Issue 42:
Various and Sundry
By
The Dude
Halloween is awesome. It is a time of the year that one of my nerd traits is equalized by society. I loved, okay love, dressing up into alter egos. I do not just mean comic book characters. I would dress up as Mr. T, Vanilla Ice, Condor Man, Ninja, Caveman, Guitar Guy, and anybody else for whom I could put a hodge podge of an outfit together. This would all be on your average afternoon, and have nothing to do with Halloween.
Then that great and glorious time of the year would come when the world would dress up with me. I started smelling candy, pumpkins and Charlie Brown shows in August. My mom would take me to the fabric store with her, and I would pick out the pattern for almost whatever costume I wanted.
I was never allowed to be a ninja. They are evil men of no moral or ethical boundaries, according to my dad, but I could be a Samurai. They have morals and ethics when they kill people I guess.
I had the big three that I almost always picked. Zorro. The Lone Ranger. Dracula. My mom made the sweetest Lone Ranger outfit. It had details like real cowboy stitching on the shirt, and the mask tied. None of that cheap elastic crap on my mask. The inside of my Dracula cap was lined with red material. She always went the extra mile to make the outfit seem real, which meant a lot back then, because you could not just go to Target and get a real Aragorn outfit with all the accessories. You had to make your outfits. Target was where you would go for candy.
As an adult I moved on to more adult attire at Halloween. You know- The Crow, Merlin, and yes, my beloved ninjas. I kept up the tradition of realistic costumes. When I was The Crow I had long hair that I dyed black, and I pieced the costume together at thrift stores. I think the need to have an authentic outfit is what keeps me in the nerd category even at Halloween.
Now as a parent I have a new temptation toward realism in my costumes as well as a new temptation to dress up my unsuspecting child as a sidekick, a partner or an archenemy. This year he is going as a dragon, and I am thinking about going as a wizard or knight. I might even try to get my wife to be a princess. We almost bought him a Curious George outfit, which would have been more than enough excuse for me to be The Man in the Yellow Hat.
I want Lil’ Dude to be able to pick his own costumes and learn to love Halloween as much as I do. I just cannot help my need to go as Batman and Robin, Superman and Jimmy, or Kid Rock and his midget. I only have so many Halloweens before I die, and he will have his own son to torture one day, right?
Does this sound like a mom, a daughter and a wedding to anyone else?
Issue 40:
Superhero Information Initiative
By
The Dude
If you have not heard, Ms. Munroe recently married T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, and is now Queen of Wakanda, quite a step up from princess of some remote tribe in Kenya…oh, and smoking hot leader of the X-Men. Some would not have seen the beauty of little Orphan Ororo, but T’Challa fell in love at a young age. When a little 12-year-old street thug saved him from racist gang bangers. Storm was always the hero, even as a thief.
If you have lived in a hole, or some country that has no outside contact, like Wakanda, then you may wonder who this enigma of a woman is. Daughter of Princess N’Dare and Dave Munroe, Ororo Munroe is orphaned at a young age, and grows up as a pickpocket in Cairo. Some time in her teens Ororo begins to manifest some weird… ummm… talents, and heads out into the Serengeti, where savage cannibals kill and eat… wait that was a different African woman. I mean she was worshipped as a goddess. What would you do if some beautiful young African teen came wandering into your village and she could control nature, ride the winds, sometimes hers eyes glowed blue and she had pure white hair? Worship her until Professor X comes recruiting, that’s what.
Storm first joins the X-Men in Giant Size X-Men #1. She quickly becomes a fan favorite, and a powerful member of the team. So it’s not surprising that she eventually replaces Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops, as team captain. She continues to be on the X-Men line up in some form or fashion for over two decades, (in real world time), and most often as team captain. She even beats out Scott as team captain during a period of time when her powers are lost.
The loss of her powers is due to her being shot by a weapon of Forge’s. She is clueless to his involvement. So she has no reason to not fall madly in love with him as he nurses her back to health. Things don’t go so well for him, though, when she does find out. Thus starting an on-again, off-again relationship depending on who is writing the X-Men and which arc of the story line you are reading. Luckily Forge, Storm, and the writers all came to their senses and moved on.
Storm did this punk stint in the 1980’s, were she went with a black leather halter-top, skintight black leather pants and white Mohawk. I am sure you saw her guest appearance in Mad Max Beyond ThunderDome. (I think that was her.) It took her a while to grow that hair back, and reestablish her image as a regal African princess. If you came across her for the first time during the punk era, (me), it may have also taken you some time to see her as anything more than some bee with an itch. Looking back on it now, you may appreciate the significance of an African female leading a team of 90% white guys as far back as the 1970’s.
