The Cliff Test

Batman passes The Cliff Test

Before I begin let me clarify a few things. I will not be talking about a test based upon the dad from the Cosby Show (whose names was not Bill, nor [paradoxically] was his last name Cosby.) I will also not be talking about a test based upon a big red dog, (that would be a Clifford Test,) or the main antagonist of Back to the Future (that would be a Biff Test.) Instead, I am going to talk about one of the first lessons I was ever taught by television, back when I was still just a kid, and how it shaped my understanding of the world.

I was very fortunate to be raised by a pair of working parents, which means I was also raised (at least partially) by my third parent, TV. The moving images on my screen that kept me so entertained also taught me many valuable lessons. For instance, Bugs Bunny taught me my vocabulary (indubitably,) and how to avoid hunters by cross-dressing. Similarly, Reading Rainbow taught me that the USS Enterprise must have a really good library. Yet, most importantly, Saturday Morning Cartoons taught me what it meant to be a hero. While other boys were modeling their ideals of manhood on professional sports players, firemen, police, teachers, U.S. Presidents, mailmen, my vision of adulthood came from men who fired red lasers (and never once killed anyone with them,) mutated ninja creatures, and superheroes (oh so many superheroes.) It was a magical time of life, when you got up earlier than you ever did in college, stuffed yourself full of cereal, and spent a solid four or five hours ingesting as much animated antics as possible. For me those days were formative, and the cartoons that stuck out most in my mind were the ones that contained battles between the forces of good and evil, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Thundercats, and all those wonderfully non-morally-ambiguous shows where you immediately knew who was the good guy and who was the bad.

There was always one particularly defining moment found in almost every single cartoon that stuck out in my head. I came to nickname it, "The Cliff Test." Surely as my name is Surely, there would come a time when the hero was fighting the villain high atop a mountain, or floating platform, or suspended walkway, Batman battling the Joker, Duke battling Cobra Commander, Lion-O battling Mumm-Ra. Inevitably, the villain would lose his footing and fall, grabbing for the ledge at the last moment. Then the hero would step to the edge to find their fiendish mortal foe helpless dangling by a mere few fingers. It would be so easy to finish them off and end the fight, but it is in that moment that heroism became crystallized for me. If a hero was true he would pass The Cliff Test by reaching down his hand and grabbing hold of his foe and attempt to pull the villain to safety. Ultimately, the bad guy would show his true colors and reveal some sort of weapon from behind their back that they stupidly used to strike out at the person currently trying to help them get to solid ground, resulting in the hero jumping back and his enemy plummeting to their deserved fate. Yet, that is supercilious in this argument. The real test of valor is passed once the hero makes the decision to assist their nemesis, despite all the bad that person had committed, and even despite the fact that seconds before he would have killed that villain in combat given the chance. There is no conflict here, because killing the foe in battle (It was a cartoon so no oven ever died,) is honorable and done in self-defense, but letting him mercilessly fall to his death serves no one, least of all the hero.

Not everyone can be Batman, I guess.

So, when I learned this week that on top of everything (government shutdown, questionable drone tactics, and the fact the NSA is probably the only one reading this blog post,) that the U.S. has been spying on allied leaders (as if they were some British newspaper mogul,) my cynical adult brain went, "yeah I'm not surprised." However, that younger part of me, (the one that spent everyday of the first Gulf War playing with G.I. Joes, because the heroism of my country so inspired me,) died a little more inside. Does Superman use his powers to spy on the rest of the Justice League? Does Batman? (fine Batman might, but that's not the point.) I am not ready to admit that we have become the bad guys in the story, but I don't think we're the good guys either. Everyday I watch us succumb more and more to greed and mistrust as we cling almost desperately onto power and spite. It's a path that leading us to ruin and is disenfranchising so many young people, whose formative years (unlike mine) will be filled with an atmosphere of disbelief, anger, and mistrust of their government and no Saturday Morning Cartoons, (which is an outrage. They don't exist anymore, but I'm digressing...) I understand that in the real world we can't always apply technicolor 2D morality to our 3D world, but part of me still believes that a house built upon a rotten foundation will only lead to trouble down the road.

