So Shut Your Mouth, It's Time To Dance

I defy anyone to formulate a rational argument against this song. Seriously, is this not the catchiest thing you've heard in forever? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it must be really nice to get paid crazy money to make fun little pop songs like this for a living.

And on that note, there's some new Stuff over in the sidebar.

The Song is "The City's Summer," by The Honorary Title. This is one of the few good songs I've discovered through Last.fm. Which reminds me- if you can listen to internet radio at work, I highly recommend signing up for Last.fm, and typing in your favorite stand-up comic. It's pretty awesome getting to work while listening to Eddie Izzard bits.

The Album is New Wave, by Against Me!. Again, I've mentioned this album before, but it bears mentioning again, because it's pretty darn good. It's also the perfect length for my drive to and from work.

And The Book is American Pastoral, by Philip Roth. Apparently, Roth is another one of those authors who won't do interviews, one of the reclusive guys. That seems like such a cliche by now. It's fine for the guys who really go the distance with it- your Thomas Pynchons, your JD Salingers- but the ones who are just mostly reclusive, but still do the occasional interview, that's just silly. Quit taking yourselves so seriously, people.

Vote For Me, 'Cuz The Other Guy Might Get Shot!

Holy crap.

That video right there is Hillary Clinton explaining why she hasn't bowed out of the nomination race yet. Here's her answer, in print:

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

Did she seriously just almost say she's staying in the race in case Obama gets shot? And now that she's said this, what happens if Obama really does get shot? Will she be able to hide her Smirk Of Victory during her somber memorial/acceptance speech?

Of course, her campaign claims she was simply reminding us that the nomination race was still going in '68, when Bobby Kennedy was shot. Because that's a reasonable excuse. I suppose we're supposed to forget for the moment that the '68 race was only 3 months old when Kennedy died, and that it was a three-way race at that point with no clear front-runner, so maybe it's not really comparable (like, at all) to the current situation.

You know, up until now, I'd bought into the general consensus that Clinton was staying in it to re-establish the Clinton brand (ie, set herself up for 2012), and to ease the Party's transition into unified support for Obama, and all that nonsense, but now I just think she's gone batshit crazy like Bill. Which is good, because it revives my hope that the Convention this summer will be nuts. I want a circus, people- MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Snackr

I just downloaded this program called Snackr, and it's awesome.

Basically, it adds a news ticker to your desktop (I actually have mine at the top of the screen), pulling stories from whatever RSS feeds you want it to. You can also import an OPML file of all your subscriptions from any online feed reader, like GReader. It's even nice and pretty, though it does require you to install Adobe Air.

I suppose it may end up irritating me to have it there, and I may also decide it takes up too much screen space to be worth it, but for now it's pretty nifty. Highly recommended, especially if you have a ton of RSS feeds that you like to keep an eye on.

Party Time

This is my weekend, so here's a five minute party for all of you.

Close the door, and turn the volume up. Then party. Repeat as necessary.

Indiana Jones And The Inordinate Influence Of George Lucas

I'm pretty sure everybody has already decided whether or not they're going to go see the new Indiana Jones, so there's really not much use in actually "reviewing" it. If you like Indiana Jones movies, you'll probably go see it. And since I imagine a lot of people fall into that group, I don't want to go throwing potential spoilers out there.

So let me just say this: It is overwhelmingly obvious which plot points came from the mind of George Lucas, and every single one of those plot points is stupid. Like, really stupid. It's a fun movie, and it gets all the good Indiana Jones stuff in there, but there are also a lot of "WTH?!" moments, and every one of them has 'Lucas' childishly scrawled across it in red crayon.

I wish somebody would pony up a couple billion dollars to bribe all the studios not to allow George Lucas anywhere near movie production ever again. The guy is seriously out of control.

do do doop do doop da dum

Thanks, Adam Riff, for reminding me of this Mariah Carey song. Thanks a lot.

I haven't really paid attention to American Idol this season, and by "haven't really," I mean "not at all." I only know there's two Davids in the finals because it's all over the lovely internets. So I had no idea one of those Davids covered that song at some point.

