You will travel far, my little Kal-El

Swinebread has asked me to help fill in over at his place while he changes diapers and such, so I'll be occasionally posting over at Atomic Romance on comics, movies, video games and such.

Your name is Kal-El. You are the only survivor of the planet Krypton.

This is not a perfect song but it's darned close. Especially the first couple of verses.

It's Been a Long Time.

(Sorry no embed.)

I'm the man they're protecting. I'm the President.

The answers- apparently they were all availble via Google. Thanks don.

Congrats to Swine and don for getting so many. Especially the Star Trek one which I thought would've been practically impossible.



1. Only when you've been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is on top of the highest mountain.

Richard Nixon, "Nixon"


2. Leon, somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor's working the night shift at Libyan Intelligence headquarters. He's going about doing his job... because he has no idea, in about an hour he's going to die in a massive explosion. He's just going about his job, because he has no idea that about an hour ago I gave an order to have him killed. You've just seen me do the least presidential thing I do.



President Andrew Shephard, "The American President"


3. I saw... its thoughts. I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet... their whole civilization. After they've consumed every natural resource they move on... and we're next. Nuke 'em. Let's nuke the bastards.



President Thomas J. Whitmore, "Independence Day"


4. I like Grant, he takes what we give him, and he doesn't ask for the moon.




President Abraham Lincoln, "Lincoln"


5. Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I have you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.




President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet , "The West Wing"


6. I want the people to know that they still have 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for them, and that ain't bad.



President James Dale, "Mars Attacks"


7. Shhhh. We're keeping that on the QT. We're calling it "secret mission to go in and get the guys captured last time."


President Thomas 'Tug' Benson, "Hot Shots! Part Deux"


8. There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy; there is nothing good in war except it's ending.



President Abraham Lincoln, "Star Trek," TOS


9. Get off my plane!



President James Marshall, "Air Force One"

10. The people will die regardless. But this duck still has a fighting chance.

President Harris, "Scary Movie 4"

It's a ...baby.

Rare meteorite found in Kansas field.

You've got me? Who has you?

Superman Returns.

I loved this film but whatever you do DO NOT see it in the IMAX 70mm format.

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First a disclaimer: "Superman: The Movie" was one of my favorite films as a kid. The two biggest things that have stuck with me were Christopher Reeve's pitch perfect performance as Superman and John Williams' bombastic score.

I watched it again recently with the young'uns in order to get them in the mood for the new film. During the movie my daughter leaned over and asked me if I ever wished I could fly. I said "Sure, everybody does at one time or another. Usually in dreams."

But her question started wheels turning got me thinking and got me to take a little deeper look at a movie I'd taken at face value for twenty years. Pretty much everything superman accomplishes in "Superman" he does by flying. He woos Lois by taking her on a moonlight flight. He stops Lex Luthor's rocket scheme by flying after the rockets and he performs the ultimate Deus Ex by flying so fast the world actually spins backwards and time regresses. Superman is a man that can bend steel and leap tall buildings, but most important he's a man that can live out our dreams of flying.

I think that's why Christopher Reeve's spinal injury while horseback riding hit us so hard. Sure, he was just an actor but he had become inseparable from the man he played on screen and the man who could fly could know no longer even walk.

Yet Reeve did something amazing. His initial reaction to his injury was deep depression. At on point he discussed ending his life with his wife Dana. With her help and with great determination he began to find purpose in curing his injury and walking again. He started a foundation for the cure of spinal cord injuries. And he took us all along for the ride- stubbornly molding out dreams of seeing him fly into dreams of seeing him get out of his wheelchair and take his first steps in years.

I bring all of this up because Christopher Reeve permeates "Superman Returns" without showing up in a single frame of the film. From Brandon Routh's voice characterizations and appearance to the dialog which lifts generously from the first Superman movie, Reeve is always there- his ghost hovering and smiling over the whole enterprise.

But what really strikes me is the film's subtext as it parallels Reeve's own life and taps into our own lost hopes for the man, particularly in the last act. Superman is on the receiving end of a kryptonite shiv to the back. He winds up in the hospital... Dying from his back injury. The people of the world stand vigil, hoping to see him fly again.

Then, having tapped into our real world hopes for Superman, director Bryan Singer finally gives us the happy ending we lost with the death of Reeve.

Superman flies.

Is that how a warped brain like yours gets its kicks? By planning the death of innocent people?

John Belushi was a comic genius. It frustrates me to no end that he threw his life away in a speedball overdose some years ago. A complete and utter waste.

If I was to try to imagine what went through Belushi's drug-addled brain in the moments before his death I see all sorts of psychedelic visions of flying ponies, talking hamburgers and, more than likely, Donald Rumsfeld talking about Iraq's "known unknowns." Listening to Rumsfeld is just about that surreal of an experience.

I can't for the life of me remember an administration appointee from ANY administration that came into office with as much hype as Rumsfeld only to fail so miserably. Rumsfeld was going to modernize the military and bring it into the 21st century. Left unspoken was that his concept of modernity was the stuff of Star Wars fantasy. Literally. A missile defense shield which fails even fixed tests that he convinced the President was ready to spend billions of dollars deploying in Alaska. No doubt he had to promise the President he'd get the first lightsaber.

Don't even get me started on his approach to the human element of the military. If there was a way to cut costs and go it on the cheap it, especially at the expense of our men and women in uniform, he'd find it. Cut down on support. Check. Cut armor for humvees. Check. Cut benefits and hazard pay. Check. The man is obviously more in love with technology, especially unproven, over the health and well being of the actual soldiers who serve under him.

In public he comes across as a sort of bespectacled Mr. Spock, more computer than man. This is supposed to demonstrate his value as Secretary of Defense. Coldly and impeccably logical. Cool in the face of danger. A slave to reason. All complete bullshit.

There has been nothing in our strategy towards the war in Iraq that has been logical. From the lack of appropriate numbers of soldiers at the start of the war, to the allowances for looting, to the disbanding of the Iraqi military because of worries about Sunni officers-- it's been one downright stupid move after another.

So I found Rumsfeld's public jabs at Condi Rice amusing on a couple of levels. The first is that Rumsfeld wants to play a semantical game. Rice referred to mistakes in Iraq as "tactical errors." Because she's talking about the bigger picture and not the actual prosecution of the fighting by our military I assume she ment to say "strategical errors." In military terms "strategy" is the planning made by generals and above before and during the war to achieve victory. "Tactics" are what the troops on the ground put together to implement the strategy. Rumsfeld is pretending he doesn't understand Rice and, in the process, is being too cute by half:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of "tactical errors" in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.

Speaking during a radio interview on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said calling changes in military tactics during the war "errors" reflects a lack of understanding of warfare. Rumsfeld defended his war plan for Iraq but added that such plans inevitably do not survive first contact with the enemy.

"Why? Because the enemy's got a brain; the enemy watches what you do and then adjusts to that, so you have to constantly adjust and change your tactics, your techniques and your procedures," Rumsfeld told interviewer Scott Hennen, according to a Defense Department transcript. "If someone says, well, that's a tactical mistake, then I guess it's a lack of understanding, at least my understanding, of what warfare is about."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502269_pf.html

I'd just point out one final thing: Rumsfeld's entire "understanding of what warfare is about" could easily fit on one side of a post-it. But listening to him talk is quite the high.