Why Can't We Just Let Clark Be Clark

So the House just passed its Obamacare repeal. I don't think the thing has a chance in hell of passing in the Senate but I'll bite. I wish there was one man who could make the case for the powerful and capable to act on behalf of those that can't help themselves, who represented the compassion of the New Deal. This is a job for.


Look whenever I start talking old-timey comics it makes me want to talk about how disappointed I am that people keep trying to fundamentally change the nature of Superman. And I know in the wake Batman V Superman it's getting old but still can't ya'll just let Clark Kent be Clark Kent?

The entire point of that character, his entire reason for being is to represent the idea that if you can do good you should do good.



That's it.

Superman is the most powerful being on earth. If he wanted to he could walk into the White House and declare himself God Emporor of mankind, but he doesn't because the thing he wants most in all of the world isn't money or power, or revenge or glory but to help people.


That is Superman. To him all the anger, and fear, and loneliness and greed, and pride and laziness, that keeps us from being the best of ourselves are small things to be overcome because they are small things we CAN overcome.

There will ALWAYS be a job for Superman.

Archie Beat Marvel And Don't You Forget It (Well I've Been Using My Insomnia to Update My Comic Wishlist I Might As Well Use It.)

So for the past couple of years or so Archie comics has been going through a bit of a revival. And the go to response has been "holy hell Archie is all of a sudden interesting, when did that happen?" For most of my life hell all of it really Archie has been the go-to reference for the safe boring comics that wouldn't piss off your parents.  And I think that's kind of unfair.

First of all, Archie's been chugging away for so long that his resistance to the whims of time has almost become subversive in its own right. Everytime comics decide they need to go dark, with a few exceptions Archie tends to go , "no no that just ain't us man."  Though there are a lot of cringe-worthy attempts.

Second dear god. I loved Sabrina the Teenaged Witch as a kid... and Josie and the Pussy Cats is a fun little rock and roll movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. (If anybody was disappointed about the Jem movie  Josie and the Pussy Cats along with Spice World make a fun consolation.)

Seriously this entire post was basically originally going to be me going on about how fun Sabrina can be. But hey everybody has shows they liked as a kid and while a Sabrina nostalgia trip would be fun I don't know how insightful, hey remember that show is.

My real point is that Archie set the template for nearly every damn piece of fictional media created to hijack the brains of teenagers since.

Okay for those who need a refresher course on this. The post-war WII economy saw massive changes in society, namely creating a middle-class scenario where a single member of the household could financially afford to provide a comfortable stable lifestyle for their immediate family.

Oh, don't look at me like that. I hate the 1950s and their emphasis on conformity to pre-assigned racial, sexual and gender roles more than anybody but I'm also willing to admit being ABLE to economically support a family has a certain appeal even if it's not a path I ultimately choose.

I am willing to admit I am more conservative than I let on.

Anyway, I'm not going to even pretend homemaking isn't a stressful daunting task, but the kids. Well, this shift created a radical difference in what childhood looked like, particularly for the middle class in the United States often granting those kids with a massive dose of leisure time and money their parents would have found unimaginable.

All of a sudden businesses realized they could make a mint by specifically marketing to these kids instead of their parents.

And dear god that trend has become god damned important. Why else is every other anime protagonist an ordinary high school student. 



To bring it back to comics THE reason Marvel became a thing in the 1960s is that they managed to change the super-hero paradigm from being solely an extension of the pulpy genre stories of the 1930s and 40s  (oooh Detective Comics) to also focusing on the anxieties and struggles of the baby boomer teenagers who were actually reading the books.

That is the lights over the head reason why people give a damn about Jean Grey, Peter Parker, Johnny Storm, Kamala Khan, Robbie Reyes and even DC's brand of the same thing.


And Archie did it first.

P.S.

Note: For me the most interesting part of the Killing Joke debates was which version of Barbara Gordan the fandom decided should be canonical. The darker gritty Oracle version older fans came up with or the newer... older.. whatever teenage version that seemed to resonate well with the audience after all the calls to make comics more inclusive to young girls. And honestly, I like both versions.

List of Publications For Freelancers

I am out of money and out of ideas, so write what you know. Here is a list of all the publications I can think of in Detroit that might accept submissions. Note: I have not verified this list.

