You Know What I Like? Me.

Sorry I haven't updated for a while. In the past few days, I've broken my foot, and my car has died. 2005 is not winning me over just yet.

Today I present my last Top Ten of 2004 list. And I thought, since all Top Ten lists are inherently egocentric and self-promotional, for my final list I would give you the ultimate masturbatory indulgence:

Tom the Dog's Top Ten Posts of 2004!

HA! I rule! Yes, here are the ten entries since TTDYKWIL? opened in June of last year that I thought were the most significant, the funniest, the best written, the most unfairly overlooked, or in some other way struck my fancy. It is a paean to the wonder of me! My name is Tom the Dog, King of Kings! Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

In chronological order:

1. MOVIES: I'm a good walker, bro. June 28, 2004
   
   My third entry (way back when I was still watching my language; by the way: fuck), my first proper review, and the first and last time I actually used the term "You know what I like?" in one of my posts. I had originally planned on that being a recurring phrase. Guess not.
   
   It's a review of The Station Agent, a wonderful but little seen film that I hope I can get more people to see with this new link. Back when it originally posted, my daily hits were in the high single digits. Now they're in the low triple digits. Yeah, I know, whoopity-doo, but maybe some of you folks who weren't around at the start will now rent the DVD because of this, and that would make me very happy.



2. TV: What about Grape Ape? July 20, 2004
   
   This post, which only kind of almost references Grape Ape in the final paragraph, was the first one which got me some attention via unexpected linkage. It's a pretty funny (if I say so myself, and clearly, I have no problem doing just that) rant about various video music channels, and their infuriating failure to show videos:
   
   

   And, if you've only seen music videos on TRL, here's the kicker -- actual music videos last the ENTIRE LENGTH of a song, and are NOT OBSCURED by fawning text messages from sub-literate dipshits with computer access in their detention facilities, and are ENTIRELY FREE of screaming idiots in Times Square superimposed over the screen!

   as well as a rave for the so, so beautiful VH1 Classic.



3. COMMERCIALS: At least they didn't drag the Pope into it July 24, 2004
   
   Fred Hembeck just posted about classic cartoons being used in TV ads, and wondered if we would soon see "Yogi Bear scampering off into the woods with a roll of Charmin". Well, it wasn't Yogi, but Charmin actually did produce a truly repellent commercial which featured an animated bear shitting in the woods. I rip on said commercial in this post:
   
   

   ...not only will I never buy Charmin, but I think I now actually hate my body and its natural functions a little bit. Thanks, Charmin! Thank you and your defecating cartoon bear!



4. COMICS: Hulk is coolest one there is! August 4, 2004
   
   Ha! I lied to you! I used the phrase "You know what I like?" in this post, too. (My mistake.) In this post I profess my love for ol' Jade Jaws:
   
   

   The Hulk just wanted to kick back in the forest, away from all the puny humans, feed grass to an innocent deer who didn't know to be afraid of the green monster, compose some haikus, I don't know -- and then some dumbass supervillain would always come along and drop a building on the Hulk's head. And so the Hulk would have no choice but to GRRRAAAARRRRRR HULK SMASH!! and whale the holy living shit out of the bad guy.



5. My Herculean Olympics coverage: Part 1 August 18, 2004; Part 2 and Part 3 August 19, 2004; Part 4 August 20, 2004; Part 5 August 23, 2004; Part 6 August 29, 2004
   
   I'm extremely happy with my writing on the Olympics, #1) because it's the most I've written about any one subject, and I think it's pretty well-rounded and entertaining, #2) because I didn't see any other blog doing anything like it, and #3) this is where the running gag about Misty May's ass began. To this day I still get near-daily hits from search engine requests for "Misty May's ass".
   
   Did I mention Misty May's ass?



6. My titanic Emmys coverage: Part 1 and Part 2 September 19, 2004
   
   My first minute-by-minute recapping for this blog; an insanely detailed look at the 2004 Emmys, from the red carpet to the final award. I really love doing this kind of thing, even if very few of you people seem to share my enjoyment. You can expect the same for the Oscars this year. I'd do it for the Grammys and the Tonys too, if my threshold for pain were much much higher.



