THE DARK KNIGHT

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 2 Number 14
THE DARK KNIGHT

Hopefully, by now, you have all seen The Dark Knight. If you have not – SHAME! SHAME ! SHAME!

The Dark Knight is a GREAT movie. It picks up seamlessly where Batman Begins ended. If you have not seen either of these movies you really need to and I will try not to spoil anything.

There is much controversy surrounding the newest Batman phenomenon:

• “I like the 60s Batman TV show, it was fun,”
• “I like the older Batman movies, they weren’t scary,”
• “no one could be Batman,”
• “it is too dark.”

I would like to address this stuff because I really like Batman. I’m not a freak – I don’t label all of my belongings prefixed by the word Bat or anything like that. OK, I don’t do that anymore. I do, however, have a very deep admiration for The Dark Knight.

Batman made his debut in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and has been thrilling readers and audiences for the 69 years since. Batman (originally hyphenated as the Bat-Man and still referred to at times as the Batman without the hyphen) has undergone many changes in that time. He started out on Bob Kane’s drawing board with “reddish tights…with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN.” Removing the wings, adding a cape, a cowl and gloves and changing the colors to the muted black, gray and blue spectrum created the image of Batman that we all recognize.

Anyway, back to the bullet points:

(“I like the 60s Batman TV show, it was fun.”) As the comics progressed and changed over the decades, the 60s gave Batman a new home. TV! Deadpan, serious acting of hilariously ridiculous scripts and Technicolor (to the max!) made Batman into an even more iconic (albeit, ridiculous) creation. I loved the 60s TV show because the overacting and underwriting was genius.

(“I like the older Batman movies, they weren’t scary.”) Jump to the late 80s and early 90s when the big, bad bat jumped to the big screen. Fun movies! Don’t get me wrong. But constant actor changes ruined any chance of really having a franchise identity. The making of each subsequent film in the franchise more kid friendly, just started getting too close to the campiness of the 60s TV show ruining it for any serious adult viewer. (They did that a lot in the 80s, recall Ghostbusters 2? It was nowhere near as good as the first because of the kid-friendliness of it.) I did, however, like the 80s and 90s movies because Batman was on the big screen and they were, indeed, fun.

(“No one could be Batman.”) Actually, the cool thing about Batman is that ANYONE could be Batman - almost. You would have to be extremely wealthy (which Bruce Wayne is) and you would have to be intensively trained (which Bruce Wayne is). The great beauty in batman is that he is, for the most part, a regular guy. He isn’t from another planet, has not mutated, and wasn’t exposed to any sort of radiation or anything sci-fi-esque, like that. He just has a strong desire to right wrongs and make bad guys pay. With enough determination you could become as highly trained as Batman. With enough dough, you could buy all of his crap. Really. Check out Batman Tech and Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight on the History Channel.

(“It is too dark.”) Sadly, these newest Batman movies are NOT too dark. They are just too realistic. The really sad part is that we already have villains like this. There is no Scarecrow that dons a mask that sprays you with chemicals to make you insane and submissive! Ah, but there are plenty of criminals out there that will slip you some rohypnol then rape and kill you (or worse). There’s no crazy, homicidal clown like the Joker. There are hoards of gang-bangers and street slime that will laugh and joke as they slice and dice on innocent victims, because to them it is funny and they feel no remorse. Come’on, there is not an evil dude with a melted off mug like Two-Face. Maybe and maybe not. But there are people out there who will put a gun to your head and flip a coin to see if they pull the trigger or not. Problem is, if the coin comes up heads they would probably blow your brains out anyway.

We have the villains out there and, as a society, we keep making it OK for them to do whatever they want. Doctors and lawyers come to their defense. They are ill, mommy and daddy didn’t love them, they are poor, they are victims of circumstance, they saw it in a movie or some other “reason”… It is sickening. They are bad and they should go away, but they won’t.

They won’t because all we have are excuses.

