Maintenance Post: Work, Sports, Comics and TV

Let Emmylou be my co-pilot

Hey all.  

The pic above is just the new pooch, Emmylou.  No news there.  I just like my dog, and y'all won't click if there's no picture.

It's not a secret that this here blog is used for many things, but that I've moved more personal stuff back to League of Melbotis.  Should you wonder - nothing in particular personal is keeping me from blogging - it's just that this site is mostly movies, and I haven't watched many movies of late.  

Why?

Well - I have a fairly recent new job and this last week was a crunch week.  It wasn't miserable - I kind of liked it, honestly.  But I also was tired and not in the mood for movies, exactly, at the end of each day.  And my days were starting at 7:30 this week and ending around 9:30 PM.  With large breaks for dinner, but nonetheless, stopping for a 2-hour movie wasn't really in the cards.

Comics

I've been reading comics again at a greater pace.  This summer was DC's Summer of Superman which saw a lot of Superman material put out in celebration of the movie and to monetize casual fan interest.  But we're also completionists, so this summer has not been awesome on my wallet.  

Action Comics and Superman were already pretty good titles of late, but I feel like the titles are in a wave where now is a very good time to be reading Superman comics.  We also have a new Supergirl title that is *very* promising, the confusing Power Girl title is disappearing (I have a few issues, and... no thanks), and we're getting everything from original graphic novels to Treasury Editions (love those) to mini series and one-shots out right now.  Include a Krypto The Superdog mini.  

Sports

This summer I've also been watching a lot of Cubs baseball and WNBA, as mentioned over at the other blog.  Cubs are gonna Cub, and after a remarkable first half of the season, we're now struggling, and will never catch the Brewers for the NLC title at this point (f'ing Brewers, man).  

And the WNBA has been a trip to watch.  There aren't that many teams, so I've been keeping up with a few, which means I've watched all the teams at least twice.  Dallas has a player as good as Caitlin Clark. Paige Buckner, but it will take a while to build a team around her.  Caitlin Clark has been injured all season - and I doubt she'll play again in 2025 - but the Indiana Fever have brought in reinforcements who have made them play-off eligible.  But those players, too, have been victims of injury.  Similarly, the Golden State Valkyries have been plagued with injury, taking out stars Kayla Thornton and Monique Billings.  It's a rough season.  

Oddly, I've kind of fallen into the New York Liberty camp.  Did not see that coming, but here we are.  I kind think they're the most fun to watch, as Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones rule, Natasha Cloud makes it seem effortless while absolutely delivering, and when she's healthy, Breanna Stewart is dynamite.  But YMMV. 

I have a few beefs with the WNBA as a league, from player exhaustion, to how flopping has made playing inside almost impossible, to horrendous reffing across the board (which has led to the flopping to no small degree), but overall - it's good basketball.  And rather than pick a team, I've more or less just found favorites on several teams, and watch *a lot*.  Up to 5 or 6 games per week.

We'll see what happens in the playoffs, but it's hard not to the Lynx are just going to crush everyone.

Television

We've watched all of Derry Girls, and the latest season of The Bear.  We started King of the Hill and Poker Face,  and I'm watching The Yogurt Shop Murders doc series on HBO, and Alien: Earth on Hulu.  I'll do posts on those last two.  

This week, I think Jamie has agreed to some JLC watching and I may go see Freakier Friday.  

Happy Birthday, Lois Lane

According to Superman lore, today is the birthday of Lois Lane, star reporter of The Daily Planet, former girlfriend, and now wife of Superman/ Clark Kent/ Kal-El.  And all-around troublemaker/ kick-ass character.  

It's no secret we're big fans of Lois here at The Signal Watch.  She burst into comics on the sixth page of Action Comics #1, then going on a date with Clark where she was immediately kidnapped by a mobster - leading to her first meeting with The Man of Steel.

She's been a part of Superman's adventures since that moment, and continues to appear alongside him in his adventures in comics, radio, books, television, movies, video games and more. 

This year has been dense with great takes on Lois, in the movies, TV and comics.

Terence Stamp Merges With The Infinite

Actor Terence Stamp has passed at the age of 87.

This site obviously was aware of Stamp first and foremost from the first two 1970's Superman films wherein he played General Zod, Superman's foe and the would-be conqueror of first Krypton and then Earth.