Print

• Detroit News
• Detroit Free Press
• Oakland Press
• Metrotimes
• Mlive
• Crain's Detroit
• Michigan Chronicle
• B.L.A.C. (Lifestyle Magazine)
• Detroit Hour (Lifestyle Magazine)
• Bridge Magazine 
• South Oakland Eccentric
• C&G News

Television

• WXYZ (ABC)
• WJBK (Fox)
• CBS
• Click on Detroit (NBC)

Radio

• Michigan Radio (NPR)
• WWJ (CBS)
• WJR
• WDET (Public Radio)

Online

• Oakland Times (Ferndale/Oakland 115)
• Deadline Detroit
• Model D

And for good measure, since I'm a sci-fi nut here are some sci-fi magazines and websites that also that also accept submissions. 

Science-Fiction and Genre

• Black Static
• Asimov's Science Fiction
• Nightmare Magazine
• Fantasy and Science Fiction

And because why not...

Humor

• Cracked
• College Humor
• Mad Magazine

Now if only I had an idea to pitch.


P.S. I forgot about Curbed Detroit

Out of Gas

It occurs to me that while I've hinted about why I've been MIA I haven't just straight up told people so here goes.

Long story short I ran out of money. Doing this blog takes money and I ran out of it. I am literally tapped out for even transportation money right now so I'm done until I can figure something out. Call it a hiatus if you want.

The Locked In My Own Head Playlist

Television Review: Emerald City Season 1 (Spoilers)

I like Emerald City. It's probably the best network sword and sorcery fantasy series I've seen since Xena. But it's not perfect and the more I think about it the more of its imperfections could be tied the thing I like.

So the moment I came to love Emerald City was when Princess Ozma dispenses justice to the Cowardly Lion. In that moment something clicked. This is not a retelling of the Wizard of Oz but a reclaiming of Ozma.

Let's Back Up

On Adaptations
Okay This Television show is based on The Wizard of Oz, which is a book that was turned into a movie so legendary that people kind of forgot it even was a book first.


I've seen the Wizard of Oz. I've seen a couple of the adaptations but it was not some crucial artifact of my childhood. But I love the hell out of fantasy and the word on the street is that as far as developed fantasy worlds go Oz is primordial gold.

But the Wizard of Oz movie is a simplified version of the first book so there is a lot of weird stuff the popular culture hasn't been exposed to.

It feels like the entire point of the show is because somebody wanted to do Princess Ozma. As far as important characters in Oz she actually probably ties with Dorthy as the most getting shit done person in Oz but since she wasn't in Wizard people just kind of forgot about her.

Emerald City feels very much like it views telling her story and what's going on in her head as the most important thing. By far she and everything related to her are the most interesting stuff going on.

But the show also feels the need to be a dark gritty retelling of the original Wizard of Oz.



I really like Tin Man. People don't but Tin Man had a lot of good ideas, a lot of good ideas Emerald City ran with. It remakes the WORLD of Oz into something I at least hadn't seen before.

But  Tin Man is not good. The writing's wonky, it relies too much on nostalgia, and the acting is horrific. They had some of the best oddball character actors working and they are all simultaneously restrained and overacting.

But Tinman did try to get the ball rolling in making Oz not revolve around Dorthy.  For a long time, people have been trying to get weird stuff we forgot from the books back into adaptations of Oz.

And dear god if that's what Emerald City was trying to do I have to give a slow clap. They did it masterfully.

We have versions of

• Princess Ozma
• Jack Pumpkin
• Ku-Klip
• Mombi
• Princess Langwidere
•  And A Version of Tik Tok That I probably just spoiled

With maybe the exception of the character that everybody loves to "revise",   all of those characters are more interesting than when the show stops to try to retell The Wiz.  But this was probably pitched to a network exec as a dark gritty retelling of Oz so it kind of has to.

It doesn't help that the show is short. Like I said the one character from the Wiz that works is the Wicked Witch, who is almost entirely sold by the actress. The script does not tell you what her deal is. I take that back it kind of does but breezes right past it.

So Glinda's main beef with West is that West is broken. The Wizard did a lot of stuff because of course, he's evil (they try to hide this fact long after it makes sense to do so). and Glinda is preparing for war, while West has more or less basically just given up. And West has a slow burn redemption arc. Except everything is so low key and in the background that it's hard to recognize as a redemption arc.

Here is the thing. We're in fantasy land. We don't know what NORMAL is for a witch period let alone West. We the audience don't know how she acts when she's on her game. And by the time the show really reveals how broken she is and how much guilt she feels it's almost over.

Her redemption arc is satisfying but it takes too much brain power to realize there was a redemption arc in the first place.

The end result is the realization that in the grand scheme they could have probably cut EVERYTHING with Dorthy save 2 mildly important scenes that they could have written around.

And while that sounds bad and there is no way the execs would have let them do it. The show has no time for fluff with its 10 episodes. Dear lord we get a love triangle with Dorthy, the Scarecrow and Glinda for crying out loud.  Things grind to a halt at Glinda's castle right around the time everything else starts to cook.