The Cliff Test was a defining moment not just for the hero in my cartoons, but for me as a child. It was proof of what it meant to be a "good guy." I know there are people out there who would rather be a Sith Lord as opposed to a Jedi Knight, but, personally, my accessory of choice was always the white hat. Perhaps it is nothing more than childhood naivety, but I had always believed that the United States of America was more hero than villain. After all, I was a child of the eighties. Everyone from Regan to Springsteen was telling me that we were the good guys. I wanted to believe that our government strove to be the best and most upstanding it could be, because that was the core message of those old cartoons. You have to try and be the best person you can, to do what is right regardless of personal effort or cost, and even if you make a mistake you never give up on doing what's right for everyone. That is what those cartoons promised me about myself and others.

You might think it is naive of me to approach the world with a lens I developed before I was even old enough to read or write. You would assume once I grew up and saw the true nature of the world that I would have become disillusioned with the lessons those cartoons taught me, but  instead I found myself holding onto them and striving to be the Saturday Morning hero even more. I am not a very religious person, but those early lessons became almost an ancient and scared text to me. Maybe heroes are what the world truly needs right now, real heroes. I'm not saying I am some example that everyone should follow, but I do believe that we have to live, we have to breathe, and we have to fully be the change we want to see in the world. We are all human, even our institutions, (apparently even our corporations,) and we will make mistakes, but we have to keep going. We have to try to be the best damn people we can be, not just for our sakes, but for everyone's. Maybe this world could use a little more idealized naivety, maybe we all just need to remember our childhoods and ask what our ten year old selves would think of the people we are.

Perhaps we can look at The Cliff Test in another way. By helping the villain, the hero is actually helping himself. It is a way to reaffirm his actions and reinforce the kind of world he or she is fighting for, a fair one, a just one, and a merciful one. So in fact, the hero is not only reaching down to save the villain, but they are reaching down to save themselves. Right now we all stand upon a similar cliff, (over a hot menacing volcano.) Everyday we are faced with others in need who are dangling by mere fingers, ready to fall. There are issues facing our country and our world that just seem so big, too heavy to lift, and it would be simple to let them fall away. It would be easy to stop trying and stop caring. It literally requires that we do nothing, or we can reach down and help. We can help for no other reason than because it is the right thing to do. The Cliff Test is not about the dangling villain. It is about the hero and his or her resolve to make the world a better place. We all stand on a cliff, everyday in big and small ways. So you have to ask yourself what will you do?

And once you know, keep that knowledge and never let it fade, because knowing is half the battle.

Comic Con 2013

Captain America is smaller in person than I thought.

My friends and I started out this year at New York Comic Con the same way we always do, not being able to decide on costumes, so we just ended up slumming it in nerdy t-shirts. (One day I will cosplay.) As for the rest, this year was not, what I would call, a typical year for NYCC. It was still good, just different. Allow me to explain.

It all started near the end of the summer when I discovered (much to my chagrin) that Comic Con tickets had been sold out on the website. For the two prior years I had attended the con, I never had any problem getting my three-day passes online. All of a sudden they were sold out within a month of going up for sale. And so it was that my sister and I found ourselves waiting on a seven-hour line that seemed to stretch the length of lower Manhattan as we waited to buy the tickets in person, from Midtown Comics. The day proved to be rainy, cold, and lacking dumplings (which I had planned to eat for dinner.) Worst of all, by the time we reached the front of the line the three-day passes were sold out. I had to shell out an additional twenty dollars per ticket to get the four-day passes, (not cheap when you take into account that I was buying them for all my friends.)

This was my first indication of how incredibly mobbed NYCC was going to be this year. Even though I have written extensively on the rise of nerd culture, I have to admit I wasn't quite prepared for this. At some point I went to sleep and NYCC became a mainstream pop culture event. Even the panels and exhibits went from small potatoes to large fries overnight. Whereas last year I happily attended improv nerd comedy shows, trivia events, and panels by minor authors and YouTube stars, this year those quaint little events were replaced with talks by heavy-hitters such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, John Barrowman, Shatner, and other names that packed the halls with nerds and normies alike. Every year the con has been growing, but this year it was like it reached critical mass. I am not saying this is a bad thing, just surprising, and annoying at times.

Bumblebee... Bumblebee...

