more closely related to the New World vultures – the other birds of prey, or the storks, of which we have talked about in the past. (Animal taxonomy is a dense mess). Some scientists do think that the New World vultures are more related to the other birds of prey, but that still isn’t settled; what is certain, is that many vultures are endangered and should be protected, because if they die-out, it’ll be bad. Anything else?

Sadly, nothing much; nothing is good on YouTube anyhow, and the TV is out of my reach for the moment. For better or for worse, life keeps on happening, and when it stops, there is always the vulture to send you on your way.

…Well, this was morbid. Also, this is it for now. See you all soon!

RM - Killer Torpedo

Once again, JW has returned to Central (& South) America. This time, though, he wasn't chasing a catfish or a piranha, this time he was chasing something else.

Let's be honest here. "Killer Torpedo" was a typical RM episode: it focused on JW and his fishing - this made it different from, say, "Atomic Assassin", where JW talked more about Chernobyl and its effect on the wild life than about fish. No conflict of interest here, it is fish ahoy all the way.

But there are similarities to "Atomic Assassin" as well - namely the decrease of the folk/folklore element in the ep. In previous seasons, JW often approached local holy men or shamans or similar people for spiritual guidance in order to catch this fish, and he usually talked about the local fish- or water-related legends as well. Here, in "Killer Torpedo", this didn't happen - almost.

Yes, JW mentioned that the locals talked about some sort of a local 'mermaid' that may drag anglers to their doom, but it was very brief, and he practically didn't develop this angle at all. Moreover, instead of a shaman, he talked to a local professional angler (White Boy) and received advice that was much more practical than spiritual. This indicates a clear break from the previous seasons and shows that the S5 of RM will definitely be different from the previous ones. Not better or worse, but different.

The other difference in "Killer Torpedo" is the use of flashbacks...or not. It is the "Columbian Slasher" episode that had an overwhelming amount of flashbacks; this one - not so much. What it had an overwhelming amount of were...the black vultures, birds similar to the turkey vulture, but more drab in color. WTF? Basically every 10-15 minutes the episode produced one or more black vultures doing something that was completely irrelevant to the show. Were they supposed to serve as ethnic color for the episode? I honestly don't know.

But black vultures aside, "Killer Torpedo" was still an impressive episode, centered on JW's struggle with the fish - the Atlantic tarpon in this case. It was a straightforward struggle of man vs. giant fish and JW delivered by catching his fish. Too simple? Perhaps, but RM is a fishing show and catching fish is what it is about. By catching his fish (the tarpon in this case) JW has fulfilled the premise of this episode, as he usually done. My respect goes out to him as usual too.

So: a straightforward fish-catching episode that nevertheless indicates a break with the tradition established in the previous seasons. I give it four out of five stars.