Last night's Muse concert was the best live rock show I have ever seen, full stop. In a stunning upset, pyromaniac korpermusik purveyors Rammstein have been pushed into second place in the Arena Concert Experience category.
Muse is a three-piece outfit, a classically aligned power trio like Rush, and similar to them makes use of both automation and session musicians to take over either the guitar or keyboard duties for frontman Matt Bellamy as needed. In fact, in a comprehensive transformation from the shy fellow who let the drummer warm up the crowd in their H.A.A.R.P. concert film, he actually focused purely on vocals for a handful of songs, occasionally grabbing an axe to take over on solos.
But in addition to those background musicians, the Simulation Theory tour adds dancers, acrobats and a ten-piece marching band dressed as androids covering the horns from "Pressure."
Other highlights included 4 acrobats suspended from the rafters in hazmat suits while the giant video screen behind them depicted microscopic organisms swarming around them, two dozen translucent beach balls containing glow sticks being batted around during "Starlight," an enormous cyborg puppet erupting from under the stage, and, of course, more lasers than the entirety of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Personally, I thought we had reached peak Muse when, during the chorus of "Thought Contagion," a catchy and brilliant track about the power of memes, the dancers returned, this time as staggering cybernetic zombies with glowing face masks.
Musically, the band played for nearly two straight hours, covering a solid mix of tracks from the newest album as well as their back catalogue, so in addition to "Algorithm" and the gospel version of "Dig Down", we got to hear "Plug-In Baby," "Time is Running Out for Us," and "Hysteria," which is still one of the best bass demos I know.
The staging, pacing and sound quality were all top-flight, but part of what makes a Muse concert such a great experience is their commitment to bringing as much drama to the stage as they put into their music, which is a considerable amount. They've had an actor or two and a pair of trapeze artists onstage before, but the additional personnel brings it to a whole new scale.
Muse has always enjoyed a reputation as having one of rock's best live shows, and with this being my third time seeing them, I can assure you: they are getting better all the time.
If you have an opportunity to see this tour, I highly recommend you do so. Pete and I are having a great visit with my sister and her husband down here in Houston, but now I find myself looking for a way I can bring more of the family to Toronto to see Muse there, which seems unlikely. But if they come anywhere in Western Canada on a second leg of their world tour, I will be there again without hesitation.
We were chatting via email this weekend, some of the lads and I, about the cancellation of the two remaining Netflix Marvel shows, Punisher and Jessica Jones. I still haven't watched Punisher, but probably will at some point, but am likely to view Jessica Jones at the earliest opportunity due to its general quality and nuanced portrayal of a complex and conflicted main character.
There is a chance that these grittier, street-level characters, the Marvel Knights if you will, could still end up getting picked up by Hulu or another Disney-related streaming service. If they do, I hope they take a page from the recent Titans series:
Have more stuff happen more often
Shorter seasons are a good idea
A little humour can balance out the grimdark without undermining it
Masks, costumes and powers are cool - don’t be afraid to be a $&#%ing comic book show
Even if they don't though, there is more superhero content out there than I can reasonably be expected to watch. Agents of Shield comes back this summer, I gave up on most of the CW Arrowverse shows, but could go back at some point, and still hear good things about Legends of Tomorrow. Hulu already has Runaways and Cloak & Dagger, and Umbrella Academy just premiered on Netflix this past weekend.
And that's just superhero shows; Star Trek and Star Wars both have television series currently airing new episodes, with more rumored to follow. Game of Thrones will follow up what is likely to be the most highly anticipated television finale of all time with at least one new spin off, and Amazon is producing something similar for Lord of the Rings.
Fresh anime can be viewed from Japan within 24 hours of it airing there, and increasingly grandiose boardgames covering more and more nichey topics are being backed on Kickstarter all the time.
Truly, it is a wonderful time to be a nerd.
And yet... I find myself wondering how long it can last.
Go ahead, call Joe "Deathstroke" Manganielloe a nerd -wait, he doesn't care.