Personally, I attended the John Barrowman panel, (standing room only,) and the David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson panel (as X-Files was one of my first sci-fi loves.) Mostly, we walked the show floor, saw the sites, and played the games. I got to demo the new South Park game: The Stick of Truth, (and let me tell you, its quality.) I even got to watch the StarCraft II East Coast championship live on the Intel stage. Unfortunately I missed out on Tyson (my personal science god,) and I got tricked into going to a panel on the 75th anniversary of Superman, which admittedly, infuriated me a lot less than I expected. I also got a free Superman cape out of the deal. Going Thursday night was a new experience. I missed the documentary screening on the history of DC Super-villains, but we did get to see the opening night comedy show by some funny comedians, led by Brian "OMG is That a Wookiee," Posehn. Janeane Garofalo was there too, but (my mother always taught me that if I never had anything nice to say I shouldn't say anything at all, so) I will remain silent on the subject.

Then came Friday night, the night I really get to throw myself into Geekdom, the night of Rock Comic Con. My favorite NYCC after-party, where I get to hear all the coolest and latest nerd rock. I was excited, but I was even more excited for my friends to bear witness to its awesomeness. Last year was a thriller and this year's promised to be even better with the return of my favorite Nerd Rock group, Kirby Krackle. So naturally, I took my friends by the hand and led them through the streets of New York, escaping the crowded Jacob Javits Center for the quieter roads of 29th Street. We had dinner at small Chinese place and headed to the show at Pioneer's Bar. Now the location of the show changes every year and requires some research online to find it, but I had managed to dig it up, (and by that I mean I got it off Facebook.)

So we arrived at Pioneer's that Friday night raring to party. We paid the cover charge, and got ourselves some beer. Then we headed back to the stage, and a cold realization came over all of us. There was already someone on stage and he was making jokes we couldn't quite understand. We also started to notice that everyone around us was not dressed in the usual nerdy paraphernalia. In fact, they were clapping at the man on the stage by wiggling their hands in the air.

"Are we at a deaf comedy performance?" asked my friend, Doug.

"That would explain why the greeter signed at us when we walked in," said my friend Chris.

I checked again and it appeared that the night of Rock Comic Con had moved from its usual Friday night to Saturday night. So there I was, standing in the middle of a crowd of deaf people, feeling like an idiot, but afraid to say anything because I was keenly aware that we were smack-dab in the middle of a room of lip-readers. We promptly finished our drinks and headed to the train station. Thankfully, we salvaged the night by picking up a few six packs of beer and playing Killer Bunnies (the board game) well into the night.

We did eventually attend the concert the next night, though, in comparison to previous years it felt somewhat lackluster, as if they slapped it together at the last moment. The performances were great, especially Kirby Krackle and H2Awesome (who always gives every show their all,) but there were no artists painting for charity, no nerd magicians, not even the usual burlesque show (which admittedly, I can do without.) Yet the whole night seemed mellow as compared to the charged atmosphere of past years. Perhaps that had as much to do with the night change as anything. Whereas on Fridays most people are raring to go, excited for the weekend ahead, but after Saturday at NYCC, most people were drained and exhausted from the day. Still the night was still fun and it wasn't a bad excuse to hang out in a bar with people I cared about.

All in all NYCC offered its usual fun, festivities, and scantily-clad women. Yet, I still keep coming back to the crowds. It was busier than I had ever seen it, and I suppose I am at least partially to blame for some of it. As this year I brought a few new friends as well as both my sisters and their significant others to the con. I more than doubled the people I brought with me. Also I heard from many people about all sorts of others that were going to NYCC, and I'm talking about people I would have never expected, people who are staunchly (and boringly) normal. However, I prefer to look at the positive of all this. Nerd Culture is soaring higher than it ever has, and that's a good thing. Personally, I think the whole world should attend at least one comic con in their lifetimes. After all, we could all use a little nerd in us, (and that's what she said.)

DC's Agents' of SIGH

It's a show about secret agents that spend most of the time
bickering, get no real work done, and then decided to go home
early, because screw it, it's not like their job is important.

There has been a lot going on this week. I wanted to talk about how promising Marvel/ABC/Disney's new show, Agents' of SHIELD  was looking, but then two inexcusable things happened. First, my government closed its doors for business, (like that good pizza place near Baltimore I crave sometimes in the middle of the night. I love that pizza, but horrible business plan.. much like Congress actually.) Second, for some fracking reason ABC, in all its wisdom, pulled Marvel's Agents' of SHIELD from OnDemand. It seems like both my real government and my fictional government decided to shut down on almost the exact same day, and at the root of both problems is money and politics.