Man, talk about a nostalgia trip. That came out sometime around sixth grade, as I recall, and I listened that CD to death. That one, and the Boyz II Men album that everybody had back then, were my first two CDs, in fact.

Clearly I had pretty lame taste in music, but I was only 11. I can't be blamed.

Oh man! Wikipedia just told me that this song was succeeded by "Tha Crossroads" by Bone Thugz & Harmony! I do believe that was the first Parental Advisoried album I ever bought (of course, I got the Wal-Marted version, so no curse words for me). That's still a good song, too.

That's Not How Grown Men Should Sit

Apparently Bill hates his right foot, and punishes it by crushing it with his left foot.

Die, foot, die!

Image originally from Deadspin.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

I like to think that I can write reasonably well. I mean, technically I get paid to write now (whoo hoo!), but even before that, I liked to think that I could communicate rather effectively with the written word.

And, I even like to think that, if I actually stopped being lazy, I could probably write a halfway decent novel. I may be horribly wrong, because, after all, all white people think they can be writers, but I'm white, and I like to flatter myself, so I, too, think I could write something decent.

Most books, especially books written nowadays, I consider within my range of abilities. That sounds really arrogant, I know. I'm not saying that I could write as well as anybody out there, but most books seem pretty achievable. Take High Fidelity, for example. I love that book. It's very good. But it's not 'Epic.' I'm pretty sure I could at least conceive of a book like that, that I could come up with a story and a message of that scope, and that I could at least come close to communicating it reasonably well.

Perhaps it would be less arrogant to put it this way: I can see how Nick Hornby produced a book like that. I can understand how a person could get to that story, could put it down on paper, and could have it come out that well. In fact, most created things are like that- even when they're good, they somehow seem achievable. I love American Beauty, but I can also see how somebody could come up with it.

But then, sometimes, there's something that's not just unimaginably good, but is so epic in its scope that I just can't wrap my head around how a single person could produce it. The first book that I distinctly remember getting this impression from was East Of Eden. The story is almost simple on its face, but there's so much depth, and the book communicates so much about humanity, that when I finished it, I simply couldn't imagine writing something comparable.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude is exactly like that. The story is so big, and touches on so much, that I just can't imagine conceiving of it, never mind conceiving of it and then actually communicating it so well.

I know this sounds like an arrogant way to gauge literature. It sounds like I'm saying I could write as well as all but the greatest of authors, but I'm not. There's a lot that goes into producing a good novel, and I have no idea if I could actually do it (though, like I said, I like to think I could). But I can see how somebody else could write most books. I can even imagine doing it. I can't even imagine producing something as epic and beautiful as One Hundred Years Of Solitude, or East Of Eden, though. They're just inhumanly great.

Next Up: American Pastoral, by Philip Roth. I'm tempted to start In Search Of Lost Time, but it's made up of 7 books (seven! and two of them are in two volumes each!), and I only have the first (Swann's Way). I should at least know when I'll be buying the second, because I'd like to read the whole thing contiguously. It is, after all, the "definitive Modern novel."

Also, I came across this list a few minutes ago- a book critic called up 125 of the greatest authors alive, and asked them for their all-time 10 greatest books list. He then boiled it down to an ultimate Top 10, and here it is:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

To my shame, I've only read three of those. But, fortunately for me, I possess six of the remaining seven (I'm only missing Anna Karenina, but come to think of it, I'd actually like to get a different translation of War & Peace). I don't really see how Huck Finn made it- either of Steinbeck's two big books would have been better choices- but it's still an interesting list.

And at least it's not as stupid as The Modern Library's Readers' Top Ten, which is almost too ridiculous to merit criticism.

Serious Business

Science has gone and created The Greatest Song Of All Time.

Thanks, science.

Science also created The Worst Song Of All Time a few weeks ago, in which some lady Opera-raps the lyrics, "Philosophy itself is nonsense."

Seriously.

Nobody Hates Sex And The City, Right? ...Right?

"Probably the greatest benefit of the show is that no one really hates us, which is very rare. I've been doing [TV] for a long time and it's rare that you don't have someone who [says], 'Oh, I hate that show. That show's terrible.' Everyone has friends like these people or favorite episodes or feel that they are these people. So there's never an unkind word really ever said to us, which is awesome. It's probably the only job I've ever had that's like that."
-Willie Garrison, Sex And The City

Um, really?

