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brazilian thunder god On Monday night I watched the latest reality humiliate yourself on national television game show just so that your friends and family can see you called The Bachelor. Yes, I admit that I sat through the entire hour. I'll also admit that I found the women who were on the show to be fascinating. First of all I wanted to know why they would do it. Yes, they said that other dating avenues had failed them, but what happened to intimacy and getting to know someone in private? Is that going to happen with a camera crew hovering in the background or merely a few feet away? Do they really expect this to work? Did they get paid to appear on the show? I imagine that they probably did. What was even more striking to me was the shock and dismay of the women who were not selected. Yes, I know that the tears and crushed looks make for good television, but the guy had to make a decision on a first impression. Ten minutes is all that they had to make that connection that they so desperately believed would happen. Is that kind of expectation healthy? Is this what qualifies as love at first sight? What was even more odd was that these women wanted to know why they hadn't been selected. They needed an answer, which really surprised me. Why did he owe them an answer? From what I have seen men get turned down all of the time by women and never get a reason why. Oh well, despite these quibbles I am sure that I'll watch the next installment next week if I remember that it is on. In the second episode the sexist quotient increases by having the remaining fifteen women all living in the same house lounging around in swimsuits hoping that they will be the one that he chooses for a mate. Let the cat fights begin. ... At the urging of my friend California Dan, I finally watched an episode of Smallville and I must confess that I liked the show. The writers managed to boil down the essence of the Superman mythos to what I think are meaningful if not universal themes. There is the awkward phase of adolescence combined with reactions to the unknown. Ma and Pa Kent are there in modern incarnations that make sense to me and provide the moral structure that Clark represents later as an icon. Lex and Clark were friends in the beginnings and are still "human" at this point in their lives. What was even better was the minimal reliance on special effects. The program was about the people and not the powers which is how I view comic books as a whole. So often I loathe film and or television interpretations of comic books because what I find valuable in them gets lost. Suddenly everything becomes action and costumes with very little thought and or good dialogue. What makes this positive review coming from me even more unusual is the fact that I have very little interest in Superman. In my three thousand plus collection I probably own less than a dozen Superman books. He never held any appeal to me. Even when I was ten years old there was just too much baggage there that didn't make sense to me. I hated The Daily Planet and the glasses as disguise concepts, the costume was gaudy and he was too powerful. None of it appealed to me. When the television program Lois and Clark was on a few years ago, I watched an episode here and there, but it never did much for me. Oh, Teri Hatcher was easy on the eyes, but as I just said I hate the reporter as secret identity part of Superman. Smallville on the other hand is more about the people and there is some genuinely good dialogue. One of the best lines was when Clark describes the loft in the barn as his fortress of solitude. Yes. It was subtle and made me smile. I don't need to see The Fortress of Solitude built in the ice at one of the poles with a bloated Marlon Brando as Jorel. I wonder what my life would be like if all of the women that I were attracted to had the initials of LL?
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