 

The thing that baffles me the most about the sudden disappearance of the Joss Whedon's Agents' of SHIELD is that a week before, it was very much OnDemand. I work most Tuesdays and was able to catch the series premier, (which I thought showed a lot of potential for interesting and superhero-y storylines,) with the OnDemand feature of my TV. It was right there, at the top. Now this week, when I went to repeat the experience, it has disappeared. My only theory is that Disney/ABC/Evil Corporation is trying to pull some kind of stunt where, (much like drug dealers,) they give everyone a free taste, then try to get them to pay to watch, because, as my TV and Internet have told me multiple times over the past week, Marvel's Agents' of SHIELD is on Hulu for only $8.99 a month.

 

This is a dangerous game that Disney is playing, as most people will just turn to the Internet to get their fix, further reducing the power of TV. However, this move is also not unforeseen. Ever since the mouse-run megacorp took over Marvel I have been expecting this. They only bought the comic company because, all of a sudden, comics were "the thing" and they saw a chance to make a large sum of money very quickly. They don't care about the company or the loyal fans. They just see a cash-cow (in a superhero cape) that they can milk for all of its worth and then break down and sell off for meat and animal feed when they're done with it. Yet, the real victim here is, Joss Whedon. Just when it seemed that he had finally escaped the fickle iron fisted rule of the Fox Network to produce a show, (that has every single advantage going for it,) he is once again screwed by another evil entertainment company that is going to monkey around with its broadcasting.

 

Then again, maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe SHIELD just lost its funding and had to shut its doors for a few weeks like so many other government programs, such as NASA (because science is witchcraft,) and the Federal Elections Committee (because who needs fair elections anymore.) This to me is an exceedingly frustrating situation, but why should I care if the USDA (the people who monitor my meat) are closed for business without pay. I mean its not like Congress, who shut the government down in the first place, will be getting paid when they're out of... Oh wait, they do get paid... Even during a government shutdown? Even during a government shut down they caused, because they're too stupid and pig-headed to do their own damn jobs? The answer to those rhetorical questions is, yes, by the way.

 

Closed, due to government shutdown. It's not like Dr. Doom
or HYDRA will choose to strike at any moment.

I understand this is some kind of asinine attempt at protest by Republicans because they are being sore losers over the ObamaCare issue, but I have news for them and the Democrats in Congress, (because no one there seems to understand this,) THAT IS HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS. They've made me resort to caps-shouting. I feel ashamed, but not as ashamed as they should feel. All of a sudden they don't want to do their jobs because they would rather act like children? Well that's tough, because if something happens at my job that I don't agree with, I still have to go in everyday and keep on doing it, like 98% of Americans. We don't get the luxury to throw a hissy fit and shutdown, but for some reason our government, (which we rely on for actual and tangible services, like food for those in need,) decided to do just that. Police, firemen, and even teachers don't have the right to strike from their job or walk out in protest, because they are considered critical employees, but I guess that just means that Congress isn't critical to anyone.

 

The only thing that really scares me about all of this is that on October 17th Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling or we are going to default on our international loans. That has never happened, but if our nitwits in power aren't back in session by then, it will. Its a simple vote that requires very little thought (something most politicians are very good at,) but without it there could be horrible consequences. If we fail to pay our debt interest this year then it only proves to the rest of the world that America can no longer handle its place of power and responsibility. We risk losing the American dollar as the trusted currency of the world, (something that is already beginning to happen.) Yet, more and more it feels like this country is being ruled not by the people, for the people, but by party and for the party. After all, the Democrats and Republican have played chicken before and when neither blinked we all went over the fiscal cliff.

 

So once again, both Marvel and (Washington) DC have put their own interests ahead of the people they claim to be serving. Perhaps, the worst part is that both seem to answer to no one. Disney with its "more money than God" is almost immune from any sort of caring about what their actual consumers might want, and thanks to re-districting and gerrymandering on the state levels, most Congressional seats now sit in super-districts, which means the politicians that are the most irresponsible and fanatical in their beliefs have no fear of their voters, because it is almost impossible to get unseated, unless they upset the party, (And that is a very dangerous position for America to be in.) It seems as if both have forgotten their roots, one as a small place of quiet dignity that always wanted to do its best to fairly represent the people of the United States and give them something to hope for in the struggles of daily life, and the other Congress, which was always at least somewhat evil and lazy, but never quite like this.

 

Maybe we should make a new show about super-powered agents that do nothing but punch elected officials for 44 minutes at a time. At the very least, it would probably get a higher approval rating than Congress.