Got Ham?

When you get right down to it, Gotham and Metropolis are the same place -- a setting for superheroes with an unsettling resemblance to New York City on a really bad day.  Gotham is a nickname for NYC, first applied to the future Metropolis at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century by Washington Irving (Of Sleepy Hollow and the "Headless Horseman" fame). It wasn't meant as a flattering appellation -- it means "Goat Town" (not GOAT town) -- but caught on nonetheless. After decades of hypergrowth, the five boroughs were merged into a great big Metropolis at the end of the century.

I recently watched Zack Snyders treatment of Batman and Superman, where Gotham plays Newark to NYC's Metropolis. The two movies -- Batman V. Superman (Ultimate Edition) and Zack Snyder's Justice League -- are available on Max and are quite long. They took about a week to watch, although I did take some breaks for sleep and such.

I thought bringing the two cities together worked about as well as bringing Batman and Superman together -- by which I mean not well. Batman is a regular man (an especially good one) who battles regular human criminals (the especially bad ones -- who may have been goosed with this or that toxic juice). Toss him at high velocity against reinforced concrete and he's done, no matter how good his armor is. In the fight scenes with Superman, that happened quite a lot, though the Supe' fought with a kryptonite handicap. In the end, they became friends and took on a big -- I don't know what the hell it was, but it was big -- something or other. Wonder Woman shows up to help. "I thought she was with you," was the best line in the movie.

Not to ruin it (I don't think it will), but Superman dies at the end of the first movie and comes back to life halfway through the second. I thought it was another bad choice. It's ridiculously hard to kill the guy and when it happens it should mean something. Of course, I knew it couldn't last since he was going to be in the second movie. 

Originally, Gotham was a metropolis in its own right, with its High Society, uber-wealthy, and widespread corruption. It got downgraded into a depressed, hollowed-out, post-industrial has been. Its character changed, and so did Batman, who became less of a detective and more of a Gatling gun.

The Justice League was so long that towards the end I began rooting for the Vile Henchman and his Flying Monkey minions (an homage, I presume, to a much better film, The Wizard of Oz). Quite simply, I wanted planet Earth to be put out of its misery -- and the rest of the multiverse with it (talk about high stakes). Then there is the small matter of the epilogue. A couple of minutes to round things up wouldn't do.  Instead, we launched into another bizarre movie, and a very confusing one -- except it turned out to be a bad dream, a Batman bad dream.

By this time I zoned out and the credits began to roll, backed by a soft piano instead of a mighty orchestra. I reached to turn it off but stopped. I wondered: Is that Hallelujah? I hadn't heard the Leonard Cohen song in a few decades and the piano piece was more of an improv. But a few minutes into it the Lady sang:

I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord,

But you don't really care for music, do you?

Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

And so on. I don't know what that song had to do with that movie, but it was the best part.

Allison Crowe - Hallelujah

And some bonus Superhero introspection:

Superman's Song

They Unleashed the Demon in Demography

 

New Chinese Demographic Data = Population Collapse || Peter Zeihan

Could it be worse than bad? Yep.

In 1982 I worked as a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund for Asia in Bangkok. I wrote summaries of population studies and was glad when that project was over.

One night in a bar in Hong Kong, I talked to a fellow who worked on the "One Child Policy" that the CCP installed on the mainland. I kept my own council but thought the idea was a bit screwy -- but not because I thought they would fail. The iron law of government institutional immortality says that once they built a giant bureaucracy around the "One Child Policy," it would roll on well past its "should die" date, resulting in something like an upside-down population pyramid.  One insight I picked up from my work at UNFPA was that population growth falls as economies develop and infant mortality declines, so recovery from any "overkill" would be hard. The data from China's urban areas bears this out.

But at least the bureaucracy can survive, switching from forced abortions to forced births as they launch a thirty-year effort to right the list before the ship-of-state rolls over and sinks.

Bloody War Catch-up

 And Now We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Program (Ukraine War Updates)

Peter Zeihan looks at Ukraine's counteroffensive as it enters its fourth week.

When Putin launched his invasion, I didn't expect it to go well because the iron law of armed conflict is that wars are easier to start than to stop -- although there are notable exceptions to the rule.