Now back to the present. After a whirlwind tour of the world where Black Panther and Storm visit other powerful mutant, and sometimes royal allies, they honeymoon as Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic. So Stretch and Peek-a-boo, (my pet names for Mr. Fantastic and Mrs. Invisible), get some much-needed alone time. After which, they returned to Wakanda to live happily ever after… and then they invited Wolverine to visit.
Issue 37:
Various and Sundry
By
The Dude
Part I
The Bathroom
“Damn zipper.”
“Why do you always wear those pants anyways?”
(To the zipper) “Come on. Come on…” (To his companion) “What?”
“I said why do you always wear those pants anyways?”
“These are my effen Rockstar pants! That’s why! Now pull down right here while I yank the zipper up.”
Bam! Bathroom door slams against the wall.
“I knew I’d find you wusses in here puking. You should at least go in a stall if you’re going to play with each other.”
“Effe you Craig my zipper is stuck.”
“You ain’t a Rockstar, so why you always wearing those leather pants?”
“It is all about appearance on stage, and Kay says they make her want to copulate.”
“Copulate? Did you just say copulate? No one says ‘copulate.’ You sound like my Grandma talking about the chimps screwing, doing it, banging, hittin’ skins or any other term a normal person might use for chimps having sex at the zoo.”
“Shut the chimps having sex up Craig. You are a nonentity, and that is why you effen open. Take a piss, or get out. Dave, can’t you do anything right? I told you to hold right there.”
“Sorry.”
“Got it. Shit! I caught my pubes.”
“I’ll see you losers on stage.”
Craig leaves laughing.
“I hate him Matt. Why do you keep him?”
“You know he is the best opener we have. Do you have a pair of scissors or a knife?”
“Why don’t you wear underwear?”
“What?”
“I said why don’t you wear underwear?”
“I heard you, fag. Kay doesn’t like seeing lines. Why, does it turn you on, fag?”
“You promised not to say that. You promised.”
“Shut up, and get out. I’ll see you on stage.”
“You’re not even a musician, Mr. Rockstar!”
“Screw you. Kay says I can sing.”
Friend leaves Matt alone in the bathroom. Where he proceeds to jerk on the front of his pants trying to free his pubic hairs.
Part II
The Stage
“And now introducing our debate team from District 37 David, Katherine, Craig and Team Captain, Matthew.”
Issue 36:
Various and Sundry
By
The Dude
Connections. Life is all about connections. When we meet new people we try to connect, and then we try to stay connected. It is always interesting to be part of a new group of people. Maybe it is a new book club, maybe it is a church retreat, a business convention, or just two new neighbors on the lawn, but somehow conversation takes away the strangeness of strangers. (On a side note, staring at people only adds to your strangeness.) One topic that always seems to come up is television and what we watch. What we currently watch becomes what we used to watch, and then we are able to gauge how similar we are. Did they watch The Smurfs, The A-Team, and Mr. Rogers, or do they belong to a different generation?
What happens when they watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead of Speed Racer? They watched Howdy Doody and not Captain Kangaroo? I’ll tell you what happens.
You start talking about food.
We start to recognize a slight generational difference, and we need to bridge that gap. So we naturally discuss which cereal makes the best chocolate milk. If the difference is too big you will move on to politics or religion, but God forbid you have to discuss anything so grown-up. No, lets stick to the important philosophical issues.
So let me, The Dude, connect with you the reader in a way I can’t over on the Superhero Information Initiative front. Since you will have gotten an idea of my age by a few of the shows I mentioned, and I have no idea were that leaves us generationally, I will skip right to cereal.
If you are watching Saturday morning cartoons now, or then, you know that there are some fine cereal options out there. I always had to decide between three areas of concern: taste, sugar, and milk. Taste and sugar are easy: the obvious choice for taste would be Applejacks, and the search for sugar would lead you to Lucky Charms.
Milk is a more important choice than you may realize. I am not talking about the milk you put in, but the milk you drink out. Do you want chocolate milk at the end, and how chocolaty? Do you want milk that almost just tastes like milk, or do you want a sugary sludge? With the best cereals you can get a great combination of all three. I still have yet to discover how to get a chocolaty, sugary sludge that works, though.
I will not argue with anyone over where the chocolatiest milk comes from. Hands down- Cocoa Pebbles. The best chocolate milk, (that with the best consistencies of chocolate and milk), comes from Cocoa Puffs, though. While I am an amateur connoisseur of cereals that turn your milk chocolaty, I will confess it is not my area of expertise.
I dedicated my childhood to discovering how to get the perfect amount of milk and sugar at the end of every bowl. I wanted such a thickness at the end that I would need a spoon to eat it and not drink it. What is running through your mind, reader? 10 bowls of Lucky Charms + 5 bowls of Frosted Flakes = sugary sludge. Wrong. Let me just tell you what cereal to use… Rice Krispies.
