A long, nine-month wait for the return of Game of Thrones ended with maces and shields smashing together with glorious clamour.  All for the entertainment of a boy-king absolutely drunk with the power of the Iron Throne sitting patiently under his lanky, undeserving rear.   Patiently, in wait, for numerous contenders ready to raze the world for a chance at it.

An opening image is everything in the cinematic art, even for an episode, or better still a season of television.   What does the Hound’s crushing defeat of another soldier tell us about this new season to come?   What tone does this scene set for the year?

Bloody fucking contest.   Orchestrated violence.   Unequal rivals set against one another.   The paramount nature of power?   A king getting whatever he wants, no matter how he laid claim to the crown.

Littlefinger reminded our good Eddard Stark last year that succession hardly mattered, when Ned pushed for Stannis to claim his elder brother’s throne.   After all, Robert took it with Ned’s help by taking it by force from the Mad King.   Right, wrong, whatever it was, it was Robert’s throne, and he knew it, even if he bankrupted the realm, and whored and drank his way to an early grave proving it.

Power!  A lesson not lost on Joffrey, who writers Weiss and Benioff remind us quickly with their opening scene, is enraptured by power and misusing it grossly.   And that he should be justly hated for it.

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With an insatiable desire to depict worlds in disarray, Roland Emmerich has spent the better part of three decades pumping out grandiose blockbusters bedecked in social destruction with a flair for the skeptical. That isn’t to say there is a whole lot of method behind the madness; Emmerich’s love for blowing stuff up–be it a sturdy building or established fact–is just too primary, too outrageous. And he’s willing to draw on dicey pasts (The Patriot, Anonymous) and controversial presents (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) to lay waste to the good earth of cinema, scorching anything that resembles sensible storytelling or true scientific inquiry in his movies’ cataclysmic march to commercial success. And leader of this bombastic parade is Independence Day, Emmerich’s most entertaining film to date.

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I could’ve sworn I filled the tank.

I mean, if I was goin’ to risk my life time-travelin’, the best false sense of security I could’ve had would’ve been having enough fuel. As such, I spent countless weeks double-checking my math, the calculations whirring around around my mindscape even as I slept. The formula for post-temporal diesel was arcane knowledge, and if I wanted to concoct it myself I’d have to be super careful.

And when I finally felt that the arithmetic lined up, I got a big `ole metal barrel and mixed the ingredients:

– 1/2 gallon of gasoline
– 20 ounces of Pepsi Max
– 3 gallons of liquid zebra feces (grassfed animals only)
– 1/2 hour’s worth of tears

When the sludge was uniform in color (and pleasant to the taste), I poured it into the Toast-R-Oven I’d outfitted as the energy converter. I plugged in the converter, took a whiff of paint thinner, and then hopped into my combination broom closet/time machine.

I closed my eyes. Waited. Exited.

And here I am, trapped in the year 1998. Ugh. If the 1990s were an orgy, `98 would be the unwashed hippie who’s shown up despite having never received an invitation and hopin’ that some cooze grants poon-access to his scabby semen-dispenser. 1998 brandishes neither the novelty of the earlier 90s nor the enthusiasm of the turn-of-the-century. And yet it still cries for attention, hoping and pleading and wishing that someone will give a fuck.

I could’ve sworn I filled the tank. Next time I’ll check more carefully.

–-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE. I’m going to present semi-coherence in the hopes that you’ll validate my role as a member of Team Omega-Level. In the process, I’ll detail the various ways I’ll be keeping myself entertained. Fuck human tragedy, let’s all have a swell time!

Your mission – if you’re as brazen as you wished your prom date thought you were – is to hit up the comments section and share the bits and pieces of fun-debris that you’ll be sifting through this workweek.

Let’s dance.

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King Robert Baratheon, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms and resident of the Iron Throne of Westeros, is dead.

His son – in name only – reigns as Boy-King, strings tugged by the villainous family he unknowingly owes the entirety of his incestuous bloodline to; Robert’s brothers lay dormant, yet assuredly plotting in city-states half a continent away; his old enemies conspire across a northern sea in a country forgotten by the current, imperiled kingdoms; a young man commands a kingdom at war in the north newly receded from the governance of the Iron Throne; and a new queen rises across a second sea in the east, mother to a rediscovered power that tore Westeros apart a century before.

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When traveling through the galaxy, it’s of supreme importance to be on the lookout for liminal spaces. If you’re not paying attention while cruisin’ through hyperspace — maybe you’re rockin’ too hard to some Load-era Metallica or you’re caught up in a high-stakes game of Sabacc or perhaps you’ve fallen asleep at the wheel — you may very well hit a pocket of liminality. If this happens, chances’re that you’re going to be lost for awhile.

More innocuous than thinnies but less defined than wormholes, these cloudbursts of purple dark matter will warp the perceptions of everyone in your starcruiser. Sophomore slumps will sound like masterpieces. Cash-grabs will look like art. Dog food will taste like delectable cuisine. Hell, I’ve even heard tales of reckless space-pirates tongue-kissin’ their dogs and grabbin’ fat fistfuls of their sisters’ doughy fannies.

It ain’t pretty.

