"Kick Ass" kicks the comic books and superhero movies standards you know where

Warning: No big spoilers here - safe to read

By Dr. sipmac

¿Jan Luc Picard or James Tiberius Kirk? ¿Star Wars or Star Trek? ¿Law and Order or CSI? ¿DC or Marvel? Dr. sipmac's heart still belongs to the DC Universe, and he remembers how when he was a child he used to think of the Marvel superheroes as second-rate Super Friends wannabes. While Superman had a succesful major motion picture, Captain America had a lame movie to offer (a little research tells Dr. sipmac that it had to be one of the two 1979 TV Movies starred by Reb Brown or both). It was sometimes utterly painful to watch Peter Parker being regularly abused by J. Jonah Jameson, even if it was a cartoon. Hey, you can tell anything you want about Clark Kent, but he never took abuse from anybody just the way Parker did. And, ¿have you ever seen the dreadful Marvel cartoons of the WWII era?

But nowadays Dr. sipmac recognizes that Marvel has done a superior job since the begining, and always had the ambition to aim always for something different and edgier than its competitor, even within the boundaries of the Comics Code Authority. And it has handsomely paid off: The X Men movies, the Hulk movies, the Fantastic Four Movies, the Iron Man movies... and on the other side, a lame attempt to revive the Superman franchise and (fortunately) the Dark Knight.
Maybe Dr. sipmac oversimplyfies in his analysis, but you may think he's getting the overall picture right. Marvel connects a lot better with the readers than DC does and sets the trend where competitors parasitically thrive. The trendsetting example this time is, as the title already revealed, "Kick Ass". There is a lot of reviews for this movie, sip is not going to try to top, but he feels the need to share still a few more thoughts.

As in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, literature, even in the form of the "despicable" comic books is approaching reality and slowly reshapingly it. In the Golden Age of Comic books it took an extra-terrestrial or a multi-millionaire to fight crime; in the Silver Age the lead was taken by a geek that gained radioactive superpowers, and the modern age artists like to praise the exploits of superheroes with no powers, even no special training. Just like Kick Ass. Well, and that modern age Batman, the awesome and lethal Hit Girl.

For sip, it was hauntingly attractive to write a story about a superhero-without-powers for years. Well, you can say it's too late, it is already been done. But you didn't knew that the first requirement for that implausibly plausible character was his insanity. Yes, for Dr. sipmac it was clear from the beginning that the protagonist had to be a complete nutcase, with his madness barely concealed. Sip imagined an insignificant hard working clerk, a worthless peon tired with his mindless job, that decides to "fight evil" after working hours. He would dress as... a giant bird. He would drive an old clunker across the city until he could find something he could fight for.

And now you may think, sip, it's really too late. You are talking about Big Daddy, the father of Hit-Girl. No, sip is surely talking, er... retelling Don Quixote. Just think about it: take the superpowers or the special skills away from a costumed hero and tell me what you get? Don't be shy... yes, a ridiculous, insane and senseless person. A Don Quixote.

It surely can be found ideology traces in the comic book-movie tandem, but you (maybe) never thought you could find even deeper meaning in this externally harsh and coarse presentation. We need more Don Quixotes in this world.

What are you waiting for? Go and watch the movie!

El Gran Varon: Willie Colon’s story of Simon is 20 years old

sipmacrants! is still celebrating. Today Dr. sipmac's special guest will be Dominic Ambrose, with a spectacular post about a groundbreaking song of the 80's: El Gran Varón/The Big Man. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambrose by letting Dr. sipmac repost your article here again on sipmacrants! Without further ado, Dr. sipmac proudly presents:

El Gran Varon: Willie Colon’s story of Simon is 20 years old

Twenty years ago, one of the great New York salsa artists, Willie Colon, released an album containing what would become an enduring classic of salsa music, as powerful for its message as for its fantastic style, the story of Simon, “El Gran Varon.” Willie Colon (pronounced Colón) was born in New York City in 1950, and became a headliner at venues like the Corso Ballroom and the Cheetah when he was still in his early twenties. Throughout the 1970s and 80s he built up a loyal following for his work with the Fania All Stars and artists like Hector Lavoe. This album, entitled “Top Secret” was his last for the Fania label, and it features Colon with his trombone and distinctive vocals, and his own orchestra, Legal Aliens. The song “El Gran Varon” was not thought of as a potential hit, or at least it was not initially presented as a candidate for such, perhaps because of the risky territory it covered. It was a song about AIDS and the isolation that homophobia and stigmatization bring.

