In my day, grandpa might say, things were different. We knew what we were about. Good was good, bad was bad.

Okay, Gramps, you salty old bastard, but it’s not like it was all black and white, nazis and nuns. Things are always simpler when they’ve already happened, when they’re history.

But Gramps might not relent–he might only heighten his jabbering. You used to look at a thing and know what that thing stood for. Stand for something! The old days: with none of this antihero BS where you’re supposed to like the guy that kills people and hates children. You knew who was who.

At this point in the conversation, you’d be forgiven for pointing out to Gramps that making things predictable doesn’t make them better. And, though a lot of what comes across our plates today–movies, music, comics–is awfully tired, it’s nice to remember that we’ve gotten smarter as viewers and readers and listeners, simply for the number of choices we have to sort and make. There was a time, Gramps, when all the superheroes had pets.

Seriously: all of them. We’re not talking, like, Aquaman became good friends with a whale that helped him thwart the intergalactic giant squid. It’s more like Oprah walked into the Hall of Justice and started pointing fingers: You get a pet! You get a pet! You get a pet! Everybody gets a pet!!

These were pets of the expected breed, suspiciously granted some limited superpowers, and they got to wear little capes: Supergirl got a pet horse named Comet — secretly, he used to be a human male; then he became a horse with superpowers. Like all of the superpets, Comet wore a cape. Also pictured on the superpet pedestal are:

- Streaky the Supercat, whose super-powers derived from a little piece of a kind of opposite-field Kryptonite, which found its way into a ball of yarn.

- Krypto, Superman’s favorite of all the Superpets.

- Beppo the Supermonkey. (The picture at the top of the post is interesting: note that A) Beppo is wearing a snug blue shirt with the cuffs rolled, and B) his red cape is the same makeshift-looking number worn by Streaky; it’s tiny–more of a kerchief than a proper cape. Beppo got jacked in the costume department.)

Now, on the one hand, who’s going to tell Superman/boy/girl not to adopt that adorable pet, giving it a comfortable home, a place where it can demonstrate the superpowers it just so happens to already have? Not me, not you; not Animal Control. But things just got out of hand, there, for a while. Back in the 60s, every one of Superboy’s foes seemed to have a dog.

I am the Kryptonite Bulldog, ferocious pet of Kryptonite Kid!

I am Destructo, Lex Luthor’s dog! I was infused with superpowers so I could help Lex deviously defeat Superboy and Superdog! Guess how that worked out.

All hail Tail Terrier, Captain of the Space Canine Patrol Agency! This is a team of intergalactic, crimefighting dogs, of which Tail Terrier was the studliest. In addition to a neverending, elastic, prehensile tail, he was telepathic.

Choose your pet: Destructo or Kryptonite Bulldog or Tail Terrier or Krypto the Superdog or Streaky the Supercat or Beppo the Supermonkey or Comet the Superhorse. What’s worse.

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Invisible Man v Hawkman

This is the classic match-up. First conceived and told by John Hodgman on the Superpowers episode of This American Life (#178, thought by many, including this blog, to be perhaps the best episode ever), the question posited there is:

Which is better: The power of flight or the power of invisibility?

Hodgman, whose gloriously dry and incisive wit has been displayed on The Daily Show, the Mac vs PC ads, and in his book, The Areas of My Expertise, among other places, first poses the question as Invisible Man versus Hawkman, but the question actually turns on which superpower you’d rather have–the power of flight or the flight of invisibility. He conducts an informal survey, and the answers are revealing, funny … and super interesting. This blog, and friends of the blog, have been actively talking/arguing the flight or invisibility point for 4 years.