We have no heroes.

No Batman.

Until Next Time,
Wayne

Gaylord, Bigfoot, Jesus, Camping and Ghettos.

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 2 Number 13
Gaylord, Bigfoot, Jesus, Camping and Ghettos.

Is it already the 11^th of July? My God, what has happened and where has the time gone. It seems that I am caught up in a whirlwind that is only increasing in velocity and I cannot jump out. I am sure that I have been swamped, but I am not sure if I can recall exactly what I have done.

I do know that I recently went to a sales training seminar in Dallas. Wow the Gaylord Texan was fun… that is not some code for Texas-style man love either. Before I went, I actually thought it was and was quite afraid that I was being set up by my co-workers for another run-in with “the wrecker driver.” For those of you who do not know, the Gaylord chain of hotels is actually a bunch of super fancy, schmancy resorty type places. I tell you what; their property was about the size of Tularosa. This place was so fancy that above and beyond the $800 a night charge (for a regular ol’ room) each guest was charged an ADDITIONAL $25 a day for what they call a “resort fee.” I am not sure what that covered, because you didn’t get anything for it. I guess paying the fee just allowed you to buy stuff and services at the resort. Don’t wanna pay that $25? Get the hell out! We didn’t even really get to use the “resort” because we were in sales training the whole time. The place was quite beautiful though; complete with an atrium area the size of the Pan American Center, if not actually bigger! While there I also ate at something called Texas de Brazil – fancy, with free unlimited refills on meat – ‘nuff said.

I also was called out twice for a search and rescue mission in the Gila. Grueling, it was. During the time we were out there we were:

• burning up under the sun during the day,
• freezing in the wee hours of the morning,
• soaking wet from the river crossings and a blinding rain storm that decided to work its way up the canyon we were searching,
• gassy from a bag of dried apricots (you know who you are!)
• hungry from lack of real food on the trail
• starving from lack of restaurants in Silver City open after 9pm,
• and half-sockless after melting one because it was drying too close to the fire.

We never found the guy. That is strange for two reasons… 1) our SAR team has a great track record on searches and is usually quite successful and… B) we were looking for a guy who had long hair and was wearing either a black snowmobile suit or a white Bedouin robe (he actually had both with him). I figure someone like that would stick out like a sore thumb. Why wouldn’t he? In one outfit he would look like Bigfoot and in the other he would look like Jesus. Millions of people around the world see those two guys all the time! PS he made it out of the Gila Wilderness safely – two weeks later! Crazy!

Then, over 4^th of July weekend, the Boy went on a camping trip with some folks from his school to… guess where. Ding! Ding! You got it – the Gila Wilderness. I was a bit preoccupied with worry for a few reasons:

• the fact that, being in Search and Rescue I am more aware of the one Million things that can go wrong,
• the aforementioned search,
• and the fact that he is eleven and he is sure that he knows way more about everything than I do and would not listen to any of my advice.

For those reasons, the Girlfriend made me go out of town for the weekend so I wouldn’t rattle around the house fretting.

We went up to Albuquerque for a few days. It was very fun relaxing and just generally a nice time. I did notice, however, that no matter how nice a place is in our great state of New Mexico it seems to get ghettofied somehow. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown which is a pretty nice place. The elevators had the obligatory New Mexico ghetto tagging scratched into the stainless steel; there were emergency sprinkler covers missing and other stuff like that. Trust me; no one had messed with the Gaylord! (I love that sentence.) It just seems like …how do we Dads put it when something gets messed up, ruined or broken? Oh yeah! “Can’t we have ANYTHING nice?!” People are always complaining how crappy a place is while they are carving their name in the coffee table with a knife. Besides the ghettofication, the trip was really nice and it did keep me from over-worrying about the Boy.

Anyway that is what has been happening since the Steve story. Oh, Steve is still in the freezer safe and sound.

Until Next Time,
Wayne