And THEY BROUGHT IT BACK FOR A SEQUEL TEASE!

All that said. How many places do you get to see Princess Ozma come in all d. swaggar and put things to right.



I think I may be a monarchist.

Nah. Sometimes you get Arthur but most of the time you get Geoffry. (I have my soundtrack for the next four years)

March 6, 2017 Southfield CIty Council Meeting

I Love PBS. Please Stop Trying to Kill It.

I love PBS.  Please stop trying to kill it. PBS never hurt anybody. I don't know if I can call it essential to the country or an institution that must be protected at all costs, but it's always been there when I needed it, from my days as a tot to when I had to cram in high school, and  in college, to now when I just want some news that helps me think or when I'm just trying to chill out or listen to some music.

I'm going to try to make the case but honestly. I just really really really like PBS. I talk about how The Mouse got to me as a kid. The Mouse ain't got nothing on PBS. The Mouse waxed and waned. but PBS was always there just waiting for me.


Sooo. Let's use PBS.



So the general argument for why the government should stay out of the economy, apart from arguments about government involvement in anything is because government involvement tends to screw up supply and demand curves, market equilibrium, and price signals. It's harder to tell whether or not people want a good, how much of it, and what it should cost, both to produce and purchase. It makes for inefficient markets.


In short companies need information to determine if a business venture is potentially profitable and government involvement obscures that information.

BUT

There are some goods, services and regulations that we've all just kind of agreed are useful but at the same time are unprofitable. There is just some stuff companies should do but won't because there is no money in it.



GRUMBLE GRUMBLE GRUMBLE

So the question is do I feel PBS is important enough to demand everybody kick in for it?

Well to answer that let's broaden the question.  Are the country's cultural and educational institutions in general important to demand everybody kick in. The National Endowment for the Arts, Corporatation For Public Broadcasting, Department of Education, as well as various grants ensure that everyday Americans have access to information, culture and education and that is something I think is a common good.

We all benefit when the American populous is educated and well informed. But the benefits of that education and sponsorship of the arts and culture are not always in terms of dollars and cents.

Folks, unless we start to value media, journalism, and the arts we are heading towards a crash where the people who make the things we love can not afford to do so anymore or have to make something so broad that it can not speak with any sort of real voice. I am wary of government involvement in those things but there needs to be a place for high-minded art and television programming to exist. The market will always push for broadness and I have a lack of faith in the American people's intellectual curiosity right now.



I'm worried about propaganda but still, we need to do everything we can to make America smarter.

The Original Sin

The dream, the promise that is America, the singular thought that guides our founding documents, freedom, the idea that one is and should be able to express their will and act in their own interest without fear is a lie.

But it is a sweet and beautiful lie. A lie that I wish with all of my being were the truth. For far too long that freedom was only granted to the few the ability to craft your own destiny was denied to whomever the state deemed unworthy of that dream.

The state decided who's freedom it would respect and guarantee, whose interests it would protect and whose it would ignore.  and in the wake of all those decisions lies the country as we now have it. We can not change the past nor can we ignore it but we must reckon with the fact that it is a sin to simply ignore people only asking to defend their interests especially when those interests have been consistently ignored for the vast history of this country.

That is what slavery is to me.

The theft of the ability to act in one's own interest and express one's will without fear. That is the crime behind all the other crimes.  It goes further. Freedom is the ability to craft the future.  Slavery robbed my ancestors of the ability to craft the future for their posterity. It was and continues to be a crime not just against those who lived through it but those who came and will come after.

I don't blame the living for slavery. But I still acknowledge that it was a crime committed not just against my ancestors against me and my descendants.

I can not undo that crime. I can not remake history to my will. Moreover, I am not sure I would even want to. My mind has been twisted to this modern world of wires and wheels.

I am not African.

I do not know that land neither as it existed nor as it exists presently. I would like to pretend I would understand those who were sold and taken from their homes but I don't and can't. How they saw the new world is lost to me.

Slavery was a crime committed against me.

And yet the man I am is built on top of it. The wealth and prosperity of my country was built on top of the forced labor, rape, mutilation and bondage of my ancestors.

I am American.

I sing the songs of the new world. Trade in its currency and live by its laws.

I am American.

Yet.

The lie. The lie. The damned lie.

February 14, 2017 Southfield Board of Education Meeting

The Vice of Civility (I Aim to Misbehave)

This isn't about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The reason why I just mentioned her name in the first sentence is because she is someone I have the utmost respect and admiration for and I want to make clear that when I have the following discussion it doesn't mean I hate people, or think they are racists, or bad or evil or any of that jazz.