He was, of course, accomplished and popular In England well before those films.  With smoldering good looks and a natural talent, he was in with a wave of British talent that crossed over the pond and back again over the decades.  

If you want to see a phenomenal movie, check out The Limey.  But he was in everything, from comedies like Bowfinger and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to to actioners like Young Guns.  

Raise a glass, and, for today, it's okay to kneel for Zod.

I'm very sorry to see him go, but he left a rich legacy.  

G Watch: Shin Godzilla (2016)

Watched:  08/16/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third, I think

Director:  Shinji Higuchi, Hideaki Anno

Shin Godzilla (2016) is currently enjoying a theatrical re-release because, I guess, why not?  Godzilla Minus One was supposed to be in theaters for a week, and wound up playing for months and making crazy bank compared to original estimates, and then landed a much deserved Academy Award.  

Yes, Shin Godzilla is also in the process of being released on 4K disc, and, look, kids....  there's something your favorite blogger would sure like to open on Christmas morning.  

I will never not tell this story, so here goes:  PaulT, Jamie and myself went to a mid-day screening of Shin Godzilla at the old Alamo Ritz, I think in January of 2017.  We were excited, the place was almost sold out in the middle of the day...  it was a whole scene.  Then the movie started and a piercing tone hit the theater.

This tone.   1kHz test tone.  

They paused the movie and the manager came out and said "has anyone seen this before?"  A few hands went up.  "Is this supposed to be happening?"  No.  "Ok!"  So she disappeared.  We hung out for a while.

Apparently the distributor had sent out their digital copies with 1k tone and there was nothing the Drafthouse could do. So I think we got out money back and went to Shakespeare's nextdoor for a beer.

Anyway - I've seen the movie since.  But not since seeing Godzilla Minus One.  Or spending COVID lockdown watching every single live-action Godzilla movie.  

First - this one isn't for the kids.  It's a movie that happens to have a Godzilla in it as a stand-in for any disaster, but in this case, it was pretty specifically the Fukushima nuclear accident that hit Japan in 2011.  I think Shin Godzilla is a genuinely really, really good movie when it comes to the challenge of bureaucracy and systems built to ensure safety by way of democratic processes, something I'm pretty familiar with after spending a lifetime in state-funded higher education,  State government and, recently, local government.  That a single decision must pass through up to five levels and reach a "final decider" to do the obvious, and that person is hopelessly compromised by politics, optics and party machinery has real world consequences.  

Comedy Watch: The Naked Gun (2025)

Watched:  08/13/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Akiva Schaffer

If you're wondering if The Naked Gun (2025) lives up to the original film, it's really, really close.  It's, of course, trying to recapture that same vibe, and mostly hits the mark while also absolutely having moments that will have you saying "well, that's clearly Akiva Schaffer".  And I mean that in the best way.

I won't actually do a dive on this because it's a joke every 30 second comedy, exists to be that, and does so.  There are great gags that I'll be laughing about tomorrow, and sequences that made me fold over in my chair laughing.  You'll know what they are.

And everyone is funny.  Neeson I've seen be hysterical before, so this was not a shock, but he nails the Police Squad brand of humor..  Pam Anderson has great comedy chops and I hope this pair gets a sequel to do more.  Paul Walter Houser shows up as Ed, and I'm becoming a fan.  CCH Pounder even gets to send-up very specific police chief tropes and it's just hysterical having it come from her.

If I have a recommendation, find the person in the theater who is going to laugh like a maniac and sit near them.  I was fortunate to have "deep belly laugh" guy behind me, and it helped to be in a theater and join that guy in knowing it's okay to laugh like that in a theater.

The Space Jam Fallacy: Is The Movie You Like From Your Childhood Actually... Bad?

For a few years, we ran a podcast based on this here internet web log.  During that time, I made an observation and had to find a phrase to describe it.  We called it:  The Space Jam Fallacy.

The Space Jam Fallacy is the misguided belief that an artifact, such as a movie, is of quality because it was a favored piece of media first consumed during one's formative years.  However, the movie is technically, narratively, and critically, actually, bad.    

As a person who is now fifty, I've now seen the power of The Space Jam Fallacy in full bloom with Gen-X, then Millennials, and, these days, with Gen-Z.  