Let's Talk About Sex

Not surprisingly, the Gray Lady (side note: that's a really lame nickname, even for a newspaper) has already published a story about how sexist it is that Hillary lost is going to lose the nomination.

Because it's not that she's a heinously untrustworthy slime ball who doesn't really have any qualifications that make her any better suited to be President than a dozen other Senators and Governors. Nor is it the ineptitude of a campaign that somehow failed to turn the most powerful brand name in Democratic politics into a nomination. Nor is it her tendency to make shit up on the campaign trail. Nope, it was definitely just because she's a woman.

It's going to be incredibly painful, if McCain somehow, against all odds, does end up winning in November, to sit through all the Monday morning quarterbacking about how it was all about race. And not, you know, qualifications.

PS. It's really difficult to pick just one photo of Hillary Clinton for a blog post. There are just so many good ones available. I could have chosen this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one (caution: it's gross), or this one, or this one, or the grandaddy of them all. The options are almost limitless.

PPS. Feel free to suggest a caption for the photo I ended up choosing. It looks kinda like Barack's having a hard time swallowing. Or maybe he's just concentrating on not smacking her.

Unaffiliated

I told you guys about the gallons of soda we have in the office, but I forgot the even greater foresight the kitchen stockers have shown by tucking five or six boxes of travel-sized packets of Excedrin, Tylenol, Advil, Aspirin, and so on in one of the cupboards. So not only do they provide unhealthy levels of caffeine and sugar, but they're prepared for the inevitable caffeine headaches, too. Nice.
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You know what's a good show? Weeds. Weeds is a really good show.

Reading about it online, though, I found out two awesome cast facts. Elizabeth Perkins is in it, and I knew she looked familiar, but I couldn't figure out why until I realized she was in Big! Great movie. And the little kid in the show, Alexander Gould, voiced Nemo in Finding Nemo! Also a pretty great movie.

Plus, Mary-Louise Parker rules at everything. So, really, Weeds can't fail.
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The more you think about it, the less it makes sense to bleep out curse words. I mean, it's one thing to censor some ridiculously profane rap song, but when the chorus of a song is "You're Such A ****ing Hypocrite," I think everybody can figure out what he's saying. If bleeping it out doesn't change the fact that we all know what word was said there, does the bleeping really help anyone?

I know it's supposed to protect kids and all, but these days the average 9 year-old has probably seen more porn online than the entire population of Michigan. He, or she, knows the word "fuck." He, or she, uses that word. Prolifically. And probably in more creative ways than any adult does.
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Last.fm isn't really all that great.
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I've realized that a significant motivating factor behind the fact that I'm going to vote for McCain is my desperate hope that, once he's in office and doesn't have to expend so much energy motivating his "base," he'll go back to being the guy he was eight years ago, when he should have won in the first place.

I'm sick of the bullshit the people who've highjacked the Republican party have forced every candidate to kowtow to. McCain used to be awesome, and I just keep telling myself that he's just going through the motions to get into office, so he can go back to being awesome. I also just read today that Bloomberg is on his VP shortlist, and if there is a God, then Bloomberg will be on the ticket. I say screw the base, you guys picked Bush over McCain and fucked everything up, so you don't get a vote any more. Go to the back of the classroom and shut up.
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What's with Huckabee making a joke about Obama getting assassinated? I'm not even talking about how ridiculously offensive it is- did you read the joke itself? Here it is:

[loud noise] "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."

Okay, how is that supposed to be humorous? I can only guess that, since he was talking to the NRA, he was trying to imply that Obama is unfamiliar with guns, and therefore overreacted to the sight of one, or something. But that's stupid. First off, Obama's got Secret Service protection, so if anybody were to pull a gun on him, he'd be on the floor anyway because he'd be (gently, of course) tackled by half a dozen dudes in black suits. But even if that weren't the case, is it really so ridiculous for a person to dive to the ground when faced with a gun? Because, I hate to break it to you Mike, but you can bet your ass I'd be diving behind anything I could find if somebody pulled a gun on me.

