Oysters on the half-shell: tasty delicacy or booger-like nastiness?
Ye Olde Booke Haule
The other day was the quarterly Used Book Sale at the local library, which I honored as I usually do by filling a box with books for about $15. I’m telling you, folks, if you like to read, find out when your local library is having a used book sale.
The stuff in the picture is just the stuff I got for myself; I got seven or eight books each for The Wife and The Daughter. Great bargains, all. Here’s a rundown:
:: Chariots of the Gods?, by Erich van Daniken. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for gonzo theorists like van Daniken. I read stuff like this as fiction, basically.
:: For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming. This is not a novel but a collection of several short stories featuring Agent 007. (Specifically, “From a View to a Kill”, “For Your Eyes Only”, “Quantum of Solace”, “Risico”, and “The Hildebrand Rarity”.) I’ve just decided to start trying to gather all of the Fleming Bond books, but I want them in old, cheap paperbacks. Hence, I grabbed this one right up…and then discovered that I’ve already got one. An earlier edition, even. Oops. (Buying duplicates of stuff you already own is a constant danger of used book sales.)
:: The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O’Shea. I know nothing about this, but I loved the cover art.
:: The Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi. I also have a long-standing soft spot for Asian philosophy.
:: The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower. I bought this by virtue of its trippy title and the blurb comparing it to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
:: Fantasists on Fantasy, a collection of essays about fantasy.
:: The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. Serial killers at the World’s Fair in Chicago. A friend recommended this to me some years ago, and I forgot about that recommendation until I saw the book.
:: Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. I’ve been intending for some time to read Russo, and the presence of his most decorated book (it won the Pulitzer) at the sale made it easy. I’ve already started reading it.
:: U2 at the End of the World, by Bill Flanagan. I’m not a huge U2 fan, but I like good music writing.
:: An Anthology of the World’s Best Poems. It’s a six volume set, but only five were there. I’m a sucker for old poetry collections; as tastes change and as more poetry gets produces, anthologies shift, and many poets who were beloved decades ago won’t be found anywhere near an anthology today. It’s not that I need two dozen volumes containing the same poems by Whitman, Poe, Shakespeare et al.; it’s that I want to have volumes containing all of the voices that are now mostly forgotten.
:: The Hound and the Falcon Trilogy by Judith Tarr. No idea at all, but grabbing an entire trilogy I haven’t read, in a genre I love, in hardback, for three bucks? Yeah. Sign me up.
:: The Flying Carpet, by Richard Halliburton. I love Halliburton. He was a wonderful writer, one of those adventurers of the first decades of the 20th century — like Frank Buck — who journeyed all over the world just because he wanted to see it. (Here’s an earlier review of mine of one of Halliburton’s other books. Halliburton is one of those authors whom I buy on sight when I see his books at the sale, which is why…ahem…I now own three copies of The Flying Carpet. But I can justify this one by the fact that it has an intact, if a bit worn, dust jacket intact!
Not pictured (because I mistakenly put it with The Daughter’s stuff): How Much For Just the Planet?, by John M. Ford. Ford was a science fiction writer who passed away several years ago. This book is one the higher regarded Star Trek tie-in novels that began coming out in the 1980s. I rarely read tie-in books these days, but this one’s got a pretty high pedigree.
Next sale’s in September!
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Let’s-a Play!
Yesterday I achieved something grand. Something wonderful. Something that will, I think, live on in the annals of my life as one of my finer deeds.
I beat Super Mario Bros. on the Wii!
OK, now that I’ve written the words right out, it doesn’t seem quite so momentous. But this is the first video game I’ve beaten since college. So, huzzah for me!
What did I think of Super Mario Bros.? It’s really a great game. It just is. There’s so much cool stuff in it, and it’s not entirely linear, in that I know there are things in it that I never saw on my way from the first level on World One to the last on World Eight. Here are some things I liked about the game:
Variety. It’s not the same screen, over and over and over again. In these kinds of games — “clearing level” games, which go all the way back to Pac-Man and Space Invaders — you have to get through an entire level before moving on to the next. Used to be that the “next one” was basically the exact same level again, but a little harder by making the things that can kill you move faster, or start closer to you, or stuff like that. With Ms Pac-Man, you started to see literally different levels: a new maze every few screens. (Well, a total of four mazes, anyway.) Well, as computing power of game systems goes up, so do the possible levels, so now Mario’s not just running up the same set of girders and ladders anymore; now he’s running through eight different “worlds”, each of which boasts seven or eight “levels”.