Our topic turns the question on its head–instead of the superpower you’d prefer to have, the question is: which superhero would you prefer not to be? Some considerations:

1. Outfit. Right out of the gate: a tough one. Invisible Man has a tall order, a total hassle, everytime he wants to leave the house in a condition to be seen. Granted, if you’re a super reclusive and/or sadistic type, you may not want to be seen, often or ever. But, boy, the ladies have not been known to go all ga-ga for the gauze-pads-n-goggles look -

And, hey, eye contact is nice, every once in a while, isn’t it? The inability to un-invisible yourself is one of the real tragedies of the life of Invisible Man. On the other hand, however, it’s not like Hawkman gets to take his wings off, ever. As Hawkman’s cousin Harvey Birdman can attest, even after having your suits altered to accomodate your feathery accessories, you’re liable to run into problems with people taking you seriously.

2. Fly places or sneak places. This one is central to John Hodgman’s This American Life piece, but is worth reiterating here, in pictures. Your choices are this -

or this -

Keep in mind, it grows cold very quickly at high altitudes. Conversely, if you’re in Maui on a 95-degree day, meet a girl you like and want to ask her out, you’ll do so dressed like a mummy who’s dressed like a private investigator.

Invisible Man or Hawkman? What’s worse.

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For a second time, we’re drawing on the gold mine that is Gone & Forgotten (seriously, there’s so much there; it’s an epic collection of comic book recounts and interpretations). In terms of career path, longevity, benefits, etc, today’s pairing draws from two very different skill sets and overal ambitions:

Skateman v Prez

Skateman is a roller derby racer whom tragedy strikes, twice, and so he puts on his short shorts and kneepads and laces up his skates in the name of Justice.

Prez is a high school kid who goes out to fix all the clocks in the town of Steadfast and gets elected president of the United States. Just as their stories are different, they have very different agendas. But they also share a few striking similarities, such as A) both the Prez and Skateman comic books failed immediately, B) more masculine characters refuse to take them seriously, and C) they each have an ethnic minority sidekick, and the most superficial stereotypes are given relentless play.

Without digging into the biographies — Gone & Forgotten does a fabulous and funny job of that, so here’s the Skateman entry and here’s Prez — let’s get straight to the sub-questions that are most significant in helping you make your choice.

1. The name of your signature move – what’s worse:

My Wheels Your Face or Seal the Deal

Skate Free Die Hard or Fix the Clocks

Tell Paco to Do It or Tell Eagle Free to Do It

2. Things you say when you’re trying to sound cool – what’s worse:

“Maybe I’ll roll by L8r” or “Let’s take a ride on the FreeBee” [Airforce One’s new name]

“L8r Sk8r — and, by Sk8r, I mean Myself” or “Cool it, man! You had your chance!”

“These kneepads are coming in handy” or “I make the decisions around here — I’m the Decider”

Skateman or Prez? What’s worse.

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The inspiration for today’s What’s Worse? entry comes from a marvelous website called Gone & Forgotten. The site details, in turn, a collection of obscure/failed/bad comic book series, and is edited by the unbelievably knowledgeable and sarcastic Calamity John.

A forthcoming What’s Worse? will examine the question of superpowers; but today, we’ll take our cue directly from Gone & Forgotten and look at the professional, physical, and emotional hazards of being a specific superhero. To the task, then:

Would you rather make your living as

that’s right, Chlorophyll Kid. Nothing need be said here that the leaf-chested Cholorophyll Kid doesn’t explain in the image above, wherein he talks about himself in a way nobody does. “I see your Seed Pouch is as big as mine! Now let’s see how well you … handle it.” I mean, seriously.

on the flipside is

Captain Marvel. This is not the Captain Marvel we all know (Shazaam!) but, instead, a robot whose limbs detach. As described by Calamity John, he’s “an amnesiac robot with loose limbs.” That’s right, he’s a robot with memory problems; and, as if that’s not fancy-footed enough lure us eagerly into the story, he also possesses the terrifyingly awesome ability to spontaneously deploy his body parts and assault people, and/or surprise them, and/or totally weird them out. No joke:

No! Captain Marvel, no! Not the body part attack-thing! Ugh! Oof. If you send your head over here to bite me again, I’m calling my lawyer.

