NGUPLUS

Foot Pets and Theatre

Sunday morning has just ebbed into Sunday afternoon and I have a picture of a cat on my foot. Last night, as we were eating dinner before going out, Ben asked me a question.

"Um, what shoes are you going to wear tonight?"

Its not like he is usually disinterested in my sartorial choices, but Ill admit the query took me back.

"I... I dont know. Why?"

"Well, I was wondering whether youre going to wear open ones or closed ones?"

"..."

"Its just that I quite want to draw a cat on your foot with this permanent marker."

"Oh. Right. Well, I dont know what shoes I am going to wear, but I definitely want you to draw a cat on my foot. Make it good, though, because I was actually planning to wear open shoes."

So, giggling like a sweet but possibly not intellectually over-burdened child, he began to draw.

"Those" he explained after a while "are the ears."

I wore boots.

****


I am having a cup of tea, and considering cleaning the flat. In a few hours Lowri will pull up on her bike (cue screeching tyres and burning rubber) and I will leap upon Glinda, and together we will go and get Fergus and go to a housewarming/babyshower. I am almost resigned to the fact that I will sit considering cleaning until the point when its really too late to start anything now and I will shrug my shoulders and go and get ready. Later on Fergus and I are planning on going to a life-drawing class. I am hoping for an interesting naked person. Somebody with some good topography to test our pencils properly. Basically, I want a morass of a subject, preferably with an evil glint in their eye and weird hair. I will be very disappointed if we get there and there is someone average, or even worse, someone who clearly likes gyms and soya products. I might take a marker pen in case I have to make the subject more interesting by drawing cats on their feet.

****

On Friday night we went to see some street theatre in Castlefield, an area of Manchester underneath the railway arches where the canal threads through. It is all red brick and cavernous spaces: dark and brooding. Castlefield is an area that could be really interesting and weird were it not for all the identikit wannabe-fancy, not-a-hair-out-of-place bars that have slithered up there, all moody outdoor lighting and Dyson airblades. The sort of place where you slide off the shiny sofas whilst desperately trying not to spill a drop of your pint because it cost £4.10.

Anyway, that aside, the theatre was amazing. It was part of the xtrax Platform 4 festival, and, as usual with these things I didnt really know what it was or even where we were going, I just trailed behind Ben whining vaguely about food until something amazing happened. As The World Tipped was stunning. About 1,500 people sat on the steps and watched as actors came onto the stage dressed in office clothes, and... well this is what it says on the website:

"At the Secretariat of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, harassed staff fail to notice as the world around them, literally and metaphorically, slides toward disaster. Suspended above the audience in the night sky, the performers struggle to control their increasingly precarious world as they do battle with the effects of drastic environmental catastrophe."

Which is all true. What the website doesnt point out is the whole OHMYGODWOWDIDYOUSEETHATNODONTTALKTOMEIAMWATCHINGWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW of the whole thing. It was impressive, sure, but more than that it was so moving and poignant. I just loved it. I dont want to bang on about the details because I am not a theatre reviewer, but I will just say that I totally forgot about needing a wee for about an hour. Its that good.

Also: free. I dont know how many people would have been there even if they had had to pay, probably quite a few, but not as many. It was a really strong reminder of why arts subsidies are so very important.

****

We are going to Edinburgh tomorrow! To the festival, just for a couple of days. I plan on spending a millionsquillion pounds and getting a cold, which is usually what happens in Edinburgh at festival time. I strongly believe we can be there for just two days and come back as broken and penniless as if we had been there for the whole month.

(Brief interjection to say that the impatient buzzing coming from the window area and what I assumed to be a fly is, in fact, A WASP. My arch nemesis. (Please insert dramatic "dun dun DUN" music here.) I am going to have to go and get in a cupboard until one of us dies.)

I am looking forward to Edinburgh, the hectic, street-pounding existence of it all where time moves in strange ways and everyone is cocking joyously on about THEIR SHOW and how hungover they are all the time. Its fun and brilliant and deeply exhausting.

(Now I have noticed the wasp I am finding it very, very distracting. I might phone Ben and get him to come back from town where he is doing street theatre and tell him FUCK ART THERE IS A WASP and hope he comes back to rescue me. Even Foot Cat is beginning to look nervous.)


****

I have to stop droning on now. I have successfully wasted most of the time I should have been tidying up, so my mission has been accomplished. Well done, me. I am going to see exactly how permanent this marker actually is, because if Foot Cat doesnt come off I will be forced to draw a matching one on my other foot. Or maybe a Foot Dog and make them chase each other by doing some kind of dance.

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Friday in a darkened theatre

So my wife and I are watching our recently-arrived Season 2 DVDs of Lois & Clark, and I found myself doing it again. The thing that all comics fans do, whether we admit it or not. It was the fifth or sixth episode from that season, the one where the cloned gangsters are trying to take over Metropolis, and Emil Hamilton turns out to be the guy that did the cloning.