In some levels you run through desert landscapes, riding on the tops of gushing geysers of sand. In others you slip and slide your way through snowy mountains and ice-filled caverns. There are spelunking levels that take place in darkness so you can’t see where you’re going or what’s coming at you, and there are flying levels where you are literally jumping around the sky without a safety net.
(I’d be lying if I didn’t see the final world, World Eight, with its volcanoes raining lava and rocks down upon you and its lakes of fire, as the planet Mustafar from Revenge of the Sith….)
Rewards.
Super Mario Bros. has a pretty good reward system. You never feel like you’re just knocking off one level after another, ad nauseam. There are small things to achieve along the way: the collection of regular coins and “star coins”, the collection of power-ups, extra challenges such as carrying those little toad-guys through levels unscathed.
Short levels.
I wish I could remember where I read this, but a review of the game I read recently compared the levels to Pringles: they’re short enough that you tend to think, after you’ve completed one, “Ach, what’s one more!” Some levels are a bit longer than others, it’s true, but none are epically long. I did find all of the levels on World Eight surprisingly short — but I wonder if they were actually shorter, or if they just seemed that way to me because, by the time one earns one’s way to World Eight, one’s gameplay must be pretty good.
Variable difficulties.
In general, the game gets more difficult as you go through it, as all such games do. But my experience was that Super Mario Bros. doesn’t maintain an inexorable ratcheting-up of the difficulty with each level. I suppose this would be different for everyone, but there were times I’d die multiple times on a level before getting through it by the skin of my teeth (there’s a level on World Five that I absolutely loathed), and then the following one turns out to be comparatively easy. Super Mario Bros. seems to be almost set up to make progress pleasurable. I appreciated that after I’d get through a tough level, the next one wouldn’t suck the life out of me by being even tougher.
Humor.
There are a lot of little whimsical touches in the game, like the way the ghosts in the ghost houses cover their eyes when they want you to think they’re not watching you, or the monsters who literally throw up big metal balls with spikes on them to toss at you.
The fat guy in overalls gets the girl!
Well, yeah!
And now…geez, I need a new game or two. Hmmmmm…maybe Super Mario Galaxy. And Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Or maybe that Lee Trevino golf game that Marge bought Bart for Christmas that one year….
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Gwaa?!
I haven’t had Livesavers in years, myself, but Boy Howdy, that’s just wrong. Watermelon? Pineapple? Who the hell wants to eat those?
(But then, I got all excited a while back when I saw a yellow label on a Tootsie Pop. “Huzzah!” thinks I. “They’ve created a lemon Tootsie Pop!” Alas, it was banana. Which is gross.)
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Expeliarmus
Notes on a few movies we’ve watched lately:
:: The Daughter and I watched a sci-fi movie that uses huge amounts of CGI to create a stunningly alien world that is populated by peaceful beings who love to fly. A human spaceship arrives on this world to exploit it, even though its atmosphere is poisonous to humans. A union takes place, though, between one of the human soldiers and a native girl, who strive to prevent the wholesale raping of this lovely alien world.
No, it wasn’t Avatar. It was The Battle for Terra.
I saw ads for this movie during The Daughter’s Saturday morning teevee regimen a year or so ago and I thought it looked interesting; of course, I’m always a sucker for explodey spaceshippy goodness, and this looked to have some. I’ve also thought for a long time that as animation becomes more and more popular, we should see more and more SF movies that go to really alien places, since animation makes possible the depictions of alien environments that aren’t possible in any other way. The existence of The Battle for Terra was a welcome one.
Of course, the movie played in theaters in these parts for all of eight days or so, so we had to wait for the DVD. I’m glad we did. It’s a beautifully made movie, full of gorgeous visuals, and the characters are decently executed as well, even if the humans look a bit cartoonish. There’s not a whole lot of subtlety in the story, but if the idea of a less indulgent telling of the same basic story as Avatar appeals, give it a shot.