7. MUSIC: I Get A Kick Out Of... October 12, 2004; MUSIC: Somebody better put you back into your place October 13, 2004
   
   A couple lists of various little things I enjoy about a number of different songs, from John Lennon's singing "Don't you know that you can count me out... in" on "Revolution" and Freddie Mercury's odd pronunciation of "Marie Antoinette" on "Killer Queen".
   
   
8. Nerd Heaven November 29, 2004
   
   My account of the Las Vegas Hilton's Star Trek Experience, the nerdiest place on Earth. And of getting really, really drunk.
   
   

   When the door closed on the shuttle pod, Scoot began poking all the fake buttons on the wall next to him, prompting one of the employees spying on us to announce over the intercom that we shouldn't bother touching the console controls, because they were DNA-encoded to respond only to Enterprise crewmembers. We loved that. Neeerrrrrrd Heaven.

   
   
9. MUSIC: Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs December 2, 2004
   
   One of the highest comment-counts ever for one of my posts. Clearly, I like ripping on "Best of" lists as much as I like making them, and so do you folks.



10. I don't get it December 8, 2004
    
    And finally, the post which I believe has garnered the most comments ever in the short history of my site. It's a list of overwhelmingly popular things, like Radiohead, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that I'm not a fan of myself. In fact, I think they stink. So there.

Thank you to all of you who visited my little blog in 2004. And here's to much more pop culture goodness in 2005!

COMICS: Hulk is coolest one there is!

You know what I like? The Incredible Hulk.

I've always liked him. Ever since my first comic reading days as a kid, I liked how he was different. He wasn't like all those other superheroes, who went around looking for someone to help -- looking for trouble, basically. The Hulk didn't want trouble. The Hulk just wanted to be left alone. I loved that. The Hulk just wanted to kick back in the forest, away from all the puny humans, feed grass to an innocent deer who didn't know to be afraid of the green monster, compose some haikus, I don't know -- and then some dumbass supervillain would always come along and drop a building on the Hulk's head. And so the Hulk would have no choice but to GRRRAAAARRRRRR HULK SMASH!! and whale the holy living shit out of the bad guy. The Hulk didn't go looking for supervillains. The Hulk didn't give a gamma-irradiated rat's ass about supervillains. He wasn't proactive, he was purely reactive. Mess with Hulk, Hulk smash.

Also, the Hulk was the strongest one there was. And you knew because he would tell you: "Hulk is strongest one there is!!" There wasn't anybody who could beat the Hulk in a straight-up fight. Even Thor -- who's a god, for crying out loud -- could only fight him to a draw, at best. How sweet is that?

And best of all: half the time he was puny Banner, so nobody would see it coming. The element of surprise, turning the tables on the assholes -- that was great. I mean, you see a giant pile of orange rocks walking down the street, you go, "Hey, it's the Thing." But not the Hulk. He's just this meek little rocket scientist -- and then some hooligans start thinking they can get tough with him, or maybe they just won't stop talking on their cell phones in a movie theater. Next thing you know, they're standing in the shadow of (if I may quote) "7 feet, 1,000 pounds of unfettered fury!" and crying for their mommies. Now that's comedy.

Then, of course, came the TV show. The Incredible Hulk TV series changed a ton of stuff from the comic -- from the main character's name ("Bruce" was deemed too effeminate for a hero, so they called him "David" instead), to his backstory (adding a wife who died in a car accident) to how he became the Hulk (self-administered dose of radiation, rather than accidental exposure), to the Hulk's strength (bullets could actually hurt him, rather than just bouncing off) and speech (rather than childish language, the Hulk never spoke at all), to who was tracking him down (not the obsessed General "Thunderbolt" Ross and Ross's daughter, Betty, who loved Banner, but some reporter named McGee). But it was still great. Where else could a nine-year-old see primetime superhero live-action on TV? (Well, Wonder Woman, I guess, but that was fun for an entirely different reason, even at that age.) "Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." So true, so true.