Salsa is a powerful style, capable of expressing a great variety of emotions with its wide repertoire of rhythms, dynamics and tonalities. It has a basic structure but many origins, from African rhythms, to the clubs of Puerto Rico, Cuba, New York and the Caribbean as a whole. The New York style, of which Willie Colon was a leading exponent, was nurtured in its formative years in the jazz world of Manhattan in the forties and fifties (that is, the West Forties and the Nineteen Fifties), where jazz bands and salsa bands would sit in on each other’s gigs. Improvisation and idiosyncratic flair were highly prized elements there, as evidenced by the elaborate solos and characteristic free-form piano bridges.

Willie Colon’s trombone was a part of this tradition but in this song, his innovation is so much more: in the words of a timely, modern and tragic story within the framework of a traditional salsa structure. To my knowledge, he was the first well known artist, singing either in Spanish or in English, to allude so specifically to the horrifying epidemic that was devastating young victims in cities like New York, San Francisco, Miami and San Juan. It was not without its risks. If Caribbean culture has a famously vibrant gay element to it, quite apparent to those with even a passing acquaintance with the culture, it is kept in line and overshadowed by a virulent sense of honor that insists on presenting a macho image to the world. Add to that the stigma attached to this disease, not only in Puerto Rican culture, but in American culture as a whole during that period. It all could have very easily damaged Colon’s career.

Yet, he believed in this song, and with his distinctive metallic tenor voice and the perfect timing and sound of his superb orchestra, Willie Colon renders an unforgettable performance. El Gran Varon became perhaps Colon’s greatest hit and a staple of his concerts. In later years he updated the chronology, moving Simon’s dates of birth and death up seven years to 1963 and 1993. Perhaps he did this to emphasize the ongoing nature of this epidemic, but to my mind, the song is indelibly associated with the 1980s, with the terrible panic and despair of those first few years of epidemic, and of the emotional release that this song brought. Something beautiful could come out of this tragedy, some lesson learned, some community created, all in a great song to dance to and to celebrate life!

The song was recorded in 1988 and became part of Colon’s live show, then the album was released in June of 1989 and El Gran Varon quickly became a staple of salsa radio and disco. Part of its success might be the way that this performance elicits an emotional response without being maudlin, prissy or preachy. It is a difficult balancing act, and the many unsuccessful attempts to duplicate the success of Willie Colon with this material attest to that fact. A film was made in Mexico in 2002 based on this song, “Simon, el Gran Varon.” Unfortunately, this film is widely considered unsuccessful and cartoonish. Other artists have done covers of the song El Gran Varon, but nothing equals the original..

The lyrics were written by Omar Alfanno. When you read the words, you get a sense of just how much story has been packed into this one song. It is finely crafted, and quite effective in Spanish, drawing on many familiar sources, from the Mexican proverb about the bent tree to the Bible proverb about casting stones, and even giving elegant form to the lemonade adage attributed to the actress Joan Collins. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to reproduce the smooth prose of these lyrics and remain true to the words at the same time. Here is my English translation, as faithful to the original as the language will allow:

El Gran Varon, The Big Man

In a hospital room,
At 9:43, Simon was born.
It was the summer of ’56,
He was the pride of Don Andrés,
Because he was a boy.
He was brought up like everyone else,
With a tough hand and severity, he never talked back.
When you grow up, you’re going to study the same b.s. like your father.
Listen good, you have to be a big man.

Simon left the country, and far from home he forgot all about that sermon.
He changed his way of walking, he wore a skirt, lipstick and carried a handbag.
People say that one day his father went to visit him by surprise. Wow, what a mistake!
A woman walked by and spoke to him: Hello, daddy, how are you?
Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Simon! Simon, your son, the big man!