Bear in mind, one rule of this superhero edition of What’s Worse? is that, once you’ve assumed the role, you’ll possess all the traits of your choice. Looking the two options at hand, then, you’re really faced with a series of difficult mini-choices:

1. Outfit. A green and blue, tighter-than-tight jumpsuit with a Batman-type belt that’s filled entirely with seeds; OR a tighter-than-tight, monochrome, pinkish jumpsuit (a color once described by Martin Lawrence as Sneaky Salmon) with a small, boring M on the chest.

2. Name. The word Kid in your name, right there, forever, because whoever invented you couldn’t resist the chance for bumbling alliteration; OR a name that a superhero everyone has loved since the ’40s already has (also, his outfit is considerably more handsome and handy than yours).

3. Social life. Everyone remembers you, because you’re the robot who doesn’t remember things, but friendship doesn’t come easy–after a misguided stint with the S&M crowd, you settle for weekends with the college frat boys, who love your ability to send your arms out for beer. OR In your hometown, some people call you Chlorofillmeup, others the Chloro Kiddo, and you hate both. You move to Seattle or Portland, where folks like the leaf on your chest. You join a recycling club that meets for drinks and lively discussions about mulching. You feel like kind of a faker, but you make an awesome mojito, and you ride that for a while.

Captain Marvel or Chlorophyll Kid? What’s Worse.

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It’s made the internet rounds pretty comprehensively over the past few days, but the 9-minute video of Tom Cruise promoting Scientology has been taken down in a lot of places — likely due to accusations of copyright infringement. [Hence, rather than embed the video here, the link above will take you to Gawker, where the video and accompanying text has been classified as “newsworthy”]

Earth-shattering Education Encounter has no business speculating or joshing about religion. But it is our business to talk about business: especially as it relates to individuals and their careeers. And something about Cruise’s promo piece is intensely business-like. Part of this businessness is owing to the production–we see a casual yet impeccably composed Cruise, talking about his personal-yet-immaculate experience, while in the background plays the Mission freaking Impossible theme song.

However, a larger part of the business-like aspect can be traced to one thing: acronyms. Cruise gets to use these all the time, throwing them around right and left; and it sounds totally impressive. For instance, often when he talks about his own experience, and the importance of moving forward, he says it’s all about KSW – Keeping Scientology Working. Now, if you’re going to use a 3-word term that has two participles, shortening it to an acronym is a totally necessary way to prevent it from sounding dorky [Preventing From Dorking, aka PFD]

The video: if you haven’t watched it yet, don’t try just listening to it while you work on other stuff, because you’ll repeatedly need to see what his face looked like when he said that. TC sounds … he sounds a little like the helpful half of a split personality: ardent, really heartfelt, yet also weirdly distant, and almost entirely vague. One of the most anecdotal moments comes when he poses a hypothetical about driving past a car accident and being hypothetically better able to help than anyone else. Below are a few quotes.

“..the orgs are there to help, okay, but we as the public, we have a responsibility–it’s not just the orgs. it’s you. it’s everyone…re-reading KSW and seeing what needs to be done.
..i won’t hesitate to put in ethics on someone else.
..because i’m here to help.
..they said, so, have you met an SP [Suppressive Person]?
..it’s not how to run from an SP, it’s PTSP [Potential Trouble Source Person] how to run and shatter suppression.
..either you’re on board, or you’re not on board. [I think he stole this line from Patrick Swayze in Road House]
..if you’re a Scientologist, you see–you see things. [this one’s more from Keanu’s playbook than Swayze’s]
..so, for me, it really is KSW.
..it’s our responsibility to create the new reality.
..it’s rough and tumble; it’s wild and woolly; and it’s a blast. it’s a blast–really, really fun. a lot of work. we need more help.”