Furthermore, even if we acknowledge that that would be an overreaction for a normal person, wouldn't it be shockingly irresponsible for a guy who's got a 50/50 chance of being the next Commander In Chief not to dive to the ground? I mean, the dude might be President in eight months. He shouldn't be going all Harrison-Ford-in-Air-Force-One when a crazy dude charges the green room with an Uzi. McCain literally turned down his torturers' offer to let him go, and I'd bet that even he'd dive to the floor if you pulled a gun on him these days. And if he didn't, he'd be a dumbass. Sit down, John, and let the men in black kick the guy's ass for you.

This is why Huckabee really can't be on the ticket, John. Because, not only does he make offensive jokes, but he wastes the offensiveness by making bad offensive jokes. If you're going to disregard propriety, by all means go for it, but at least be funny when you do it. Jeez.
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Stephen Colbert provided the front-cover review for Michael Ian Black's new book, My Custom Van. I really, really hope that's an indication that, one day soon, Black is going to be a guest on The Colbert Report. I don't know if I could handle the overwhelming awesomeness of a conversation between those two, but I'm ready to find out.

Also, Michael Ian Black's blog is hilarious.

Cray Zee

Some dude named Blu put together this animation by painting on walls. It's pretty weird, but ridiculously nifty.

Dedication

Consider the time, the many, many hours, nay, days, this young man spent on his costume.

Consider the expenses he incurred to construct it. Imagine what type of job a young man such as this is likely to have, and consider then how much of his paycheck was devoted to this endeavor. Consider the sacrifices he must have made to dedicate so much of his income to it.

And, finally, consider the fact that this project was invariably either scorned or praised by his social group. If scorned, then this young man was so committed to his plan, so dedicated to his goal, that he was willing to cast off the shackles of human contact to accomplish it. If, however, his social group praised and encouraged him, consider then the social circles this young man has attached himself to, a grouping which would, en masse, consider the time and money spent on such a project not only reasonable, but admirable.

Vadar Goes Bluegrass

At first, watching this, you're going to be bored. You're going to be mere seconds away from saying "Eh, this is lame," and clicking away to something new and exciting. Don't.

Wait for it...

This Is When The World Will End.

There's not much time.

The Roof! The Roof! The Roof Is On Fire!

So, part of my job involves editing transcripts of network news shows. Those transcripts are initially done by, I think, a robot or something, and there tend to be a few typos.

This, however, was far and away the best typo of the day-

"A wigger fire in Brevard County has led officials to shut down a seven-mile stretch of I-95 because of heavy smoke over the roadway."

Gotta watch out for them wiggers. They be settin' fires like whoa. I heard inhaling that smoke will make Aqua Teen: Hunger Force really start to make sense, though.

In Which A Traitor To Black People Makes An Appearance

First, they announce they really are doing a Boondock Saints sequel, and now they're saying they really are doing a Donnie Darko sequel. Seriously, about four and a half years ago, this would have been the best news ever.

I like that media companies are starting to recognize the things that people like, and are willing to give the people more of those things. It's generally, though not always, better than asking a committee to write a new Eddie-Murphy-In-A-Fat-Suit movie (side note: best graffiti I've ever seen in person? "Eddie Murphy Is A Traitor To Black People" scrawled over a Norbit ad- such a serious criticism of such an absolutely banal movie).

However, can't the media companies get a little faster at it? It took four and a half years to bring Futurama back, three years for Family Guy (counting from the second time it got canceled), nine years just to greenlight the Boondock Saints sequel (and, let's be honest, I'm still not sure they mean it), and now six years to greenlight the Donnie Darko sequel. Seriously, folks, you knew Donnie Darko was popular back when you released the Director's Cut almost three years ago. By now, all the college kids who drove up DVD sales have moved on to Linklater and Aronofsky, and no longer care about cellar doors or dudes in track suits.

Which brings me to complaint number two: Donnie Darko may be a pretty flawed movie, and one which turns out to be rather pointless once you unravel the rats' nest it weaves, but it's still astoundingly consistent in its complications. Sure, people have gone way overboard in analyzing it, but unlike most products of popular culture these days, Donnie Darko actually lives up to the scrutiny. It may be a whole lot of sound and/or fury signifying nothing, but at least the sound turns out to be coherent.

