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Spider-Man, Spider-Man /
Use His Face in a Frying Pan
Williams-Sonoma is selling a Marvel Spider-Man Flexible Spatula.
How freaking awesome is that?
I just recently got one as a gift, along with a Spider-Man Cupcake-Decorating Kit. The latter is no longer available from the Williams-Sonoma website; neither is the Marvel Heroes Cupcake-Decorating Kit featuring Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I’m
Après le Déluge
Bryan Walsh contributed a good piece on Hurricane Sandy to last week’s issue of Time.
He details Sandy’s effects but also suggests how to prepare as storms like Sandy — a hurricane turned post-tropical cyclone after merging with the Arctic jet stream to form a hybrid nor’easter that some dubbed “Frankenstorm” — become a fact of life in what (most rational minds now agree) is an era of consequential climate change.
I’ve felt a bit of survivor’s guilt over Sandy, to be honest.
My home in the Philadelphia suburbs lost power for maybe 30 seconds total on the night the storm hit — going dark just long enough the final time to convince me that several days without electricity lay ahead, since it would take so long for crews to work safely and get to everybody, only to pop back on with nary a complication thereafter. Lots of areas nearby had it much worse. I got to watch news coverage on a television
in a lit room while checking E-mail.
The Jersey shore, especially to the north, and New York City got hit worst of all. NJ Governor Chris Christie — whose politics I don’t always agree with but whose attitude I can’t help appreciate — was right to evacuate the barrier islands; residents ignored him, and Mayor Bloomberg in NYC, at their peril. Hurricane Irene not wreaking the havoc that was feared last year was no excuse for failing to take Sandy seriously this time around.
Sandy ended up making the “hard left” (i.e., pivoting West) that meteorologists predicted — despite never having seen a storm act that way before — a mite sooner than earlier estimates. Its center made landfall between Cape May, the southernmost point in New Jersey, and Atlantic City. The Wildwoods, a 5-mile island above Cape May where I used to live, were along with immediate neighbors largely spared because it’s the northern walls of Eastern Seaboard hurricanes that are harshest due to counter-clockwise motion pulling water in from the ocean. My stepmother teaches in North Wildwood and was back at work by the end of last week. Atlantic City, by contrast, lost sections of its boardwalk, and northern areas up to Long Beach Island — vacation spots for New Yorkers rather than Philadelphians (as well as, of course, home to plenty of year-round residents) — were absolutely devastated. Heavy rain during high tides is always a problem for the barrier islands because the ground is so easily saturated. Flooding is inevitable with a storm far less massive than Sandy was, and when the ocean meets the western bays there’s nowhere left for the water to go.
To recap, then, where I live now we lost no power, unlike my cousins just a few miles away; places that I love like family — those of you with strong geographical ties know what I mean — were hit much harder yet still relatively unscathed. I not only survived the storm fine in practical terms but dodged a real psychic bullet when the beach and boardwalk that are my favorite spots on Earth weren’t wrecked like their brethren further up the coastline.
I donated much less than I wish I could to relief efforts. The Red Cross and Operation USA can use whatever you can afford.
House of the Rising Moon
NBC ran the pilot for Mockingbird Lane, Bryan Fuller’s revamp of The Munsters, last Friday. At this writing you can still watch it via that link.
I took in the hour-long episode as a Halloween treat after hearing positive word. The premise and talent involved definitely had me curious, despite rebooting or reimagining a familiar property for TV being a dicey prospect (Battlestar Galactica at one recent extreme, Wonder Woman at the other). Even after it was passed over for this season, Lane apparently had an outside shot at being picked up for 2013 if it turned out to be an October surprise. I’m not sure that a 1.5 rating/5 share in the 18-49 demo, 5.47 million viewers overall, is enough to do the trick but this was a Friday on a tentatively resurgent network.
Anyway, I’d like to see more.
While the original 1964-66 Munsters was a childhood staple in reruns, I’ve never watched the various spinoffs or revivals. Mockingbird Lane not only recast the parts; unlike the 1988-91 sequel series The Munsters Today it reworked the nuances within the familiar broad strokes of the concept. Its pilot introduces the Munster family as if for the first time, with Marilyn finding the perfect residence for herself, cousin Eddie, his mom Lily, his father Herman, and Grandpa in the form of a condemned mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Mockingbird Heights, California (I think). The Munsters need to relocate thanks to the unfortunate side effects of Eddie, unaware that he’s a werewolf, going through puberty: During the full moon he wreaks havoc on a scout-troop camping trip.
Grandpa is slightly desiccated thanks to no longer “drinking” — a habit that he threatens to resume — and Herman does have visible scars, yet the family otherwise nearly looks as normal as Marilyn, the non-supernatural black sheep. Mason Cook’s Eddie doesn’t have the fangs, pointed ears, or widow’s peak of jet-black hair sported by Butch Patrick; Jerry O’Connell’s Herman lacks the flat head and neck bolts worn by Fred Gwynne in parody of the creature played by Boris Karloff in Universal’s Frankenstein movies.
I found O’Connell as Herman to be the pilot’s weak link. Perhaps due to O’Connell’s passing resemblance to Jason Bateman and the presence of the divine Portia de Rossi (so perfect a foil of Bateman’s in Arrested Development) gone brunette as Lily Munster, I kept expecting O’Connell to have Bateman’s subtle charisma and bite. The show would’ve done better to cast the pilot’s pivotal guest star Cheyenne Jackson as Herman and retain a smidgen of the galumphing puppy-dog feel that Gwynne brought to the original Munsters. Eddie Izzard as Grandpa was similarly poles apart from the beloved Al Lewis, but in ways that worked. For me the big surprise was a certain indescribable tartness brought to the role of Marilyn by unknown Charity Wakefield.
Mockingbird Lane came with a pedigree that frankly outclassed its source material. Bryan Fuller, who developed it and wrote the pilot, is the creator of Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies as well as the co-creator of the too-short-lived Wonderfalls. This pilot was directed by Bryan Singer, famous for The Usual Suspects and the first two X-Men films, less so for Superman Returns. Guillermo Navarro, frequent collaborator of Guillermo del Toro (including on Pan’s Labyrinth, a personal favorite), served as the pilot’s cinematographer. I wish that I could say that the pilot was at least the sum of its impressive parts, but honestly I was underwhelmed. And yet the pilot did its job, because I genuinely want to see where the series would go from here and I’m sorry
that I probably won’t get to.
Did you watch Mockingbird Lane, and if so, what did you think?
Related: A Curious Case of Bedrooms and Buttons •
We Got a Live One Here • Bedtimes and Broomsticks