I looked up Roger Ebert’s review of the movie, and I have to agree that it would have been nice if an ending could have been made that didn’t involve yet another Big Climactic Battle As Time Runs Out, but even so, this was a good movie. I hope it paves the way for more animated SF that’s thoughtful, as opposed to, say, The Transformers.
The Battle for Terra is a good movie, but I think I like it more for the possibilities it demonstrates in animation than for its actual story.
:: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is typical Hayao Miyazaki: fantastically wondrous, visually astonishing, interesting in its story that never goes where we think it’s going, and, just generally, a fine, fine film. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it directly. It’s a more childlike film, more on the level of My Naighbor Totoro than Princess Mononoke, but all of Miyazaki’s themes are there: nature and the folly of our trying to control it, youthful love, the bonds of friendship, and life by the sea. It’s not my favorite Miyazaki, but it’s Miyazaki.
:: We’ve finally caught up on the Harry Potter movies, with last year’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The trajectory of these movies is really pretty amazing — there’s not a bad film in the entire series, and while I wouldn’t exactly say they’re getting better and better (Prisoner of Azkaban is still the high-water mark in terms of quality), they’re hitting a very impressive level of quality each time out. With different directors, this is something amazing to me. Not even the James Bond films of the 1960s were this consistent.
Half-Blood Prince is a troublesome part of the Harry Potter story, because it is, in many ways, set-up for the final showdown in Deathly Hallows. It mainly serves to up the ante, put the pieces in the positions they need to be in, and put Harry and friends in the toughest possible spot. HBP brings us to that point in all the great stories where things are at their bleakest, and you wonder how the heroes can ever recover. And yet, for all that, the film is really very well made indeed. The three lead actors — Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint — continue to grow each time out, and the supporting players are their usual rock-solid selves. The best performance in HBP, though, probably comes from Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy with just the right blend of malevolence and pathetic helplessness.
Oh, a small spoiler point — highlight to read: When the movie came out, some people complained that it omits the funeral for Albus Dumbledore. I didn’t miss that scene at all, because I thought the film handled the emotion of Dumbledore’s demise very well, and it wisely kept the focus on our main trio of heroes. I also thought the funeral scene in the book was strangely reminiscent of the final scene of Spiderman, which had Peter Parker, at a funeral, telling Mary Jane he couldn’t be with her because it was too dangerous. In the HBP, Harry Potter, at Dumbledore’s funeral, tells Ginny Weasley he can’t be with her because it’s too dangerous.
Loved the film, and can’t wait for the finale. Even if I know what happens.
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Sentential Links #208
Linkage….
:: Other people are inconvenient.
:: I’m like a modern-day Medusa. (This fellow is photo-blogging his trek, on foot, all the way across America.)
:: Baseball is never proactive. It only changes once its shamed into changing. It took senate hearings and the threat of losing their Anti-Trust exemption to get baseball to really attack the steroid problem. A coach has to lose his life before protective helmets became mandatory. It took embarrassing replays of bad calls to get them to employ even limited instant replay. And now, especially if this horrible call stands, good luck preventing more instant replay situations from going into effect. (I have to laugh at the “If Selig overturns the call, it’ll be a horrible precedent!” crowd. “Now he’ll have to reverse every call! And the game will be destroyed! Won’t someone please think of the children!” Nonsense, utter nonsense, all of it. The way certain baseball fans fetishize their sport and scream bloody murder if anyone wants to see it in any color other than sepia is truly mind-boggling.)
:: But here’s the thing, guys. If you don’t want to get tarred with the SF brush, you don’t get to play with our toys, either. That means you do not get any of the following exciting action figures: monsters, immortal beings, time travel, alternate universes, glowcaves, Egyptian mythology, electromagnetic magic, insta-healing, psychic powers, Dark Lords, Lords of Light, magical touched by an angel fatecakes, teleportation, mystical islands, or bodily possession. Get your sticky hands off them–you’ll only break them. Make a sitcom and shut up, if you want to howl about not being SF. Make a gritty procedural. Make Thirty-Something, I don’t know. But don’t make an SF show and then prance around telling everyone it’s SUPER REALISTIC while trying to conceal your painful giant quantum rabbit erection. (This is the best anti-LOST rant I’ve seen yet. I’m not certain as to the validity of the complaints, but I do tire of creative folks who create SF stuff and then try to deny that it’s SF because it’s about characters as opposed to SF, which we all know is about whiz-bang stuff and no characters at all.)