In the age of rapid text messaging, with its B4s and its LOLs and its whatnots, the formal power of the acronym is easily overlooked. But it is powerful–consider: part of the awesomeness of acronyms is their contradictory dual effect: any decent acronym sounds highly specific, and sanctified, as though it were created and agreed upon by a board of governors somewhere. Yet, if you have an acronym spat at you, and you don’t know it, you quite naturally wonder if the speaker knows you don’t know, and if perhaps he likes this, likes sounding needlessly snooty and obtuse.

In the professional business world, careers are built upon needlessly snooty and obtuse. It’s a fine verbal balance to strike, and acronyms can help keep you there; impressing people with these letters that sound like a combination of sophistication and morse code.

Earth-shattering Education Encounter recommends sitting down with a friend and brainstorming acronyms that you’d like to make part of your lexicon — things for you to say when in an interview, or with a client, or in front of the board. You can abbreviate phrases you already use and see what sounds nice; alternatively, you can start with an acronym and then assign meaning to it, a la Calvin & Hobbes and their club GROSS [Get Rid Of Slimy girlS].

In parting, here is musician Jonathan Coulton’s rather sympathetic take on the Tom Cruise Situation [potential acronym: TCSit]:

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Clown v Astronaut

As with Part 4, today’s central question–what’s worse, being a clown or being an astronaut–is broken up into a series of smaller questions, all of which turn on the matter of deadly or deadliest. The answers are personal, relative to your own likes and (especially) fears; nonetheless, visuals have been provided to guide you in making this important choice.

1. Of the two jobs, which one’s diet is deadliest to your gastrointestinal happiness?

Let’s say you’re having an attractive someone over for dinner. A) What’s in your cupboards, B) Are you even able to imagine an attractive meal anymore, and, if you can, C) do you have a tongue with more than about 4 taste buds that haven’t killed off by freeze-dried food, or burnt food, or cold mushy food, or loneliness.

Probably, clowns eat okay, because the circus often means that meat is being grilled somewhere nearby. But to my mind, c’mon, they’re clowns—and clowns are nobody’s priority after the tent is empty; they must go for days eating nothing but hot dogs.

2. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your chances of being considered an actor who takes the tough roles?

This one should be so easy: clowns, as a rule, do not have high-profile dramas made about them with any consistency; and meanwhile, successful directors lo-ooove making fancy-looking astronaut movies. At the end of the day, most of them kind of suck; but the premise—it’s like they’re fighting the same fights as down here, but now it’s happening IN SPACE—is so easily recycled that these movies will keep getting made forever. Even James Bond was powerless to prevent his own journey to the beyond. James Bond, for Pete’s sake.

3. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your chances of being loved by children?

Hm. Clowns and astronauts—children frolic and laugh at the first, and they want to grow up to be the second. A lot of love, on both fronts. But caution beckons, once again, from Hollywood: Movie astronauts, while superficial and boring, tend to be respectable-type people, even if they are misunderstood.

This cannot be said for clowns in movies. The number of guys you see onscreen in clown makeup who aren’t very sad or ironic or powerfully creepy is a very small number. For our visual reference, let’s go with the latest example—Heath Ledger as Joker in the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

4. In the end, which of the two jobs is deadliest to your opinion of yourself?

In spite of the various pit- and pratfalls laid out in the previous questions, the choice here may seem obvious. And maybe so. A parting consideration: when you at last get up into space—you’re floating around in the suit and everything—imagine how badly you want to take a picture of yourself, just to remember the moment. Too bad.

Clown or Astronaut? What’s worse.

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Trash Collector v Private Investigator

This seems like a fun, sarcastic pairing, at first. But, for the purposes of What’s Worse? the Deadliest Jobs on Earth, right away there are problems. Deadliest? How deadliest is the private investigatorial profession? Barely, it turns out. And garbage men? Not so fatal.

When you look at the fatality numbers, you’ve got the crab fishermen slaughtering everybody, year after year. Meanwhile, the private investigators, these brothers shamus, well … eh. They don’t die on the job so much. And the garbage men/women of our proud nation are incredibly good at staying alive.