However, every now and then an individual that coasts through a violet gamma-shadow will be better for it. In these rare instances, the pilgrim does not incur the Wrath of In-Between, but is actually fortunate enough to go beyond the beyond. In this transcendent moment, possibilities are not only more apparent, but well within reach. Despite being in a tiny little vessel, hermetically sealed and layered beyond reason so as to ward off solar radiation, the exo-planetary commuter is capable of turning off mental inhibitors so as to live beyond life.

Tonight, my vessel has skidded right through an extradimensional fold. And I’m not mad or concerned. `Cause the fact of the matter is that I’m rockin’ in the Thirteenth Hour.

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Shit is getting real.   The pieces on the board are inching closer towards checkmate.   Soon enough we’ll see who’s still standing … ok, to be fair we’ll see how Raylan and Boyd put everyone else down.   So prop up your feet, sit back, and let’s have a look see at this past week’s Justified.

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[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]

The Hulk is a pretty easy character to support. I mean, seriously, what’s not to love? Is it the fact that the dude is a research scientist hoping to improve the state of the world? Could it be the tremendous lengths he goes to while trying to win over the love of his life? Maybe it’s his incredible aversion to violence, the reticent willingness to engage in fisticuffs only as an absolute last resort?

Or perhaps it’s the fact that when the Hulk gets pissed off and push comes to shove, he fucking smashes.

Despite the general consensus about big green bastard’s appeal, a debate arises when discussing those depictions outside of the paneled page. Old school Banner-believers may cite the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno tagteam from The Incredible Hulk series as being the definitive portrayal. On the other hand, the more rabid fanboy-augurs amongst us are already claiming that the best Hulk-performance will be found in Mark Ruffalo. There’s no denyin’ that all three of these actors deserve recognition for their contributions to the superheroic Jekyll & Hyde mythos.

But when it comes to live-action dramatizations of the triple threat match between Banner’s id, ego, and super-ego, two actors stand above the rest.

In 2003’s Hulk,   Eric Bana used his supreme thespian skills to conjure up an image of a brutish, mentally-deficient being with enormous muscles. And that was just his take on Banner! Zing! Seriously though, the Aussie-actor guides the audience through a vision of the Hulk that must navigate his way through a whole mess of psychological pitfalls, including inferiority issues, Oedipal complexes, and the volatility of suppressed rage. Bana paints a portrait of the green goliath that uses both the broad strokes of intense violence as well as the subtle strokes of a shattered psyche.

Five years later, Edward Norton got the chance to bring the breaker of worlds to life in The Incredible Hulk. Somewhere in between a sequel and a reboot, this film tries to give fans exactly what they love about the character. Banner’s on the run, Betty Ross is lookin’ dope as hell, Thunderbolt Ross is bein’ a pain in the proverbial emerald ass, and there’s another monster for the Hulk to fight. Eddie Norton fit particularly well, as he looked the part of the scrawny science nerd but carried himself with the intensity of a man trying to iron out emotional wrinkles of the most brutal sort. Additionally, most fans agree that this second feature-length attempted was more successful than the first…but how much of that can be attributed to Norton?

This is a tricky one. Australia vs. America. Nero vs. The Narrator.

So who’s the best Hulk? Eric Bana or Edward Norton?

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Well dang! It’s been a minute since I butt cheek titty fucked this particular column. Press Start! Column where we chat up the weekly happenings in the gaming world. I’ve been busy, okay? The sculpture of Casey Hudson I’ve been crafting made out of my own excrement and sticking pins into to punish him for Mass Effect 3’s  ending won’t make itself. Lots of chicken finger plates. Lots of bowel movements. Lots of fun! What matters is that I’m here now. We’re all snuggled up, don’t sniff my fingers, and I’m about to rattle off five things that caught my eyes this week. Don’t see something you dug on the list? Good, this little community doesn’t work without your input. Let’s jam.

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I bet you didn’t know this, but I’m a huge polygamist. Not the creepy Mormon kind, but the “holy shit there are too many attractive people that I want to bang for me to even think about being monogamous” kind. You see, I have about 27 celebrity husbands and 15 or 16 celebrity wives, and I’ve been gathering my famous spouses like beanie babies since, oh, 2001. I am married to 43 people. 43, you fuckers. It’s a big list, one that has been in flux since the start. Oh, I have my fixed 10, and they will remain in their spots on the list until the day I die and take my rightful place on the throne of Hell, but I’m constantly marrying and divorcing other people like it’s my job.

And guess what? Every Thursday, you’ll get to learn about 1 or 2 of them. Prepare yourself for Cinematic Polyamory, or “R.C.’s ovaries explode so often that the frequency can’t be textually rendered”. This post is a little late, as I spent last night stuffing my face at a fundraiser dinner, so apologies for cluttering up the Friday dashboard.

But why don’t we begin this ridiculousness with my number ones?
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We all have movies that we hate yet everyone else we know seems to love.   Those movies that are brought up in conversation that we have to bite our tongue lest we incur the wrath of the public.   Well in today’s High 5 I’m taking a stand.   I encourage all of you to take a stand with me.   Yell from the rafters how much you hate a certain classic movie.   Or yell at me for hating these particular movies.

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