:: 25 years ago this weekend, I carried a mini tape recorder into the theater with me so that I could bring The Goonies home with me. I recorded all of the audio. To this day, I swear I can recite every bit of the script while watching the DVD. (Ahhh, The Goonies. I remember my mother taking me to see that. We knew nothing about it save that it was some kind of fun adventure flick, which was right up my alley. I remember both of us watching it and suddenly realizing that it was taking place in Astoria, OR; we’d lived in WNY for four years at that point and our memories of Oregon were still pretty fresh. Later on in the movie we both chuckled when one of the kids was shown having bicycled from Astoria to Cannon Beach (you could see Haystack Rock in the background). I should watch that movie again…I’ve never seen it again in its entirety since that one time.)
All for this week!
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Wondering….
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Still waiting for a Wonder Woman movie…but I saw one of these images over at Cal’s blog, and I was impressed. I’m fairly certain the images are digital creations, but the actress is Cobie Smulders, from How I Met Your Mother. I have to admit, she does look the part…although my ideal Wonder Woman right now is Stana Katic from Castle.
Wow! Come on, Powers-That-Be…get a good script and make the movie!
I’m pretty sure all these images (save the top one) originate here. Lots more where these came from, including some concept pictures for action sequences.
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Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: I heard about this on the radio, and I’m not sure if it’s even real or not, but the idea is a deeply strange one: vodka eyeballing. This is the practice of attempting to get a buzz from vodka more quickly by pouring the stuff into one’s own eyeballs. If a dumber idea comes up, I’ll let you all know.
:: Check out this very cool story about a guy and his search for a computer game he played many years ago. It’s a terrific story, even if, again, I’m not at all sure it’s a true story. Certain details about it seem just a bit too pat, too perfect. But it’s a good tale.
:: You know, if I re-interpret the nonsensical babblings of Sarah Palin as slam poetry, they start to make…well, no, they still don’t make any sense. We are still talking about Sarah Palin here, folks. Sure, she’s awesome at manipulating the media to her advantage and lots of folks love her, but she’s easily the stupidest person in American public life right now. Way to go, President McCain!
All for now. More next week.
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There is quizzery afoot.
Via Sunday Stealing:
1. It’s 2AM and you are not home. You are more than likely:
Face down in a gutter somewhere. Or on a plane to a secret destination. Or in the medical examination room of an alien spaceship.
2. What’s the last thing you spent more than $100 on?
The Wii.
3. What do your bank checks look like?
They’re boring blue checks. The cheapest checks I can get. Speaking of which, it’s probably time I got an ATM card. I have a feeling that technology is going to stick around.
4. Where did the shirt you are currently wearing come from?
Same as most of my clothes these days: Target. (It’s a red henley.)
5. Name something that will be on your Christmas wish list:
Well, we’re kind of far out from Christmas, so I won’t know. I’m always loving gift cards to Borders, though.
6. What color is your toothbrush?
Funny you should ask — I bought a two-pack the other day and I’m opening it today, so I can’t answer this until I pick one to start with. (Either blue or pink.)
7. Name something you collect and tell us about it.
Books, I suppose. I’m not really a “collector”; more of a gatherer of stuff that looks cool to me.
8. Last restaurant you ate at. Who were you with? How was it?
As a family, we ate at Taffy’s the other night. I should take pictures; I love that place. It’s just your basic roadside burgers, hot dogs, and ice cream joint. It’s right on a very busy street corner, but their seating area is set back a bit, and they have those tables with the cloth canopies and the benches that rock back and forth, and the entire seating area has speakers for their satellite radio thing, over which they play oldies. Love that place. Especially the counter-service girls whom I’m pretty sure are trained to lean forward with their cleavage when you’re ordering.
The Daughter and I got takeout pizza last night from a joint we’d never tried before. Turned out to be really good pizza. Just what I need: another good pizza place to support. This one’s a fifteen minute drive away, and we already have six pizza places within five minutes of Casa Jaquandor!
9. Who was the last person you bought a birthday card for?
Not sure I remember. I used to give a lot of cards, but not so much these days.