These things being the case, now seems a good time to revise our understanding of a key word:

deadliest.

Why? So we can stretch its definition, and can use it in a somewhat metaphorical role. It turns out that even the statistically very deadly jobs, are, a lot of the time, pretty boring. Besides, metaphors are fun, and in this setting almost necessary; a blog without metaphor is a squirrel without a nut.

What follows below is a series of questions that turn on the matter of deadly or deadliest. In answering each question, choose between Trash Collector and Private Investigator. The answers are inescapably subjective; there is no “right” or “wrong” answer. Nonetheless, visual aids are provided to help you make an informed choice.

1. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your nasal cavity?

It’s nice to start off with an easy one.

2. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your acting career?

There’s something to be said for taking whatever roles comes to you; you get to read your lines and cash your check. But there’s wa-aaaaay more to be said about having a shred of discretion;

3. Which of the jobs is deadliest to your chances of making it with somebody?

Color-coordination gets you only so far. Meanwhile, in case anyone’s forgotten where George Clooney got all his smoothest stuff, Magnum, PI sees you standing there and wants to say hi:

4. All of these questions naturally lead here: in the long run, which of the two jobs is deadliest to your opinion of yourself?

It seems obvious, right? Clear as the day. But, then,

Trash Collector or Private Investigator? What’s worse.

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Every year, the Onion’s AV Club puts out a collection of the Worst Band Names the staff encountered over the course of the year, and this annum’s list is really, really funny. The bands are categorized under headers, eg,

Just Plain Bad
- Dyslexic Speedreaders

Funk
- Hubble Funk-o-Scope

Wookies?
- Legowookie

These are band names pulled from near and far, and they draw on a seemingly infinite number of ways to suck. Now, if you’re in a band, the music you make isn’t a necessarily direct reflection of the name; but, if said band is called Stiffler’s Mom, or, say, Candygram for Mongo, then you’ve set up some hurdles for your band to clear on its way to success. Do fans of Scottish blues music understand the sardonic relevance of Harmonica Lewinski? Will potential showgoers respond to the stinky implications of the name Beneath the Massacre? Perhaps they’d rather soak in the direct command of the name Enjoy the Massacre.

(Sidenote: if you had to call it right up front, which of those two is more for you? It’s not like I’m prone to sitting around digging the massacre, and, outside of my preferences, Enjoy the Massacre is a freaking slogan with the product name replaced. You can almost hear them brainstorming different ways to finish the phrase—the progression from soda to tragedy:

Enjoy Coca-Cola. Enjoy the Burning Sensation. Enjoy Waiting for Hours in the ER. Enjoy Nobody Coming to See You in Intensive Care. Enjoy a Slow & Painful Death. Enjoy Not Just You But Everyone Around You Dying Too. Enjoy the Massacre.

On the other hand, I just don’t think there’s a way the music of Beneath the Massacre is for me. Intellectually, it seems like a nifty reference to the underground, but the accompanying visual image is too complicated. Really? You want to sing to me about the frozen dirt under the mass grave? Eh.)

As you sift through the stunning, almost exhausting number of entries, you’ll discover a single common question—one question that presents itself in every case. Did they mean to.

Every single band name on the list laughs in the face of goodness; this is self-evident. But the thing is, there’s an awareness level involved—a matter of whether the band members knew what they were doing, when they agreed on the name.

The Berg Sans Nipple. Did they mean to.

Yo Moma’s Big Fat Booty Band. Did they mean to.

I Sank Molly Brown. Did they mean to.

It’s a shockingly relevant question: when these dudes chose the name for their band, did they mean to. How much of the badness, if any, was on purpose?

Ringo Deathstarr. These cats meant to be a little playful and a little inventive, I think—they mashed together two things from the popular culture, and they gave birth to something that is new, but feels kind of dated.

