#Featured Articles
The Dark Knight Rises – It Rises, It Rises, It’s Risen, It’s Here
[Caff note: spoilers abound in the post-article comments area. You were warned. As well, Omega-Level sends out love, thoughts and best-wishes to everyone grappling with the DKR midnight shooting tragedy in Colorado]
How is anything supposed to follow The Dark Knight? Nolan’s trilogy ender will reap enormous numbers of attendees and box office dollars solely based on people wanting another TDK. Another round of dark, violent and unpredictable chaos in Gotham. Another villain as jarringly memorable as Ledger’s Joker. And another story that transcends comic roots and becomes lovingly embraced by the mainstream as a ‘crime saga’.
This might hurt your appreciation of Rises as it nearly did mine. In so many ways, this film feels like a direct sequel to Batman Begins. It notably takes the few elements it needs from the trilogy’s second chapter – Harvey Dent’s ‘legacy’, Rachel’s death and Bruce’s need to pass the mantle on – and forgets about the others, rejoining the stream Begins established seven years ago.
It’s awesome that the film feels like a much more appropriate bookend to Nolan’s trilogy in that regard. My fear was that the runaway success and rampant permeation of the Joker and TDK into popular culture would mean that everything about Rises would follow from, and be influenced by TDK, and only TDK. Not so. Not so at all. I’m definitely still a little dizzy off the high of the midnight venture to see this, and I’m sure I missed many more vital connections to TDK, so take his all as a sleep-deprived first gut reaction.
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How to Talk Like (Tom Hardy’s) Bane!
In exactly twenty-four hours, I will have begun the odyssey that is The Dark Knight Rises. So what am I going to do for the next twenty-three hours? Well, I’m going employ time-honored geek pastimes – readin’ my favorite Batman tales, talkin’ speculative nonsense with my chums, and drinkin’ Diet Mountain Dew until the point of blindness.
But thanks to Benjamin Santiago, frequent OL passenger and all-around rad dude, I’ll be able to spend the day talkin’ like BANE! Hit the hyperspace jump to watch Mr. Santiago’s tutorial!
The Dude’s High 5s: Top 5 Favorite Books
If you’re like me, you hate the heat. Well up here in New England we got ourselves a bit of a heat wave. I decided to beat this son-ova-bitch by crowding around my air conditioner. After playing 15 consecutive hours of Skyrim, I decided I needed to find a new activity to pass the hours. I grabbed my Nook (The official tablet of the SEGA Kid) and started plowing through books. So here we have my top 5 all-time favorite books.
Monday Morning Commute: murder the cubs.
Old hands to the back, newcomers to the front. This here’s an introduction and I want to make sure there ain’t no damn confusion! My name is Rendar Frankenstein and I’m a hack-writer, born-again optimist, and caffeine junkie.
It ain’t a perfect life, but I like it just fine.
The quaint piece of scrap metal I’m currently tryin’ to lodge into your brain is the Monday Morning Commute! I’m goin’ to show you the various bits of entertainment I’ll be pouring milk over and chompin’ on in the hopes of warding off ennui-illness. Then, you hit up the comments section and tell us what you’ll be doin’ for esses and gees.
It’s a big, sweaty, nerd-based version of show’n’tell.
Let’s dance.
WEEKEND OPEN BAR: Your Character!
[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]
Welcome to the open bar! Pull up a chair, pop open a brew, and join the conversation! I’ll get things started.
With which fictional character do you most closely identify?
Press Start: to continue
Dear friends. It is with a heavy heart that I write this, my first guest spot on Press Start! Many of you will remember our beloved Caffeine Powered as the articulate, junk grabbing slop enthusiast that regaled us with tales from the very frontiers of video game development and culture. I want you to hold on to that memory as tightly as you can. The last time I saw him – barely covering his modesty with tattered rags, excitedly drawing my attention to his bedroom walls: hosting his life’s work rendered in fecal matter – he told me that I needed to resurrect this information behemoth. I willingly accepted. And promptly left the premises.
The Dude’s High 5s: Top 5 80s Hair Band Ballads
Hello loyal OLers. It’s time for another obligatory musical High 5. As I’ve admitted in the past, I know nothing of music despite actually being able to play a few instruments (besides the skin flute). Today we’re looking back at yesteryear towards a magical time known as the ‘80s. It was an amazing time to be alive. MTV played music videos, Saturday mornings were filled with quality cartoons, and Han still shot first. Also our rock was filled with hair. The bad boy image was all the rage. However, beyond that tough exterior our rockers wanted us to know they had feelings and shit. So here we go; my top 5 ballads by ‘80s hair metal bands. [Note: While some of the songs may have been recorded outside of the 80s, the bands themselves existed as hair bands in the 80s]
Monday Morning Commute: Jungle Growls and Breaking Glass
It was a real, mean-as-hell, man-eating tiger.
He tried to assuage my anxieties. “A pot of coffee wouldn’t affect a cat of thissere size. Neither would those there beers I fed it. Thawwaz just some fun for the tourists, get `em to toss me a coupla extra bucks. Tough `conomy means we all gotta scrappup bucks in ways we wouldn’t otherwise.”
But there was no way that I was going to feel comfortable. No matter what this guy told me. No matter how carefully the bus driver navigated through the streets. The fact of the matter was that on this particular commute home, I found my normal spot on Metro-Transit Bus 142 occupied by a seven hundred-pound feline that’d spent the day being force fed coffee and alcohol in the hopes of entertaining sunburnt yahoos. I was still six blocks away from my apartment, but I tipped my cap to the trainer and got off at the next stop.
Bus had barely vomited its fumes into my face when I heard jungle growls and smashing glass.
It was a real, mean-as-hell, man-eating tiger.
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Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute! I’m going to show you some of the various ways I’ll be entertaining myself in the following days. Then you take your turn to hit up the comments section so as to display your own ennui-destroyers. What’re we all doin’ for fun these days?
Let’s find out!
Face of a Franchise: Peter Parker!
[face of a franchise presents two individuals that’ve fulfilled the same role. your task — choose the better of the two and defend your choice in the rancor pit that is the comments section]
It’s not hard to see why Peter Parker is one of the most popular characters in all of comics-lore.