10. What is your worst bad habit?
Spending too much time online. I have to force myself to write by turning off the Wi-Fi on my laptop, but even that’s too easy to turn back on. What I need is an ethernet extender cable, so I can just unplug the wireless router and run the Internet right to the main computer so The Wife and The Daughter can use the Interweb while I write, free of distraction from the Net.
11. Name a magazine you subscribe to?
These days, my only subscription is to WIRED. I need to resubscribe to Rambler and I’d like to subscribe to Rosebud.
12. Your favorite pizza toppings?
Pepperoni and sausage. Or sausage and onions. Or sausage, green peppers, and onions. Or sausage and mushrooms. Or pepperoni and banana peppers. Or…you get the idea.
13. Whose number were you looking up the last time you used a phone book?
I can’t remember. Last time I used a phone book was to see if there are any comic book stores in the Buffalo Southtowns anymore. (There aren’t.)
14. Other than family, who is the person that you love most?
George Lucas.
15. What is the last thing you cooked?
I made an omelet for dinner the other night, using frozen stir-dry vegetables.
16. Name something you wouldn’t want to buy used?
Underwear.
17. Which shoe do you put on first?
Whichever one I grab.
18. What is the last thing you remember losing?
A hammer “disappeared” from my tool bag at work. I hate when my tools walk off. Once in a while I’ll find one of mine in the desk of whoever borrowed it. And then another name goes on my “Revenge” list.
19. What is the ugliest piece of furniture in your house?
Our recliner. Heavens, that thing needs to go.
20. Last thing you bought and ended up returning?
A jar of something from The Store that turned out to have the seal broken.
21. What perfume/cologne do you wear? If none, why?
None. I have no interest in it.
22. Your favorite board game?
23. What was the last board game you played?
That one, I assume.
24. Where did your vehicle come from?
My parents tracked it down from a dealer they trust in their town last time I needed a car.
25. If a movie was made about your life what would the theme song be?
No song, but it would be a big symphonic thing by John Williams lasting twenty minutes.
26. You’re sad, who can cheer you up easily?
Blogistan.
27. What was the color of the bridesmaid dresses of the last wedding you went to?
I honestly don’t remember. It’s been four years since I was at a wedding, and they were people from The Wife’s job, so I had no connection to them at all.
28. What house cleaning chore do you hate to do the most?
Cleaning the cat boxes.
29. What is your favorite way to eat chicken?
Fried. Or barbecued. Or roasted. Or stir-fried.
30. It is your birthday. You hope the cake is?
Carrot, and loaded with cream cheese frosting.
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100 Characters
Roger points out that Entertainment Weekly did another of their “list” things, this time the “100 Greatest Characters of the last 20 years”. I don’t much like EW, but their lists are usually good for a blog post or two, so I’ll just reproduce their list with comment on the entries. (Now, I’m not reading the actual EW article, so I’m not sure of their criteria.)
1. Homer Simpson. While I can’t quibble with the placement, I call foul in that Homer Simpson first showed up more than 20 years ago, and therefore should not be eligible.
2. Harry Potter. On the basis of Homer’s ineligibility, Harry should be Number One. Not just a cultural phenomenon, but Harry’s also a great character, and one of the pleasures of the books is watching him grow.
3. Buffy Summers. I really need to watch Buffy one of these years, in its entirety. I always liked what I saw when I caught sporadic episodes here and there.
4. Tony Soprano. Meh. I know lots of folks liked this, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
5. The Joker (The Dark Knight). Not sure about the eligibility here, either. This was a new take on a very old character, not a new character. Great performance, but this also seems a bit high to me.
6. Rachel Green (Friends). This high? I dearly loved Friends and it was huge in its day, but for whatever reason it hasn’t had much staying power. But then, maybe we’re a little too soon yet for 1990s nostalgia. It’s taken this long for overalls to start coming back into style, after all.
7. Edward Scissorhands. This high on the list? Really? (This movie was my first date with The At-the-time Future Wife. Love the movie, but I’m not sure I’d put Edward this high up.)
8. Hannibal Lecter. Again, shouldn’t be eligible. Silence of the Lambs, which came out in 1991, was an adaptation of a book that was several years old. Yes, Anthony Hopkins cemented Lecter in our cultural mind, but that’s not the same thing.
9. Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City). I never watched this show. She wore overalls a lot, though, from what I’ve seen.
10. Spongebob Squarepants. Sure, why not?
11. Cosmo Kramer. Absolutely!
12. Fox Mulder & Dana Scully (The X-Files). Two characters as one? Huh? A great duo isn’t a great character. Both are great characters.
13. Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean). Come on, EW! It’s Captain Jack Sparrow.
14. Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (The Big Lebowski). I need to see this.
15. Shrek. Sure, why not?
16. Bridget Jones. Maybe. I know nothing about her.
17. Lara Croft. OK, maybe.
18. Sue Sylvester (Glee). I don’t know why, but I cannot get into Glee. I’ve watched it a bunch of times, and every single time, I bounce off it. So no from me.
19. Morpheus (The Matrix). Ummmm…I’m on the fence, here. Laurence Fishburne’s performance was terrific, but the character’s really your basic Mentor character in a Campbellian hero journey tale.
20. Ally McBeal. I hated that show. Hated it, and mostly because I tend to hate the people in David Kelley’s shows. So no.
21. Rosanne Conner (Roseanne). Hated the character. Hated the show. And she debuted in 1988, so not eligible, anyway.
22. Eric Cartman (South Park). OK, I guess. I can’t believe the show’s still on, but “Respect mah authoritah!” and “Screw you guys, I’m going home” are always good lines to have at one’s disposal.
23. Austin Powers. Sure.
24. Felicity Porter. Huh? Seriously? The show wasn’t that great…but then, EW is pretty firmly in the camp of worshipping everything JJ Abrams touches. I’m surprised they haven’t put a LOST character on the list yet.
25. Woody (Toy Story). Absolutely! But I wonder how many Pixar characters I’ll find on this list. Pixar does character better than anybody. I’m hard-pressed to think of a badly done character in any of their films.
26. Kavalier & Clay (from Michael Chabon’s novel). Again, a duo is not a character. A great book, though.
27. Frasier Crane. Not eligible! He first appeared on Cheers in the 1980s!
28. Madea. I have no idea who she is. Pardon me whilst I Wiki-search…hmmmm…wow. I’ve never heard of any of this. It’s always amazing how certain cultural items can slide by you so completely and utterly. This feels like something I should at least know about, and yet, nothing at all.
29. Vincent Vega & Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction). All right, EW, grab your chalk and write “Duos are not characters” 50 times on the blackboard. Both are great characters.
30. Stephen Colbert (in the persona he portrays on his show). Huh. Wouldn’t have thought of him as a character, but yup!
31. Forrest Gump. He’s a great character, but the 1994 movie is based on a 1988 book. Not eligible.
32. Beavis and Butt-Head. OK, here’s a legitimate exception to the “Duos are not characters” rule, simply because they are never shown in any light other than interacting with one another and they are cut from the same cloth.
33. Sarah Connor (Terminator 2). No, because it’s a sequel to a 1984 movie! Not eligible!
34. Cher (Clueless). No idea; never saw it.
35. Dexter Morgan (Dexter). No idea; never saw it.
36. Gollum (Lord of the Rings). So obviously not eligible that it boggles the mind. Yes, he’s an amazing film-making creation in the movies, but the movies do not create the character.
37. Kyser Söze (The Usual Suspects). He’s a Macguffin and a plot-trick all in one. I wouldn’t even consider him a character. (And besides, the movie is crap.)
38. Elmo (Sesame Street). Not eligible. He’s been around forever. Sure, he’s become huge more recently, but that’s not the same thing.
39. GOB Bluth (Arrested Development). I never really watched this show, so I don’t know.
40. Ron Burgundy (Anchorman). OK, I guess. I loved the movie.
41. Harold and Kumar. Never saw the movie, so I can’t comment on whether they’re enough of a single entity to qualify under the “Beavis-and-Butthead Exception”.
42. Sydney Bristow (Alias). I was never really impressed with the show, so no.
43. Cal Stephanides (the novel Middlesex). No idea; never read it.
44. Jack Bauer – 24. Absolutely. In fact, he should probably be higher; Bauer was really a great pop cultural summation of the entire decade of the 2000s.