Why am I picking on Space Jam, the mid-90's mix of animation and live-action movie about Bugs Bunny and actual basketball superstar Michael Jordan taking on a crew of space aliens seen over by an alien voiced by Dan DeVito in a for-all-the-marbles game of basketball?  Because it is the first movie I was well aware of/ saw at the time of release only to see a younger generation declare it must-see-viewing, when I knew the thing to be, in fact, terrible.

For context:

Cindyana Santangelo Merges With the Infinite

Actor, model and 90's cult icon Cindyana Santangelo passed earlier this year, but I just found out about it via user Flabbergast.

She never reached Hollywood levels of fame in a direct way, but made appearances on television shows and in small parts in movies.  Her relevance here at The Signal Watch is that Santangelo is the subject of what is perennially and by far my most popular post on this site, "Whatever Happened to the Girl in the Stop Sign Shorts?"

We sought her out as the dancer and lip-syncher in the video for Young MC's "Bust a Move" and learned she was also the voice and face at the start of Jane's Addiction's single "Stop".  

Santangelo passed at her Malibu home in March at the age of 58.

In whatever odd parasocial way I was aware of Santangelo, I am very sorry to hear she's passed.  If my site's numbers are any indication, she certainly had her fans, and I hope she knew that.

  

Coppola Watch: The Godfather, Coda - The Death of Michael Corleone/ AKA: The Godfather Part III (1990)

Watched:  08/10/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  third or fourth

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Released on Christmas Day in 1990, I saw The Godfather Part III (1990) with the men of the Steans Family.  I was 15 and had already seen the other Godfather movies a few times by this point.  Going in, I was aware the new film was not supposed to be up to the levels of the two prior movies, but was still interested. 

It was... fine?  Good, even.  But I didn't love it.  I do recall thinking "this Mary Corleone is super cute" and being aware she was Coppola's own daughter.  

Before the movie was released, the two things discussed most were that Robert Duvall would not be in the movies, and that Sofia Coppola as Mary.  All this, despite a cast starring Pacino, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach and Talia Shire, a winding script that seemed to be trying to say things about power and those who wield it and where, and some of the best photography of the decade.

The day after seeing the movie, I drove to Austin to visit some friends, who - knowing I was a fan of the first films - proudly held up the tickets they'd bought for a matinee of The Godfather Part III, and so it was, I saw the movie twice in about 24 hours.  

I don't know that I've seen the movie again since.  

Signal Watch Reads: The Godfather

Memory is a tricky thing.  I was positive I'd read Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather back in high school, but since it's been way too many decades since I would have read the book, I decided to pick it up again.  This time I picked it up as an audiobook read by Joe Montegna.  Not a bad choice of readers, right?

Well...  at some point I realized:  I don't think I ever finished the book back in the early 90's.  I'm glad I finally got to it, I've finished it.  All is well.  

I'm assuming that the book was so much like the movie, I kind of didn't see the point and moved on.  And yet, I figured out why I thought I'd made up a scene from the movie in my head because there it was in the book.  So... not exactly a 1:1, but pretty close.  Until...

Once you get to a certain point in the novel, it diverges mostly in how much additional content is there.  Like, Johnny Fontane is a major character, as is Lucy Mancini, and there's a whole storyline in Hollywood and Las Vegas that is interesting but was easily cut out to keep the movie focused on Don Vito and Michael's more compelling stories.  The reason the Fontane stuff is there seems to be two-fold.  (1) It's a reminder of the Don's far-seeing view and his ability to manage and manipulate things with a single move, and (2) pretty clearly Puzo was no fan of Hollywood and he wanted to do it dirt.  

Weird Al Watch: UHF (1989)

Watched:  08/08/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Jay Levey

I was walking through Walmart and passed the $5 DVD bin and saw UHF (1989) sitting in the pile, and realized I didn't have a copy of the movie.  

I've already written this movie up twice before, so no need to do it again.  But it is a delight.  I may be suffering from some Space Jam Fallacy here, and I am pretty sure most of the jokes would make no sense to anyone under 40, but what the hell... there are things in this movie that I genuinely love, and I wish Al and Co. had made ten more movies.  

Also, how funny is it that Fran Drescher is in this in a supporting bit like 4 years before she launched one of the biggest shows of the 90's?