And my fan reflex kicked in. It was an instantaneous, instinctive reaction. I immediately stopped caring about the story and instead I thought, "Wait a minute. Thats all screwed up. They got it wrong." And I spent the next minute or so riffling through my mental Superman Fan Rolodex ticking off all the continuity mistakes the show had made.

Then I got over it, thankfully without starting to rant to my wife about it. Julie really loves Lois & Clark -- I rather like it myself, at least the first couple of seasons, but Julie really loves it -- and she would quite probably have thought I was being mean and making fun of her for liking something I didnt.



But I thought it through a little bit, and realized that this fan reflex of mine was a bit ridiculous. First of all, there was no way that the show could have got Hamilton "wrong," since it was his first appearance on it. Secondly, even if you are judging the portrayal as being consistent with his appearances in the comics, it WAS consistent -- because if you asked for the quick summary of Hamilton, it would be "He is a brilliant but misguided scientist, whose well-meaning experiment results in creating a menace that it takes Superman to put down."

Well, thats what he was on Lois & Clark. And in the Dini-Timm cartoon. And on Smallville. And, oh yeah, in the original comics. None of these Hamiltons bear more than a passing resemblance to one another, but the same through-line and plot points apply to all of them. So what was my problem? I should relax and let it go. The ESSENCE was there.

Realizing this made me think about how weird we get about the movie and TV versions of superheroes. Remember the seething fan rage about Spider-Man and his organic webshooters? Or when it was announced Michael Clarke Duncan was playing the Kingpin? Or when Jessica Alba was announced as Sue Storm? Or... Im sure you can come up with your own example. God knows there are hundreds.

So whats that about? Im just as guilty of it as anyone -- nobody has been snarkier than me about the cinematic versions of Captain America -- either version, whether it be the horror that was the Reb Brown Cap --



-- or the Matt Salinger straight-to-video version, with the Red Skull as an Italian concert pianist.



So, you know, I do it too. Im just as picky and vicious as the next fanboy.

But what Ive noticed in recent years is that even though Hollywood has been doing a lot better -- no, if you are honest you have to admit it, they have been. Take a look at the old Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man from the 70s show or the Rex Smith Daredevil from "Trial of The Incredible Hulk" and THEN come bitch at me about organic webshooters. Most comic-book movies, these days, seem to work fine AS MOVIES, they hit a reasonable minimum-entertainment value as popcorn action flicks, but we are just as crabby and hard-to-please as ever. This despite the fact that not only is Hollywood doing better at adapting... but they are actively COURTING us. San Diego has become overrun with studio flacks and actors pushing their next Hollywood project. Want to be really weirded out and vaguely embarrassed? Check out Jennifer Garners videotaped message to the San Diego convention about how great the Elektra movie is going to be and how sorry she is that she cant make it to the con to show the clip package. "Youll all be happy to know that the costume WILL BE RED this time," she vows. Seriously. She said it. Its on the Elektra DVD as a bonus feature.

Think about that. Jennifer Garner taped an announcement begging the geeks not to boycott her new movie because her costume was the wrong color in Daredevil. Im sorry, but theres something deeply messed up about that.

And this isnt even an isolated incident. Every major superhero movie has somebody out there hitting the convention trail, pleading for our good will. In fact, I was shocked to see, on our recent DVD acquisition, a bit in the documentary with Deborah Joy Levine talking about how scared she was to bring a clip package to the San Diego con back in the early 90s, trying to push this Lois & Clark show she was putting together.

So if the complaint was that we werent being counted, or our opinion wasnt being considered, thats just not the case. That fights over. We won.

Which leads me back to my original question... what WAS our complaint, exactly? Think of a certain comics-based movie or show that really annoyed you. What was your issue? That it wasnt done "right"? That there was no "respect for the original"? Bryan Singers been stumping pretty hard for his new Superman movie. He knows what running the fan gauntlet is like after two previous cinematic outings with the X-Men. Fans are already lining up with their tomahawks after the first shots of Brandon Routh hit the net (The S is too small! The belt buckles all wrong!) and yet, of all the characters in superhero comics, Superman is easily the most adaptable and resilient. Check out this amazing collage I found at the Superman Supersite:



Now tell me which one is the "real" Superman that Bryan Singer has to respect or we will spend the next six months on the internet screaming for his head on a platter.

See where Im going with this? Maybe we should unclench about this Hollywood stuff a little bit. Enjoy the good and ignore the bad, and otherwise dont worry about it. Because if were at the point where the studio requires that Bryan Singer or Brett Ratner have to show up at a con and swear they did their best to a room full of pudgy guys in homemade costumes, I think we can relax and move on.

See you next week.

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