Nowadays, famous actors can tout their devotion to Dungeons & Dragons, and an adult wearing a superhero t-shirt doesn't even rate a second glance. But it wasn't always that way.
I've raised my girls in a nerd-positive environment -honestly, what choice did I have? - but I've told them of my own childhood and adolescence. Of having to conceal the things I was interested in, of having to determine who in my class outside my immediate circle of friends had similar interests. Having to find sympathetic teachers willing to let you play D&D or deploy a tabletop Starship Tactical Combat Simulator in their classroom over the lunch hour, and hoping the wrong people didn't drift in to mockingly ask how to play and express consternation at the notion that no one actually "won" role-playing games.
I mean, let's be clear - as forms of prosecution go, being teased for your interests is way down the list, and doesn't compare with being a different colour or sexual orientation from your peers. But it made things harder than they needed to be, and built in me an appreciations for them that I am unlikely to forget anytime soon.
And I wonder, what spawned that difficulty? What made that commitment to the status quo seem so pervasive at the time, so that kids, and sometimes parents and teachers, felt the need to call out people that thought or acted differently, who embraced the fantastic, who dared to use their intellect or imaginations?
And could it happen again?
This global rise in populism, the growing fear of migration, the phobic and bellicose view of not just other religions but the people who practice them, the license to not only speak in intolerant tones, but to do so publicly, loudly and proudly. People who look like our neighbours, spewing invective-filled filth about "you people" in coffee shops, waiting rooms, and street corners. Terrified people in yellow vests linking economic consequences to increased levels of immigration. Yesterday, Audrey was disappointed to discover that a fellow elementary schoolteacher has a lot of racism in her worldview and is convinced that the Muslims cause most of the problems in her school, and they are taking everything over to boot.
In Ontario, the Conservative government has rolled back the sexual education curriculum back to the 1980s, and the leader of the UCP here in Alberta is promising a similar "common-sense" and "ideology-free" approach to scholastic matters if/when he gets elected. The past couple of years seems to have had a number of people clamoring for a return to the "good old days", which I suppose they were, if you were straight, white and male, but despite being all three of those things, I still find my blood chilling at the thought of what might yet come.
Ho emboldened might these reactionaries get? Just how persecuted does the "Silent Majority" feel these days, and what sort of comeuppance might they be looking for? Will the rising tide of populism bring with it a cultural shift in what we consider "normal"?
As our society becomes more insular and austere, will fantasy and speculation become viewed as frivolous and unproductive pastimes like they once were? In a world where Avengers: Endgame is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars, it seems almost ludicrous, but remember, it's the same world where Captain Marvel is being negatively review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes. Whether this is due to the temerity of the studio for building a blockbuster action movie around a female lead or the lead actress speaking out about the need for more diversity in both filmmakers and film reviewers is immaterial.
Look, this is all speculation here, just small talk in the vestibule, and I am almost certainly overreacting here. Maybe this is all just a time-delayed response to Bill Maher's ignorant exhortation to "put away childish things" (which I thought I had circumvented by reading Peter David's brilliant response to his vitriol).
And even if there was a concerted effort to "normalize" entertainment or somehow shun those with an interest in the unusual, the internet makes it way too easy for us to not only connect and exchange ideas, but also do commerce, so it's not like I am actually worried about an Orwellian future looming just over the horizon, or having to buy polyhedral dice on the black market.
But then, three years ago, people pish-toshed the idea of Nazis being anything but a fringe element in North America, and now you have them, and people terrifyingly similar to them, marching around openly, taunting the rest of us and trying to cloak themselves in free-speech protection.
Saying "it can't happen again" is not that different from saying, "it can't happen here," and if there were more people alive from Germany in the early 1930s, they would not sadly and tell you, "that's what we thought, too."
Right here, right now, I am revelling in my time, glad to be a nerd, happy to declare it in public, grateful for far too many opportunities to spend time and money on a variety of geeky pursuits with my friends and family.
But I have to tell, you, I am kind of keeping one eye on the door at lunchtime too.