The Hulk is even what got me back into comics. In 1988, my freshman year of college, down at the Student Union there were these guys handing out "welcome packages" -- little boxes with various crap from local merchants inside, like shaving cream or scotch tape or whatever. And there were some comic books, too. I hadn't collected or even read comics for about 8 years, but when I read that issue of The Incredible Hulk in my welcome package, I was instantly hooked again. Because the Hulk was... he was grey! And he was smart! And a little bit... bad, too. He was cunning, devious. Banner was on a mission, and the Hulk was cooperating with him, but for his own selfish reasons. And the art was very new and striking, stylized in a way that was totally different from the comics I had read as a kid, much more dynamic, and grittier, too -- drawn by some guy named Todd McFarlane (who has done little of note since then).

It was all wrong! And totally compelling. I bought a slew of back issues (all written by the fantastically entertaining Peter David, who would stay with the series for about 13 years, an amazing run from beginning to end), and I was suddenly a comic book fan again.

The there's the movie. I liked Hulk (not The Hulk, for some strange reason) more than I know many people did. It had the handicap of a CGI-created main character to overcome, which turned out to look better that I thought it would, but still, it's hard to invest yourself in a bunch of 1s and 0s on the movie screen. And I think it made a mistake in not having the Hulk speak; that left him as a personality-less destruction machine. The destruction was pretty awesome, true, but I'd have liked to hear him say "Hulk smash" at least once. I mean, throw me a frickin' bone. And where's Rick Jones?

But I liked Eric Bana as Bruce Banner, I love Jennifer Connelly in anything, and I appreciated both the slower, more subtle character moments as well as the inventive visual "comic book" style of the movie. I liked that the film spent time developing Banner's repressed psychological scars, which helped to create the Hulk persona bottled up inside him -- and that it showed Banner enjoys releasing that rage. And that tank fight: come on, that was kick-ass.

Right now, though, I'm having a tough time liking the Hulk. Because all I've got to go by is the comic book, by current writer Bruce Jones... and the comic sucks. I flat-out hate it. For one thing, it suffers from Marvel-itis, in which a two-issue story is painfully stretched out to a trade paperback-friendly five or six issues. For another, it's all X-Files-type conspiracies and mysterious covert agencies and that's all fine and good in the beginning, but eventually you have to start coming up with some resolutions to those mysteries, and, like The X-Files, for what few questions it did supply (before I finally dropped the book), it fell far short of the expectations it had created. And worst of all, a capital crime for an Incredible Hulk comic: it doesn't feature the Incredible Hulk!! Bruce Jones got the bright idea of using the Hulk in a very limited capacity only. Which meant that for a good number of issues, the Hulk only appeared in brief flashbacks, or by implication (gang of toughs threatens Banner, cut straight to gang of toughs with their asses kicked, with no sight of the Hulk in between), if he even appeared at all. That might be fine once or twice, as a change of pace, but when I buy a Hulk comic, I want to see the goddam Hulk. I don't buy a Superman comic for 22 pages of Clark Kent reading internet jokes from his mom at work, and if I wanted 22 pages of Bruce Banner, then I'd buy a goddam comic called Bruce Banner, not one called The Incredible Goddam Hulk!!

But. It appears Jones is out. He's signed an exclusive deal with DC, which means his run on the Hulk will soon be over. And good riddance. The buzz in the fan world is that Peter David is a possible candidate to take over from him, which couldn't make me happier. Problem is, according to his website, nobody's offered David the job yet (although if anybody has a brain at Marvel -- which you may debate amongst yourselves -- they will soon), and what's more, he speculates that the Hulk might not even continue in an ongoing series. Which would be terrible. Why a bevy of A-list writers aren't clamoring for this gig is beyond me. Peter David, among others, has shown that the Hulk can be so much more than a one-note "Hulk smash" character. Hell, at this point, returning the Hulk to all "Hulk smash" all the time would be a daring new direction in itself.