But now they're making a sequel without the guy who made the first one? So, we're basically going to get Final Destination 7, and it'll come out a solid four years too late for anybody to care. Nice job.

Post-Script: This was originally going to be a little blurb in one of my lazy, conglomerated posts, but I ended up rambling a bit. Sorry.

Feeds And Bugs

Apparently, someone just now got around to fixing a Unix bug that has been in the code since August, 1983. What's going to be funny is when they find out that they knew about the bug back in '83, but figured fixing it would cause bigger problems than the bug itself.

Anyway, this does give hope to everybody that, if you just keep emailing them, tech support will eventually get around to helping you out.

In unrelated news, which might not even be news, really, I thought I'd link to a couple RSS feeds that I particularly enjoy.

The first is one which I just discovered today, Ommatidia, which is a site where a guy named Brendan Atkins posts a 101-word story every weekday. It's pretty excellent.

Then, Slate does a couple of feeds that are particularly good. The Explainer does just what it sounds like it does- it explains things that are in the news. So, recently, they've explained whether a skull can really be used as a bong (answer: probably not), and how newspapers decide whether to call it Burma or Mynamar (answer: flip a coin), and so on. Each article is pretty concise, too, but they don't come out with one every day.

And The Undercover Economist kind of does what that Freakonomics guy does- apply various economics theories to various aspects of life and politics. That sounds boring, but again, each article is pretty concise, so it actually turns out to be pretty interesting. Like the article about why prices don't always go up when supply goes down- I never thought about it, but basic economics says Wii shortages should cause the price of the Wii to go up. However, like The Explainer, this isn't an every day feed.

Slate has a gazillion other RSS feeds, so they probably have some other good ones, too, if you feel like looking.

The other feed I wanted to recommend is New York Magazine's Vulture. They manage to spin a very bizarre balance between respectability and juvenality (that's not even a word), and it works. Anyway, they're my favorite of the pop culture blogs, at least among the ones I've checked out so far.

Reasons To Like My Employer

It sure is nice when a company recognizes the needs of its employees.

As I said, I work some wacky hours now. Everyone, or almost everyone, at the company does. It's because the stuff we produce has to be distributed by the time normal people get to work.

Now, according to the company directory, there are just under fifty people working for this company at the moment. They're growing, but right now it's still a pretty small company. And maybe ten of those people are administrative folks, or tech support guys, or the executives who actually run the thing. Oh, and some people work from home, too. Which leaves, say, 35ish people who are working at silly hours.

And for those 35ish people, this company provides all the caffeine we could possibly want. There are currently about 50 12-packs of soda in the break room, plus a couple 2-liter bottles of Cherry Coke. We have every kind of soda you could want, and yes, that even includes Orange Fanta. There are easily a dozen varieties of soda in there, and that's on top of the dozen or so varieties of coffee and tea that are available (we have one of those single-serve coffee makers).

The only thing they don't have, and it's a bit odd that they don't, is Red Bull. I suppose, once you get used to these hours, you shouldn't need energy drinks, but still. A dozen varieties of soda, another dozen of coffee, and no energy drinks?

This sure is going to throw a wrench in my plan to cut out soda again, though.

Another thing I love about this company- they'll give anyone a second monitor if you ask for one. And even better than that, they don't just plug the monitor in, which would be enough in XP. They use this nifty little program, which, among other things, lets you use different wallpapers for each monitor. Whoo hoo! Finally, I get to use these wallpapers! Talk about cheap thrills.

Mrs. Clinton, As Played By Hitler

Poor, poor Hillary.

Coolest Music Video Ever

The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the UK, couldn't afford to shoot a music video. So, instead of hiring a film crew, they played their song in front of a bunch of the now-famous security cameras watching over Manchester. They then contacted the security companies who operate the cameras, and requested the footage under the Freedom Of Information Act, and got enough footage back to edit together a video.

That's pretty ingenious. And it's probably the only useful thing to come from the CCTV cameras, since they're pretty much incapable of reducing crime. Plus, the song's not half bad.

Moneymoneymoney! Muh-Ney!