I can only speak for myself, but it feels at times that my worldview, my perspective, my collected convictions or values, whatever you want to call it, is like a lens that rests on a nearly infinite number of supporting points. Personal experiences, moral lessons, beliefs both profound and mundane, bolster the lens in some places while leaving it slack in others, leaving me with a unique and wholly imperfect, even astigmatic way of looking at the world around me.
These pillars are revisited time and time again in my experience. When discussing the foibles of youth, I am continually drawn back to a paraphrase of Mark Twain's great quote about leaving home at 17 because his father was a fool, then being surprised at how much the old boy had smartened when he returns four years later. When discussing working environments, I am very quick to share my insight that, for me at least, my happiness on the job has less to do with what I am doing, and far more with just who I am doing it with.
When it comes to matters of faith, though, one of the most prominent pillars can trace its lineage to a comic book I bought in Leduc more than 30 years ago.
The Question was a Charlton Comics character from the mind of Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. The imagery of an unpowered detective with a pronounced moral code and no facial features is probably best known outside of comics circles as being the inspiration for the Watchmen character Rorschach.
In 1987, the writer who helped redefine the modern Batman, Denny O'Neil, launched a new Question series with artist Denys Cowan. Starting with the archetype of the angry, masked inquisitor but hampering with arrogance and a lack of experience, the first issue saw Vic Sage as the titular character beaten to a pulp, bones broken, shot through the head and dumped into the river.
Saved by a combination of factors that included a low velocity bullet flattening against the outside of the skull and traversing to the other side before exiting, as well as a fortunate occurrence of the mammalian diving reflex, Sage's eventual recovery included not only training in the martial arts but a number of meditative techniques and an abundance of philosophical discussions. His mentors included established characters like Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, and new ones like Lady Shiva. Some of the discussions in an issue carried on to the letters page of The Question, which also featured a recommended reading list. Certainly this book was exploring quite a bit more than your typical "tights and fights" comic, despite being firmly established as part of the DC comics continuity.
A year into the book, O'Neil scripted a story that spanned three different annuals, larger-than-average comics featuring characters with a strong association to him: Batman (who he redeemed from camp alongside artist Neal Adams), Green Arrow (who he wrote into a series of "social conscience" stories teaming him up with Green Lantern), and the Question.
Weighing in at over a hundred page, Fables tells the the story of the O-Sensei, a legendary martial arts instructor, who trades wisdom in the form of parables to the first two characters in exchange for their assistance with an undisclosed task. That ask turns out to be escorting him and his disciple, Lady Shiva, to his estranged family so he can be buried with his wife.
On a small boat off the coast of Malaysia, Shiva is asked why it is so important for the old man to be buried with his wife.
"It is a matter of religion," she replies. When asked which religion, she says it is one he alone practises. Green Arrow chides her; "a one-man religion?" he scoffs, and I still find Shiva's response profound:
"There is no other kind."
Former io9 writer Evan Narcisse wrote about the Question chapter of Fables in his article "The One Superhero Comic I Always Read When I'm Depressed." It's a great piece that I highly recommend, but I was disappointed that he didn't reference this exchange, and I mentioned it in my comment praising the article:
Faith and religion were not a common topic of discussion in our house growing up.My own feelings on the topic were largely unpinned as I began university, but my resentment of religious bigotry and tendency towards open-mindedness had me angling more towards disbelief and agnosticism than away from it.
Shiva's response introduced to me this idea of personal religion, of a unique relationship with what one considers holy. It also underscored the difficulty inherent in all "organized" religions; this notion that our limited human perception of the infinite could somehow be linked to a 2000 year-old book and codified into a belief system that might encompass huge swathes of humanity. Judaism eventually spawns Christianity, which is in turn sundered by the Protestant reformation. Protestantism splinters into Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians. There are now tens of thousands of denominations of Christianity alone. Within my own denomination, there are disagreements on nearly every topic imaginable, from sanctifying same-sex marriages to the proper way to practice communion.
I wonder: in any congregation in the world, could the beliefs of two different people ever possibly overlap completely? Could two ministers of the same faith end up presenting the same answers all the way through a 100-question survey on belief? Any married couple, for that matter?