In short I AM NOT CALLING ANYBODY A RACIST (Miles what happened to you.). I am just describing what I consider a common difference in outlook based upon racial experience.


With that out of the way...


It kind of drives me nuts when white people want to divorce politics from regular life. The impetus for this go round was Mitch Albom's article about The Pats skipping out on the traditional Superbowl White House visit.

Again this is not about Mitch Albom. I like Mitch Albom. Five People You Meet in Heaven helped get me out of a funk a while back, (The movie. I haven't read the book, and dear god, I need to get to work on building that library.)


But he did the thing. He called it rude.


Yes, yes it is.

But is the thing. In this country who gets to be rude and who doesn't is often about who has the power in any given situation and you bet your ass race  (and gender) has hell of a lot to do with that. Often the mere act of being polite carries with it tacit approval of the status qou in power dynamics in interpersonal relationships.

And that's kind of bullshit.

Like I said MY racial experience has been that it's hard as hell to separate politics from my everyday life. Insisting people are polite often means insisting they shut up about both their politics and how their politics affect their lives. Why am I always of afraid of showing it when I'm put out?



And no I am not doing the traditional Black History Month thing because I can't just be Black for one month.

Southfield City Council Meeting February 13, 2017

Southfield City Council February 6, 2017 Meeting

WILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

George Will and Hugh Hewitt let's rap.

First off, I know I've said some not so pleasant things in the past and while I don't think I was completely wrong this election has proven there is a whole lot of nuts out there I didn't account for.

You came out against Trump at a time when a lot of the conservative press was capitulating to him. You have spine.  And if nothing else I admire that.

I am a liberal (left-leaning libertarian). There are a variety of factors involved in that but I am long past the point where I am going to pretend otherwise. But I like to imagine I at least have an open ear to conservatives. You know... that I'm fair.

And so I'll admit that sometimes you have a point. The media particularly print does tend to skew left. The government does work by coercion and that kind of sucks. The government should be held accountable for how it spends taxpayer money and there are a lot of institutions that provide needed stability to the social order.

But...

You guys take a reasonable argument and push it a step too far especially in consideration to that argument's criticisms.

I've felt this way for a long time and that has caused me to dismiss a lot of what you and those representing conservative ideology have to say.

But you came out against Trump so you have an open ear.

...And you're losing it.

That said you aren't on my list anymore. So let's talk as if I take you seriously.

I would like to say I first read your columns in The National Review or the Washington Post, but my introduction to your minds was PregerU. I hate PregerU with the passion of ten thousand suns for the reasons I already said.

When you guys are on YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THAT. You want to defend capitalism. I love capitalism. It's kind of kicking my ass right now. But I want the stuff and capitalism is the best hope of me getting the stuff. Avarice is one of my vices.

Speaking of which. Don't call the Virginia Company socialist. Just don't.

But I digress.

I fundamentally agree that capitalism, the free exchange of currency, goods and services is overall a positive innovation in getting people the stuff they need and want.

Heck one of my beefs with Trump is just that.

But saying the government should have no role in the economy whatsoever goes a bit too far. Is Janet Yellen red because she was appointed by Obama? Don't answer that.

Still government shouldn't be involved in the economy?! No contracts. No taxes, no fed, AND NO MINIMUM WAGE!

Will your latest editorial in the Post rubbed me wrong.

Here is the fundamental problem. Wages are notoriously sticky.


People need need goods and services to live and that need puts them in an automatically weaker negotiating position. It's HARD to turn down a job because the pay is too low if you're struggling.

When wages don't rise well with inflation which they haven't it becomes harder for people on the bottom to afford basic stuff they need. But even without that Labor is basically the business everybody is in trading thier labor for currency and when the labor market is messed up the economy is messed up.

People spend what they get from wages and fuel the rest of the economy.

Now being a broke black guy in his 20's I can talk to you about inequality all day long but again I agree on the fundamental point that it sucks to get your stuff taken. I support "entitlement programs" and the stuff taxes fund but I admit seeing the numbers on your paystub go down for programs that are so obfuscated you can't tell who they help and how can suck.

And I can even admit that since it takes a crap ton of capital to invest in certain industries SOME of the wealth needs to stay concentrated for stability.

BUT COME ON!

Asking for a higher minimum wage is not the same as asking for the downfall of civilization. It's asking to be able to pay your heating bill in winter or buy your kids nicer Christmas presents.

And I definitely don't like how asking for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work is seen as equivalent stealing from someone's pocket.

Note: When I wrote this I didn't realize that Hewitt flip flopped on Trump. 

January 30, 2017 Southfield City Council Meeting