Chorus:
You can never correct nature, the tree that is born bent will never straighten its trunk.

But he cared too much what people would say.
He never spoke to his son again, and he left him forever.

Don’t complain, Andrés, don’t complain at all.
If it’s lemons that fall from the sky then learn how to make lemonade.

Then as the years passed, Andrés thought better,
and he became furious that his son never wrote to him.
Finally he received news about whatever happened to his son,
And Andrés never forgot the day that he received that sad call.

In a hospital room,
With a strange disease
Simon died.
It was the summer of ’86,
And at the bedside of patient number ten,
Nobody cried.

You have to have pity, and quit the moralizing,
Those who are free of sin should cast the first stone.
And he who can never forgive, has the most certain fate,
Of living with his bitter regrets in his own private hell.

Dr. sipmac supports South Park, even if it upsets him once in a while.

Related articles

• Cruising Through Caribbean Music (repeatingislands.com)
• Héctor Lavoe, Singer of Singers (repeatingislands.com)

Jorge Luis Borges, Patron Saint of the Internet? Well, Yes and No.

If there is anybody of whom I can assuredly identify myself as an admirer, without bothering too much by recognizing it, without being ashamed by blushing, that’s Jorge Luis Borges. An Argentinean man of letters, poet, a writer of short stories, reviews, essays and literary critiques; he was born in 1899, died in 1986. Married twice. These are very schematic details of a very interesting life. What happens in between will be discussed here, in the accustomed way of Paul: eclectically, disorganized and incoherently.

Every writer/creator admitted to the Pantheon of the Greatest (immortal, universal literature classic- you know-) normally leaves to the posterity a very powerful image to be remembered for eons: Cervantes had Don Quixote and Sancho, Shakespeare had Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, García Márquez had Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Others leave as a powerful image, not a character but a place: Thomas Moro left his Utopia, the same García Márquez has Macondo; Borges belongs in this second category. We vaguely could remember the affront suffered by Emma Zunz, or the affront perpetrated by Kilpatrick, but we always better remember Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and the Library of Babel both as two of the most marvelous and at the same time monstrous visions of universal literature.

Talking about the extraordinary capacity that Borges had for playing (and toying, why not?) with ideas might be redundant, but one has to do it. To describe a world, in which Berkelian idealism molds every knowledge, perception, civilization and language (Bite on that bullet, Chomsky!), and in the meanwhile materialism is not a heresy, but the mother of all heresies, that is more than scholar’s trickery: it takes years to metabolize the whole short story and grasp all the ramifications coming out of it. I’m still thinking of Tlön (and Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius, for that matter), and I know I’ll never go too far.

Why? Because we’re not Jorge Luis Borges. Most of us weren’t born in a bilingual family at the crossroads of XIX and XX centuries, nor we didn’t spend our early childhood and adolescence in a big family library, nor we weren’t taken from Buenos Aires to Switzerland and then to Spain; i.e., we didn’t have our whole lives to prepare an erudition comparable to that belonging to the Universal Argentinean himself. Some people is going to elaborate about Infinite Monkey Theorem ad nauseam, but is remarkable indeed, that humanity had to wait some 1950 or 1400 (consider the source) years from the destruction of the Alexandria Library, for someone bold enough to conceive the Total Library: The Library of Babel, in which all the knowledge that was, is and will be exists, and the one that isn’t, too.That is Borges.

By the way, could you imagine the power of the Librarian that could grasp the order of such a library? Well, it would be bigger than a poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market, for sure. That ‘promotion’, from the post of head librarian, was an indignity our writer had to suffer, a courtesy of the newly arrived peronista regime, as a reminder of what totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and chieftains really mean to literature. But why bother, Borges himself said:

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

I insist in things like these, because thanks to them, the Nobel Prize of Literature awards more ideological affinity than real talent. Borges, being basically a conservative, it is said he lost every chance of winning by committing the mortal sin of accepting an award in Pinochet’s Chile (he would regret that later). Besides, what about Kafka? Too much of an offbeat writer, or too much of a posthumous writer? And Joyce? And Proust? It is said that the greatest cable channel that never existed could be made with all the series Fox cancelled. Well, you could easily create quite an anthology with all the Nobel rejects.