Intuitively, this supposition of a single-person religion makes a lot of sense. Notwithstanding aberrations like the Aryan Nations and individual hypocrisy, treating any religious group as monolithic in their beliefs is a foolish proposition. The same can be said of almost any philosophical or moral outlook, for that matter.
Could the same theory apply as well to a lack of religion? Some atheists believe faith to be dangerously foolhardy while others think it simply misinformed, and there are probably a continuum of positions in between.
Humans are fundamentally messy - capricious, mercurial and psychologically complex. A reminder to think of them as individuals first and foremost has been tremendously helpful to me over the years, and has gone a long ways to helping me keep an open mind about outlooks I might find unfamiliar or even off-putting at first. I am deeply indebted to both the clarity and focus it gives to my lens.
The idea that this flimsy piece of adventure serial, purchased for $3.50 three decades ago, could have such a pronounced effect on my outlook towards faith, religion and people, is still staggering to me. The simple exchange contained within it is one of the most pronounced pillars of my worldview. When talk of spirituality arises, or ecumencialism, or inter-faith dialogues, I find myself rocketed back to the basement room in Leduc where I assume I read that comic. I don't think a week goes by that I don't think of Shiva's five-word response to one of the deepest inquiries we can ask ourselves - what do we believe?
When I was a kid, the idea of teenage street gangs scared me. Well, they often had an undeniable appeal in their iconography, strong sense of group identity, and strength in numbers ideology, which is why I question the wisdom of including S.E., Hinton's The Outsiders in so many school curricula to this day. But now that I am a middle-aged, middle-class softie, youth gangs terrify me. I'm probably not alone in this, and it is probably what makes them such great foils in movies.
They don't always have to be the villains, though. Sometimes the protagonists of a film are a sympathetic gang, which means we will either become very familiar with a rival outfit, or, more often, we will get introduced to a dozen or more of them over the course of the film.
Either way, we've been exposed to a lot of different movie gangs over the years, so I thought it was far past time to pick out the three most intimidating. Such an exercise is obviously subjective, and I imagine one man's intimidation is another's amusement, so please feel free to add your own selections below - if I am swayed, I will update this post to reflect it.
Third Place: - The Ducky Boys from The Wanderers (1979)
Bear with me here, I realize not too many of you have seen this film - after all, the biggest names in it are Ken Wahl, Karen Allen and Olympia Dukakis. It is a little hard to describe, too: an existential coming-of-age movie set in the Bronx of 1963? Sure, let's go with that.
The titular Wanderers are one of a number of high-school club gangs drawn up along ethnic lines. In their case, it's Italians, but there are gangs of Chinese kids ("Don't f**K with the Wongs!" is one of my favourite movie quotes), black kids, and willful outsiders like the Fordham Baldys. The Ducky Boys though, they're...something else.
The Wanderers settle their beefs with other gangs with somewhat sanitized rumbles - no guns, no blades - by mutual consent. The Ducky Boys, on the other hand, are portrayed as silent, ominous (Irish?) Catholics who straight-up murder a former Wanderer with very little provocation, immediately after receiving communion.
The Wanderers arrange to play a football game against their black rivals, the Dell Bombers,to finalize and legitimize their conflict, but things go awry when the Ducky Boys show up. Shrouded in fog in one of the end zones, wearing no colours, carrying bats, boards and lengths of pipe, every time the camera cuts back to them, there numbers have increased.
Without ever expressing a reason why, or saying anything at all, actually, the Ducky Boys mob descends on everyone else, including a number of spectating gangs. It's chaos, and in a misguided display of intercultural cooperation, it turns into the Ducky Boys versus everyone.
And they kind of hold their own. I mean, the Wanderers, Dell Bombers and the Wongs are left in control of the field, but it isn't exactly a rout.
The Ducky Boys, with their silent rage, incomprehensible motivation, and ability to mobilize huge numbers at the apparent drop of a hat earn them third place on this list.
