Starring a mentally ill lottery winner in a bucket helmet, 'Mazing Man was a sweet-natured DC title with sitcom-plots (i.e. 'Maze babysitting the neighbor's cat). Needless to say, rostered in a product line swollen with standard long underwear fare it was simply too beautiful to live.
The last issue cover attempted pilfering the stratospheric success of The Dark Knight Returns. At least one Dark Knight fan felt unduly roped in. Discovering no Frank Miller Bats inside, he tore up his $.75 investment and mailed the chunks to the DC editorial offices.
When Warner Bros. announced Heath Ledger had won the role of the Joker, a fanboy doubled-down and penned a treatise on the corporate suits getting it wrong. Wizard's letter column provided a podium for the poison, including a pointing out that if DC/Warner Bros. didn't evict the Academy Award winner from the role, this male with disposable income was willing to not only stop buying DC titles, but he'd boycott all Warner Bros. subsidiary products. There was even a Change.org petition, such was this moral twerp's initiative.
I shat massive chunks of passion from my soul when the California Angels tremulous hold of the ALCS crown evaporated Game 5, 1982. Rod Carew was my favorite player, so the Angels had to be my favorite team. Once things got dicey, I walked away from the television and went outside to throw a Nerf football around with friends. My mom came outside to tell me that the Angels had fully crumpled, their World Series bid toppled into the mud.
Living rural earned me a callus of patient satiation, a crude badge of honor. Here, 'earned' could be substituted out for 'inflicted upon'.
The last time I ever cried over not getting something I wanted was in the Pendleton Bi-Mart. Mom wouldn't get me a He-Man. Sadly, I think I was in double-digits by that point. Ten-years-old, shedding copious amounts of salt over molded plastic.
Until college, going to movies presented a hurdle. Home was 60 miles from civilization. Trips to town were all day affairs with dozens of stops. A movie was the last thing either exhausted parent wanted to endure. So the film either had to be something we all wanted to watch, or there had to be an endurable alternate choice for dissenters. I missed the theatrical runs of both Superman II and Star Trek IV because of this pesky family rule (ownership of the oversized Superman II Official Movie Magazine and possession of several Star Trek 20th anniversary periodicals as well as devouring the Vonda N. McIntyre-penned novelization kept me moderately sane). However, other end of the policy-stick, I got to watch Superman III while my sister opted for Octopussy. But I did have to sit through all of Yentl. For a little guy, an exercise in pain, one I have yet to tease and reapply, mostly because I already know I'd like it 30-years on given the fact up to about the time of her marriage to James Brolin, all the many manifestations of Miss Streisand inflict upon me significant pupil dilation.
I already voted. Through the glories of these modern times, the county website allowed me to confirm the ballot was received, my signature was confirmed, and my ballot will be counted.
I've lived in the conservative side of this state. Now I perch in the permanently pot-smoking, proudly queer capital of Cascadia. I've lived in bottom-of-the-barrel, economically depressed Idaho, Oregon, and Washington towns, populations ranging from 10 to 1100. I've listened to Rush Limbaugh semi-regularly. I've read Al Franken books. I like Obama. I liked Dubya. I think military spending is outrageous. I feel pride being a citizen of the country with all the big bad toys the other kids envy. I believe in single payer healthcare. I believe in public education. I believe in the damnable existence of bureaucratic incompetence. I believe FOX News and Democracy Now! are each echo chambers and feedback loops. I believe most, if not all, the gargantuan stick pot of festering ooze of this election cycle would have been avoided if Bernie had gotten the nod.
I missed out on most of 2000's election insanity due to surfing my own personal tumult. Moving from CA to WA, I didn't cast a ballot. It wasn't a priority. I heard about 'dangling chads'. I just couldn't give a shit.
Coming up on Tuesday, I feel the needle ticking from unease to fear. Not because Trump might win or because Clinton might win, but because I think of passions overspilling. We've become agents of action-masked-as-thought rather than thought. Mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers tweet about "Skittles" and "Googles" and "Fishbuckets" and use those same hands and same brains to apply loving touch and thought towards their families and neighbors. Those rushing to judge Trump from the Access Hollywood tape conveniently redact the evidence Bill Clinton exhibits virtually the same brand of villainy.
No one ever stormed the DC Comics offices and shot up Editorial over a too-late-to-spike-sales-gimmick. No one blew up a Warner Bros. reception area because the guy that played a gay cowboy was going to give the Joker breath. I never sat in a darkened movie theater and texted a friend about the musical Jew/trannie-fest I was having to endure. That was then.
At best, election day is going to be close and topsy turvy and there are going to be millions of stunned brains and faces come the final results. I don't want to even guess what might amount to 'at worst'.
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