So, how about that superhero post, eh? That one ran on a bit long. Ah well, I haven't babbled on like that in a while.

In other news, welcome to my weekend! I just finished working 7 days in a row, which isn't really all that much for most people, but which sure felt like a lot coming off of a few months of unemployment. Today is actually my Sunday, which is a bummer. Weekends sure do fly by when they stop being 200 days long.

But now that I have a job, I have to do all that other adult stuff. You know, like finding a place to live. And in finding a place to live, I've been trying to plan out my monthly budget, and I have to say, all that arithmetic is starting to break my philosophy-addled mind. I wasn't built to deal with numbers.

It would help if federal income taxes weren't so wacky. I mean, I'm a 22 year-old single guy. You would think it'd be pretty straightforward to figure out how much of my money the government is going to remove from my paycheck before I even see it. But nooooooo, they have to use all this voodoo math to keep it a secret. It's times like these that make the Fair Tax seem like such a good idea.

But while taxes suck, 401(k)s are pretty nifty. Of course, mine would be niftier if my employer matched it, but whatever. That said, it still strikes me as pretty weird that I'm going to have a 401(k) in a few months. Seriously. It's just so... grown-up.

While I'm talking about money, I highly recommend setting up a Mint account. Mint is awesome. It takes a couple minutes to set the whole thing up, and it immediately gives you all these pretty charts and graphs showing you where your money is going, and it even points out places where you can save some money (for example, it gave me a list of savings accounts that get a higher interest rate than my current one, which apparently gets a pretty awful interest rate). Plus, it's free. You can't beat free.

The Final Tally: Iron Man vs. Batman Begins

Ever since, and perhaps even shortly before, Iron Man's release, there has been a slowly percolating discussion on these here interwebz over whether it or Batman Begins is the best superhero movie in recent memory, and arguably ever. As I was trying to fall asleep just now, I began compiling the possible arguments for both sides, and decided it just might make a decent blog post. Thus, we arrive at this:

Cultural Ubiquity

Clearly, the popularity of the character before the movie's release has some effect on the movie's success. Superheroes are all about creating mythologies, and the more ingrained a character is in the culture, the more powerful that mythology becomes. And while Iron Man is certainly popular, Batman is far more pervasive. This is not necessarily Iron Man's fault- partly it is because there have been so many Batman movies, and partly it is because there are simply so many other famous Marvel characters, but ultimately it doesn't matter. Everybody knows who Batman is, allowing the movie to cash in on that pre-existing mythos.

Result: Batman Begins +1

Hero Appeal

This is difficult to gauge because it is such a subjective value. Fortunately for our purposes, the two characters are very similar, and much of their appeal derives from similar characteristics. Both are wealthy men who make themselves into superheroes. Both are, to some extent, "anti-heroes," due to a variety of personal demons. And whereas Bruce Wayne can be criticized for being too depressing and invariably dark, Tony Stark can be criticized for frequently being a douchebag. Batman is probably more popular than Iron Man, but this has more to do with the aforementioned cultural ubiquity than with some aspect of his character (though, it could be argued that those two things can't be so easily separated).

Result: Draw

Villain Appeal

While the movies come to a draw in Hero Appeal largely because both characters are so good, here both movies are in a dead heat because all four villains are so lame. In Batman Begins, we have Ra's al Ghul, an awesome-in-theory villain who comes off as pretty monotonous in the movie, and Scarecrow, who is transparently a throw-away villain added to provide a paper target for Batman. Meanwhile, in Iron Man we have Raza, a character based on The "also-awesome-in-theory" Mandarin, who is never really given an opportunity to be awesome, and Obadiah Stane, a cookie-cutter bad guy that we all know is going to lose in the end.

Result: Draw

Lead Actor Pedigree

Here we have another close race. On the one hand, Robert Downey Jr. is an actor who, due to both his acting ability and his persona in the media, brings an authenticity to the character that few other actors could possibly bring. On the other hand, Christian Bale, though comparatively new to acting, had, by carefully choosing his roles, quickly earned a reputation as a thoroughly talented and committed actor by the time Batman Begins came out. Ultimately, Downey brings an established persona which was vital to the effectiveness of his character, whereas Bale brought a fresh perspective and the acting chops necessary to revitalize a stale franchise.