Second Place: The Gramercy Riffs from The Warriors (1979)
Since this influential film depicts 23 distinct street gangs and casually mentions the existence of over a hundred, you have to figure one of them would make the top three, right?
But if you are familiar with the movie, maybe you're thinking, "Why not the heroes? And if not them, why not the Baseball Furies?" Fair questions; here is my rationale.
First of all, the Warriors are sympathetic, which actual hampers them in terms of intimidation. They are the good guys, and despite being a street gang in a pseudo-cyberpunk New York of tomorrow (by way of the late seventies), their focus on getting back to Coney Island means that they spend almost no time doing intimidating or even illegal activities. (Wait, maybe vandalism, but still.) The Warriors spend almost the entirety of the film on the run, except for a couple of fights where they defend themselves long enough to keep running.
As to the Baseball Furies, there is no question that they look intimidating, as Halloween photos from my junior high school can attest. But when they come up against the Warriors, it seems like they are "more show than go," as they say, as the protagonists fight their way through with only a single casualty.
Now the Riffs, on the other hand, are quite the opposite. Remember, Cyrus, whose Central Park gang Summit and subsequent assassination kicks off the story, was the Riff's leader, giving them even more motivation than the other gangs to find the Warriors, wrongfully blamed. Clearly exerting some degree of authority over even other independent clubs, the Gramercy Riffs coordinate the search for the Warriors, declaring their desire for a live capture and using a complicit disc jockey to coordinate their efforts with covert messages over the airwaves.
Most terrifying of all, every time they are shown onscreen, the Riffs most prominent attribute is discipline. Their leadership is respected and obeyed without question.
Where other gangs are little more than mobs, the Riffs have a clear organizational structure, and would appear to have squads and squad leaders who partake in large scale martial arts training.
Their discipline, esprit de corps and no-nonsense attitude are summarized by the synchronized delivery of their rallying cry, "YEAH, RIGHT."
At the end of the movie, when Masai and the Riffs realize the Warriors are simply patsies, they descend en masse (and very quickly) to Coney Island, where they ruthlessly, and still very quietly, remove the real villains (and fashion victims), the Rogues.
This combination of youthful zeal and iron discipline make the Gramercy Riffs the second most intimidating gang in this short list.
It is not secret that I regard this film very highly, considering it the best action film of the 21st century to date, and the fact that contractual shenanigans are preventing us from getting a sequel is nothing short of criminal. But is it fair to consider this mob of pasty, largely faceless antagonists as the most intimidating youth gang? And are they even really a gang?
As far as the latter point goes, I shall waste no time on the semantic distinctions between "gang" and "cult," but will concede there is considerable overlap in both real life and this film. For my purposes, a group of young characters who embrace a uniform appearance to signify their inclusion in a group they perceive as elite, who seek to legitimize their most extreme behaviour to each other, and conduct mayhem at the drop of a hat can certainly be considered a gang as far as this list is concerned.
In terms of intimidation, there are a number of factors in play. First, like the Riffs, they have a structure and show considerable discipline. During the attack by the Buzzards in their spiky cars on the War Rig, they display tremendous coordination, shouting commands and tactics to one another.
They coordinate their attacks, focusing on an exposed hydraulic at one point, cascading a series of explosive projectiles at another, raining them down in sequence like pyromaniac whalers out of Moby Dick.
And although we never really see the Riffs put to the test, what sets the War Boys apart is their fanaticism. Knowing that irradiation and a host of other factors have left them with shortened lifespans, and believing that death in service will see them exalted in the afterlife, the War Boys are capable of amazing feats, even when mortally wounded.
Their fearlessness and zeal doesn't leave them as robots, either - they display creativity in the field, improvising attacks with rocks or grenades as needed, or counterbalancing a vehicle like a catamaran in order to compensate for a lost wheel.
Immortan Joe has taken the idea of the youth gang to perhaps its ultimate expression, and built a culture and religion around it, turning the chassis and engines of the old world into mythical steeds of the wastelands, mounts for his War Boys in their reckless drive for glory.
Agree? Disagree? That's what comment sections are for!