Does “Snap, Crackle, Pop” even have sugar in it? I don’t know. What I do know is you can add it. If you follow these simple instructions, (patent pending), then you will get the best sugar high ever. Pour a bowl of Rice Krispies almost to the rim. Next poor milk in until the cereal won’t stay in. Take your spoon and slowly dunk all the cereal into the milk. Once you have got a wet glaze over your cereal take a spoon full of sugar and sprinkle it across the top until gone. Now take your spoon, (use two spoons- one for eating, one for sugar), and eat just the top layer by scraping it up. Then reapply sugar to the next layer, and proceed like this until all the cereal is gone. It will probably take you about three bowls of cereal using the same milk, but I promise you will end up with the best sludge of milk you ever ate. I might mention just pouring sugar into your milk does not work as well. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t.
Let me share the perfect Saturday morning meal with you. You get up early and get a small plate of pecans, and sneak a few scoops of brown sugar. Excellent appetizer course, and no matter what you do you will get in trouble for the brown sugar. Clean the utensils and put them back, leave no trace in the brown sugar, but your mom will know. Next you move on to Rice Krispies, milk and sugar. At which point a parental figure will show up and demand you eat something healthy, so I suggest grapefruit. You can coat grapefruit in sugar, but I prefer brown sugar on mine. Either way the sugar is there. Last, you will need an air popper for some popcorn. Which will require you to melt real butter. I suggest enough butter to make your shriveled up popcorn float.
By now your cartoons will be over, and the sugar high will just be peaking. What to do? May I suggest that you run outside to play in your moon boots, tighty whities, and waving a cardboard gift wrapping tube yelling, “By the power of Greyskull.” It will make perfect sense by then, trust me.
Issue 33:
Superhero Information Initiative
By
The Dude
I imagine if you are reading this, at some point in your childhood you dressed up in a red cape, or blow-up green muscles. You probably climbed on your roof in red sweats, or patrolled your neighborhood on the Batbike. Also you must identify in some way with the word “nerd.” So let me ask you, what did you do in the seventh or eighth grade when some Neanderthal freak started shoving you around? I bet your fist slowly curled up, and you had a very lucid daydream: Were three Adamantium-coated claws slowly sliding forth from your forearm? Why didn’t you dream about freezing him, running away really fast, or tying him up with the lasso of truth? Because, deep down you want to just go berserker. You want to be at the giving end of a Fastball Special. You want to be Wolverine.
It almost feels wrong to inform you about Wolverine. A list of cold facts about names, dates, enemies, teammates, and so on, takes so much away from the mystery and allure. Maybe it just doesn’t do justice for this nerd. Yellow and blue are not only my favorite costume colors, but also my favorite team colors. I remember sitting in my friend Brian’s bedroom watching football in seventh grade. We were watching the Sooners, and at a commercial break he starts flipping to other games. I saw this team with three claw like strips on their helmets, decked out in yellow and blue uniforms, and they went by the name Wolverines. Brian flipped back to the Sooners. I went home to watch my team play.
The only issue with Wolverine, a.k.a. (here we go), Weapon X, James Howlett, Death, Agent Ten, Patch, Hand of God, Emilio Garra, Mai’Keth, Logan, and most recently Dad, is his Adamantium laced skeleton. Not because it slows down his healing factor, which I imagine is quite sufficient considering he can rejuvenate from a skeletal state. No, the issue is: how do you say “Adamantium?” It always comes out admanaman, abdomen, autobahn, or some other ridiculous phonetic cluster. Here is a phonetic spelling, which I would like to dedicate to the Fantastic Four movie, to help next time you see the perplexing word add-uh-man-tea-um. I am sure even Hilary Clinton could say that. (I know, I am a Google sellout.)
You may have noticed the word dad in the last paragraph, and thought “what?” Let me give a brief explanation: while most mutants lost their powers during the House of M series, Logan regained his memories. At about the same time Civil War takes place, Wolverine goes to the closet, puts on the ol’ yellow and brown suit, and tells the X-men “I got to do this on my own. There is going to be some killing, I don’t want you to be involved.” (Or something to that effect.) Wolverine takes off to make the world pay. Along the way he discovers someone is also hunting him, and wants to make him pay, his son Daken. Read the Wolverine Origins series if you want to catch up on this. It’s only on issue #14.
Logan’s family is headed towards population level “Superman.” You got X-23, Daken, and I am sure a brother will show up soon. Makes you wonder when we will see Grandpa Wolvie light up a cigar, and tell the grandkids about his love affair with Jean Grey.
Subscribe to Nerd City
2 Comments