In the 1930s, Ukrainians were "starved into submission" by Moscow (Putin's a veteran of the "security service" that carried out that particular genocide). They suffered rough treatment immediately before and after WWII -- during which large armies engaged in brutal combat rolled over the area twice. As a result, Ukrainians could expect a Russian victory to be followed by a heavy hand holding a mallet.

Because of Moscow's previous rule over the country, numerous fifth columnists were in place (the Russian thrust out of Crimea went surprisingly well). As the effort stalled, the worm -- and the Ukranian nation -- turned.

Unfortunately, Russia grabbed a lot of territories, and taking it back is a long and bloody process, even with Western Military aid -- a fraction of which, delivered before the invasion, would likely have prevented it.

The Dastardly Motive behind the Russian Coup Attempt.

This whole coup attempt was staged by Putin to divert the world's attention from the January Sixth Insurrectionist window-breaking incident at the Capitol in D.C., as well as the many crimes of Donald Trump. Putin, who is not known as the forgiving type, graciously pardoned everyone involved in the "Militarized March on Moscow," just to make Joe Biden and the Democrats appear petty and vindictive in their pursuit of justice. If he can forgive the downing of high-tech spyplanes and attack helicopters, the Dems can forgive a few broken windows. It is Russian interference in our Judicial System, plain and simple.

Limp Noodle

Prigozhin has called off his march on Moscow. Previously, I wrote that Noodles Romanov wanted to become Tsar Romanov.  But now he's just all wet.

He should stay away from windows and swimming pools. I suggest a world tour -- make that an anonymous would tour after plastic surgery.

They done-gone crossed the Don.

Update: This was a quick take on Pregozhin's mutiny. Interestingly, he didn't follow the oldest advice in politics: when you strike at the King, kill him.

Suddenly, Ukraine against Russia is Ukraine against a Russia that's against itself, as the recent uncivil arguments among military leaders turn to civil war.

Someone has done-gone crossed the Don -- both the "Rubicon" River Don and the Don of the top Russian crime family. Yevgeny Prigozhin has launched his Wagner group at the throat of his Godfather, Vlad-the-invader. Maybe Putin putting this "criminal cook" at the head of a powerful, well-armed, independent, and ruthless military organization was a bad idea. Or a good one, depending on your point of view.

"Tsar" is the Russian form of Caesar and Prigozhin is doing a Juilius -- except Julius Caesar won his wars before he crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome. Yevgeny behaves like he's Noodles Romanov but aims to become a Tsar Romanov -- successor to Putin the Terrible. I anticipate the Male Heirs of any Prigozhin era will be male errors. OK, enough with the puns.  

The conflict between Prigozhin and the rest of the Crime Family went on a slow boil last year. The Ukrainians holding on to the City of Bakhmut turned up the heat as the slaughter progressed. At first, I thought the dispute with the Defense Minister was contrived but it became so public I soon believed it was real. 

Could we see a repeat of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of a century ago? Aspiring Tsar Vladimir Lenin relinquished much of the Russian Empire to exit World War One and launch his Communist Red Army at the Bourgeoisie Whites in a bloody civil war. By announcing the withdrawal of Russian forces in Ukraine to the 2/22/2022 lines, Putin could free up troops to come at the Wagners from the rear while splitting NATO into "war-continuing" and "peace-declaring" camps. He should do this now while offering some sort of joint military guarantees for a semi-autonomous Crimea that the West -- if not Ukraine -- will quickly accept.

Interestingly, Prigozhin made a statement attacking the premise of the invasion of Ukraine that could well be a bid for support from NATO countries. If Putin doesn't act, Prigozhin may get it. The offer of a quick end to sanctions by the West in return for withdrawal to the 1991 borders with Ukraine would help Wagner Inc. win the support of the Russian elites.

The West will want a quick settlement here, if possible. A prolonged Civil War in Russia could quickly spread throughout central Asia and beyond.

Wagner is Going to Moscow.

Indiana Jones and the National Socialists

 

Indiana Jones 5 is DOOMED, claims Nerdrotic.

I like that he refers to the Nazis as the National Socialists throughout his presentation (I'm one of the people who watch him without subscribing). For decades I've referred to the Nazis as the National Socialists. Socialists would tell me the Nazis weren't true socialists and I'd point out that they claimed to be the true socialists and millions of Germans believed the National Socialists were the True Socialists. So it's a bit like Russian Roulette with no empty chambers.