Result: Draw

Supporting Cast Pedigree

Well, here we clearly don't have a draw. While Gwyneth Paltrow soundly defeats Katie Holmes in the Supporting Lady race, the one-two punch of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman thrashes everybody else in Iron Man. A post-credit cameo from Samuel L. Jackson certainly gives Iron Man a little extra juice, but ultimately Caine and Freeman just bring too much to the table.

Result: Batman Begins +1

Sheer Awesomeness: Battles

Now we enter what are arguably the four most important categories for any superhero movie- the sheer awesomeness of the spectacle it presents. First up, the fight scenes. Again, we have a close race, and again, it comes down to personal preference. The fight scenes in Batman Begins are generally more low-key than those in Iron Man, but they are also more realistic. It's a bit like watching the Bourne movies- sure, it's less flashy than the typical action flick, but the knowledge that it is (slightly) more realistic gives it a grittiness and brutality that is appealing. That said, it's hard to argue against battles between two dudes in flying robotic suits who can blow each other up.

Result: Batman Begins +1, but only because everybody left that theater thinking "Damn, that guy was way more bad-ass than I remember."

Sheer Awesomeness: Gadgets

As previously noted, the appeal for both characters is due largely to their self-made nature, and in being self-made, both dudes need some serious gadgetry to become all super-ed up. But, while Batman's stuff is all pretty nifty, there's really no comparison. Iron Man's suit is quite possibly the coolest gadget in any movie, ever, and the very fact that such a case can even be made gives it the win here.

Result: Iron Man +1

Sheer Awesomeness: Visuals

Comparing the two movies visually is almost unfair, because their aesthetics heavily favor Iron Man in terms of awesomeness. Batman Begins is dark, gritty, and realistic, and therefore the visuals are much more understated. It's still a popcorn action movie, but it isn't anywhere near as flashy as Iron Man. That said, Iron Man isn't just empty flash- it is legitimately amazing to watch. The effects are spectacular, and somehow never seem forced or over-wrought. Iron Man is just flat-out awesome to watch.

Result: Iron Man +2 (Yeah, it's that good)

Sheer Awesomeness: Humor

Ultimately a superhero movie is just a different kind of mass appeal blockbuster, and as such it should bring some bonus entertainment value above and beyond the requisite action and mythology. That generally means it should make the audience laugh a few times, often enough to make them enjoy themselves, but not so blatantly or frequently as to be shameless. In this case, Iron Man clearly wins again, though, again, this is not entirely Batman's fault. The characters and stories are simply different on a fundamental level, and that creates better opportunity for humor in Iron Man. It should be pointed out, though, that the humor in Iron Man is perfectly measured out, and never seems out of place or unnecessary.

Result: Iron Man +1

Dramatic Depth

I think we all know who has to win this one. But, if points are to be awarded for comedy, points must also be awarded for drama. And, again, Batman Begins has the advantage of having more dramatic material to work with, due to both the story itself and the fact that the filmmakers could bank on their audience knowing the story coming in, allowing them to subtly build off of that pre-existing knowledge to generate greater depth. Iron Man does perform admirably in this category, but dramatic depth is ultimately the calling card of the Batman franchise.

Result: Batman Begins +1

Final Tally
Batman Begins: 4
Iron Man: 4

What a shocker, it's a tie.

Ultimately, both movies are pretty terrific, and both have strengths in certain areas where the other film is slightly weaker. Batman Begins has greater cultural weight and dramatic depth behind it, whereas Iron Man is more spectacular and purely entertaining to watch. And neither is particularly weak in any respect, other than their dual failures to present even a single, truly great villain. Which means that a case can be made that either is the greatest superhero movie, depending on what values one chooses to emphasize- does one want a movie that entertains and amazes, or does one want a movie that attempts to go a bit "deeper?" I suppose it's not terribly ground-breaking to make this distinction, but it's a distinction that needs to be made anyway.

One footnote to this debate, however: Using these categories, I think the popular prediction that The Dark Knight will defeat both of these movies remains a pretty safe prediction to make.