Bottom line is, Marvel had better get someone up to the task of helming a monthly Hulk comic, and they had better do it fast. He's one of their most popular, interesting, challenging creations ever, and I want to see someone who can bring the comic back up to a consistently entertaining level. Forget all this men-in-black crap.

Or Hulk will smash.

MOVIES: I'm a good walker, bro.

You know what I like? The Station Agent.

I watched it for the first time on DVD this Saturday, and I now wish I had gone out of my way to see it in the theater (out of my way is usually the only way to see limited release independent films in Ventura County, so close and yet so far from L.A.). I loved it completely.

It stars Peter Dinklage as Fin, a train hobbyist and a dwarf (that's what he calls himself in the film, not my stab at a politically correct term -- I don't have the slightest idea what the P.C. term is these days), who inherits a small train station house in a New Jersey backwater. There he meets the endlessly chatty and charismatic Joe (Bobby Cannavale, in a star-making performance) and the klutzy, emotionally turbulent Olivia (Patricia Clarkson, who was Oscar-nominated for Pieces of April the same year The Station Agent came out, 2003, but could just as easily have been nominated for her work here), who almost runs Fin under the wheels of her SUV, not once but twice, in a side-splittingly hilarious sequence.

Fin is an angry and closed-off man, maybe because he's different, maybe for other reasons; his only love is for trains, and the train station he lives in. He shuns Joe's friendship as best he can, but Joe eventually wears him down with his limitless reservoir of goodwill (when Fin won't let Joe join him on his ritualistic train track walk, Joe insists, "I'm a good walker, bro"). And Olivia soon becomes the third member of this unlikely team, partly through her attraction to Fin, partly through Joe's well-meaning manipulations.

Peter Dinklage (whom Cannavale amusingly refers to in the DVD commentary as "Dink," which seems a tad too close to "dinky," but how can you resist making a nickname out of "Dinklage"?) is the anchor; his character is a thoughtful, deliberate man, and as an actor, he never allows the film to proceed beyond the character's pace. He controls the movie with his performance, and it's an excellent one. In a remarkably short time (short enough for you to lose the urge to say "no pun intended" every time you use the word "short"), you forget there's anything different about Fin -- although he can't let himself forget.

Patricia Clarkson, I'll be honest here, I've been in love with since The Dead Pool. Yes, the last Dirty Harry movie. (Damn, that was 16 years ago. I guess Dirty Harry couldn't survive post-Reagan.) And I've never loved her more than I did in this film. For one thing, the director has allowed her to be sexier here than in any other role I've ever seen her play; she was 42 in this film, but you don't doubt for a second that both Fin (Dinklage was 33) and Joe (Cannavale, 31) could fall for her. (Hell, I did, all over again.) She's a strikingly intelligent and beautiful actress, and I hope her bounty of well-written parts from 2003 carries over into this year and beyond.

And Bobby Cannavale is a genuine discovery. And I'm guessing he's been discovered, judging from the four feature films he's got lined up for release in 2004. He's so effortlessly charming, it's hard to believe he's acting. Even when you fear he's becoming too competitive with Fin for Olivia's affections, you still can't help liking Joe unreservedly. I look forward to seeing Cannavale in whatever his next release may be.

Nothing blows up in this movie. Nobody gets shot. The only death is from natural causes. It's a slow, quiet film, but it's got a wonderful sense of humor that grows as the characters develop (the first time Fin allows himself to make a joke, you laugh half from the humor, and half from the release of tension), and the small town setting is gorgeous. The four main characters are all people you'd like to get to know better (that's including Michelle Williams of Dawson's Creek as the town librarian, who has a relatively minor but pivotal role), and when the film ended, I wished I could spend more time with them.

It's the small things in this film that will win you over. I'll let you decide whether the pun is intended or not.