Not all is bitterness: Borges could have make mistakes, but his achievements and regrets are securing the place he rightfully deserves in our time. For instance, being named by Wikipedia as his precursor, is a vindication. According to its Spanish article on him, the way the artistic and scientific works were published in Tlön, resembles a lot of that of the Wikipedia (with the same ideological bias uniformity, I might add).

Without fake modesty, I’ve been thinking of this for years, the question was if Borges preconfigured or preconceived the Internet. Nowadays anybody could say yes, being Internet a combination of the encyclopedic project Orbis Tertius, inserted in a Library of Babel (you know, the Labyrinths are kind of a Borges' specialty). What makes me doubt is thinking that the Internet era could not give birth to Jorge Luis Borges. Being born in these times, his energies would have been channeled into developing software, videogames or virtual reality environments. Our real and historic Borges deals a lot better  being considered as custodian and/or Saint Patron of the pre-Internet culture. It was the traditional culture, with its information-flow limitations, and the language barrier partially dissembled by someone who only realized after years that a part of his family spoke English and the other one spoke Spanish. That was the culture that allowed him to visualize in the virtual reality of the human imagination, the virtual reality of the computers.

I strongly recommend the reading of Jorge Luis Borges. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not even halfway to read his complete works yet.

Three New Navy Ships (Collected from the Internet)

USS RONALD REAGAN

Seeing it next to the Arizona Memorial really puts its size into perspective... ENORMOUS!

When the Bridge pipes ' Man the Rail' there is a lot of rail to man on this monster: shoulder to shoulder, around 4...5 acres. Her displacement is about 100,000 tons with full complement...

Capability

Top speed exceeds 30 knots, powered by two nuclear reactors that can operate for more than 20 years without refueling

1. Expected to operate in the fleet for about 50 years

2. Carries over 80 combat aircraft

3. Three arresting cables can stop a 28-ton aircraft going 150 miles per hour in less than 400 feet

Size

1. Towers 20 stories above the waterline

2. 1092 feet long; nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall

3.. Flight deck covers 4.5 acres

4. 4 bronze propellers, each 21 feet across, weighing 66,200 pounds

5. 2 rudders, each 29 by 22 feet and weighing 50 tons

6. 4 high speed aircraft elevators, each over 4,000 square feet


Capacity

1. Home to about 6,000 Navy personnel

2. Carries enough food and supplies to operate for 90 days

3. 18,150 meals served daily

4. Distillation plants provide 400,000 gallons of fresh water from sea water daily, enough for 2,000 homes

5. Nearly 30,000 light fixtures and 1,325 miles of cable and wiring 1,400 telephones

6. 14,000 pillowcases and 28,000 sheets

7. Costs the Navy approximately $250,000 per day for pier side operation

8. Costs the Navy approximately $25 million per day for underway operations (Sailor's salaries included).

USS BILL CLINTON

The USS William Jefferson Clinton (CVS1) set sail today from its home port of Vancouver , BC

The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to President Bill Clinton 'for his foresight in military budget cuts' and his conduct while holding the (formerly dignified) office of President.

The ship is constructed nearly entirely from recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots.
It boasts an arsenal comprised of one (unarmed) F14 Tomcat or one (unarmed) F18 Hornet aircraft which, although they cannot be launched on the 100foot flight deck, form a very menacing presence.

As a standing order there are no firearms allowed on board.

This crew, like the crew aboard the USS Jimmy Carter, is specially trained to avoid conflicts and appease any and all enemies of the United States at all costs.

An onboard Type One DNC Universal Translator can send out messages of apology in any language to anyone who may find America offensive. The number of apologies are limitless and though some may seem hollow and disingenuous, the Navy advises all apologies will sound very sincere.

In times of conflict, the USS Clinton has orders to seek refuge in Canada.

USS BARACK OBAMA

Details are as vague as his past, his economic policies and his credentials to lead. But don't you worry........he has a plan!

Related articles

• USS Ronald Reagan Returns to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (damontucker.com)
• Happy birthday, U.S. Navy! (chunhoc.wordpress.com)