45. Stewie Griffin (Family Guy). OK, yes. The parts of that show that actually make me laugh always seem to involve either Stewie or Brian, the talking dog.
46. Jerry Maguire. Sure.
47. Corky St. Clair (Waiting for Guffman). Not a clue.
48. Red (The Shawshank Redemption). Not eligible…Stephen King’s original story was published in 1982.
49. Vivian Ward (Pretty Woman). Meh. The hooker with a heart of gold?
50. Pearl the Landlord. I have zero idea who this is.
51. Omar Little (The Wire). I’ve never watched The Wire. It doesn’t look like my cup of tea.
52. Annie Wilkes (Misery). Novel published in 1987. Ineligible.
53. Edward Cullen. No. No no no a thousand times no. Great popularity does not equal great character. Edward Cullen is a creepy and abusive stalker.
54. Juno (Juno). Sure.
55. Tracy Jordan (30 Rock). Sure, OK.
56. Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother). Sure, OK. I’d probably love the show if I could get beyond my irrational loathing of Bob Saget.
57. Clayton Bigsby. No idea who he is.
58. Thelma & Louise. DUOS ARE NOT CHARACTERS!
59. Master Chief (Halo). Not a clue.
60. Mary Jones (Precious). Never saw it.
61. Vic Mackey (The Shield). Never saw it.
62. Jimmy Corrigan (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth). I’ve had this on my shelf for years. I suppose I should actually read it some day….
63. John Locke (Lost). I’m surprised that they didn’t put him higher than this. Never gave the tiniest crap about the character (one reason I never much liked LOST is that I didn’t like the characters), but it was great seeing Terry O’Quinn get a chance to show what a great actor he’s been for years.
64. Maximus (Gladiator). Huh. OK, I guess.
65. Lorelai & Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls). I’ve only seen a few episodes and enjoyed them. But DUOS ARE NOT CHARACTERS.
66. Allie & Noah (The Notebook). DUOS ARE NOT CHARACTERS.
67. Borat. Yes!
68. Effie White (Dreamgirls). Never saw it Probably should.
69. Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada).
70. Mary Katherine Gallagher (SNL). Erm…meh.
71. Det. Alonzo Harris (Training Day). Never saw it.
72. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Battlestar Galactica). OK, we’re testing my standards of eligibility here. I’m going to allow it, even though BSG is based on a show from 1978. Why? Because the re-imagining was so extensive that the newer Starbuck can really only be said to be based on the original character in name only.
73. Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct). No. One iconic film moment — we know the one — does not a great character make. She’s pretty much a cipher in the movie, a character on which to hang plot stuff. She’s a female Keyser Soze, and he’s not a character, either.
74. Don Draper (Mad Men). Never saw it, but sure.
75. David Brent (The Office – original from the UK). You bet!
76. Tyler Durden (Fight Club). I didn’t like the movie, but that was more of a “cup of tea” thing than any obvious flaws I could point out — I found it very well-made and interesting, but ultimately unpleasant.
77. Mimi Marquez (Rent). Never saw it.
78. Patty Hewes (Damages). Never saw it, either.
79. Elphaba (Wicked). Never saw the musical or read the book. We’re hoping to see the show when it comes to Buffalo again next May, though.
80. Gorillaz, the world’s greatest virtual band. No idea what they are.
81. Amanda Woodward (Melrose Place). Meh. Didn’t like the show much.
82. Tracy Flick (Election). Didn’t see it.
83. Jen Yu (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). I’ve seen parts of this movie. I should rectify that.
84. House (House). Yes!
85. Daniel Plainview (There Will Be Blood). Never saw it.
86. Karen Walker & Jack McFarland (Will & Grace). DUOS ARE NOT CHARACTERS!
87. Tony Stark (Iron Man). Not eligible. I’m not even going to bother Googling when Iron Man first showed up in comics, since I read him as a kid.
88. Napoleon Dynamite. I should probably see this.
89. Wilkus van de Merwe (District 9). This too.
90. Marge Gunderson (Fargo). Absolutely! Strange thing — she’s too good a character to be contained in just one movie, and yet, a sequel would just seem kinda dorky, you know?
91. Hancock (Hancock). Never saw it, but I have a hard time seeing this on the list.
92. Christopher Boone (The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time). I know nothing about this.
93. “Game Boys”: Nathan Drake – Uncharted, Kratos – God of War, Niko Bellic – Grand Theft Auto IV. I have no idea what this is talking about.
94. Truman (The Truman Show). Sure. This movie seems underrated to me these days.
95. Wilhelmina Slater (Ugly Betty). Not sure; I only saw one or two episodes of this show and wasn’t all that thrilled by it.
96. Bernie Mac (The Bernie Mac Show). Meh. Wasn’t really my cup of tea.
97. Violet Weston (August: Osage County). Not a clue.
98. Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Not a clue.
99. The Bride (Kill Bill). I haven’t seen the whole thing. I’m not sure how good a character she is. How many dimensions of character are there in this blood-soaked violence fantasy?
100. Tim Riggins (Friday Night Lights). Meh…the few episodes I saw didn’t knock me over.
OK, so there’s the list. Again, I didn’t read any of EW‘s commentary, but it seems pretty clear that they’re judging things on the basis of when characters became Big Cultural Things as opposed to when they originated, but that seems to be splitting hairs to me. Sure, Frasier Crane became a lot bigger when he had his own hit show, but he wasn’t exactly a bit part on Cheers — it’s not like they made a juggernaut hit out of Harry the Hat, for example. This is how they’re able to choose Tony Stark (not the most famous of Marvel superheroes) and not Spiderman or Wolverine (who were hugely famous long before they showed up in movies).
Better, in my view, to select characters only created since 1990. Sure, way more people know who Gollum is by virtue of the LOTR movies, but it’s not as if the books were obscurities known only to a small number of cultists and fanboys. It may be fun to view fantasy and science fiction fandom as something of a small ghetto, but consider: the LOTR books have been in print for more than half a century. I see no logical argument to be made that Gollum is a character of the “last 20 years”. If we’re restricting ourselves to movie characters, then maybe, but EW didn’t do that.
And of course, there are some other quibbles as well, as I note throughout. EW‘s list is wildly skewed toward what’s popular as opposed to what’s good, which leads to stuff like Edward Cullen being on there. And the whole thing of counting couples or duos as single characters really bugged the crap out of me; there’s really only one duo on there, Beavis and Butthead, that can be considered, for me, a single character entity (although Harold and Kumar might well qualify as well).
And then there are the simple omissions from the list: characters who most absolutely certainly ought to have been there. Here are just a few, tossed off the top of my head:
President Josiah Bartlet. An intelligent character, smart as a whip, and depicted as being governed by very strong moral principles that he nevertheless ignores at times. He’s a very human character.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds. I’ll take him over any character in any teevee series ever helmed by JJ Abrams.
Severus Snape. The way JK Rowling handled Snape over the years was nothing short of brilliant — we never knew, until there were mere pages left in the last book, whether he was a villain or not. And even when that question was finally answered, his motivations turned out to have been deeply complex. He’s a terribly underrated character, in my view.
Pixar characters: Mr. Incredible. Wall-E. The old guy in Up. And since they liked duos so much, I’m surprised they didn’t pair Woody with Buzz Lightyear, or include Marlin and Dory.
Captain Barbossa. They have Captain Jack Sparrow up there, but a good adventure movie can only become a great adventure movie by virtue of its villain, and Barbossa’s one of the best.
Jack Dawson. I know, we’ve culturally agreed that we can only sneer at Titanic these days, but I don’t.
Lieutenant John J. Dunbar. Same thing with Dances With Wolves.
Hayao Miyazaki characters: Ashitaka, San, Chihiro. And more.
Gil Grissom. He was so cool back when CSI was new.
If they’re including duos and some very recent characters, where are Castle and Beckett? (Not that I’m including duos, but I’d have Castle and Beckett on there separately.)
I wasn’t a huge Law and Order fan, but when the show’s cancellation was recently announced, just about every blog post or article online I saw about it mentioned Jerry Orbach’s long-running character, Detective Lennie Briscoe. That seems a good addition, to me.
Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs; Dr. John Carter from ER. Also from The West Wing, Donnatella Moss and CJ Cregg. And from my beloved Once and Again, Rick Sammler and Lily Manning.
OK, that’s it.