Butt Stomach. Yes, is the answer. Yes, they meant it. And this is a good thing to know; because, for every other question that can be asked about Butt Stomach, the answer is no or sometimes.

To Live And Shave In L.A. Confusing, at first—did they mean to? Well, absolutely they meant … something. But what? Is that a happy band name or a sad one? Sarcastic or suicidal? It looks like someone found a Madlib and filled it in. “To ____ and ____ in __.”

Speaking of Madlibs—in case you’ve lost track, the ultimate lesson today is what the ultimate lesson always is:

If you start a band without getting your college degree online, you may end up in Robin Williams on Fire .

The AV Club’s Worst Band Names of ‘07 feature is great fun.

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Stunt Actor. If your first memory of watching TV happens to involve a big box of animal crackers, an older brother screaming at you to be quiet, and a salty-haired Lee Majors playing the rugged, steely-eyed stuntman on The Fall Guy, then you are probably me. And, hey, congratulations—things could be worse for you I think. Frankly, though, you and me could be a little more current; let’s catch ourself up.

“I had a harness so I was safetyed to the car, but there was no CGI and no stunt double,” says Zoe Bell, who is a highly successful stunt actor in Hollywood, and one of the most awesome people ever: poised, brazen, and willing to try anything.

In Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, Bell both acts and stunt-acts—the first time she’d done both in a major role. Watching the film, it’s strictly impressive how long and dexterously she rides on the hood of that car—and, listening to her description of it, the experience sounds pretty unique.

“To be honest, I’d never ridden on the bonnet of a car before… The chase sequence sort of became what it was as we were shooting it… There were moments when Tracie was driving and I was on the bonnet and you could shoot it so there were two faces. You don’t have to shoot around my face seeing some woman. So suddenly you could put the camera wherever it looked best for the shot, as opposed to fighting around me as a double.”

It’s great to get Bell’s perspective on it, because, as you know if you’ve ever seen the film, that sequence is utterly scintillating, and to know it was fun for her confirms what you were hoping to hear.

“It was a really fortunate first time,” she says. “I mean, the girls that surrounded me like Tracie, Mary, Rosario, and Quentin of course made it all an experience that’s not someone’s normal first experience… I enjoyed being on both sides of the character and merging the two. I could set stuff up the way that’s best for me to do the action, which sounds like most people think like that, but I could set it up which way would make things look best. It was nice to have ownership of the whole thing.”

Bell’s experience of getting to do all the stunts for a film in which she also acted is pretty clearly the exception rather than rule, for her or any other Hollywood stunt actors. But we’ve already held up Boba Fett as the ultimate personification of the bounty hunter, and while Zoe Bell does not have a cool helmet, she is a fiesty, beautiful woman in a man’s trade. It all evens out.

Boba Fett or Zoe Bell? Bounty Hunter or Stunt Actor? What’s worse.

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for a deliciously crafted explanation of the what’s worse, deadliest jobs edition rules, see part 1

Even with all the underground fame and notoriety, sometimes what Boba Fett wanted most was a place to stand still and rest his kneeless legs.

Part of the trick in deciding a given instance of what’s worse between two jobs is not getting caught up in considering the opposite—what’s better. Like, just about everybody knows, in theory, that a bounty hunter has a very limited amount of glamour available to him. Even for those of us foolish enough to keep secretly believing our Jedi powers will one day manifest—all those who believes in psychokinesis, raise my hand—even we understand that Boba Fett is the exception to the rule. Functionally, though, that doesn’t much matter; the exception is what we end up romanticizing. And so, when asked, the ideal is what we immediately think about: Boba Fett, with his rough-and-tumble reputation, his helmet, his spaceship.

Even with that caveat, though, let’s face it: we all could see how lonely Fett was. The common wisdom has it that you can’t see the face behind the mask, but Star Wars masks betrayed exactly the right amount of passion and feeling. Who’s going to say you couldn’t tell if Darth Vader was happy on the inside? That he didn’t have daddy issues and would till he died? C’mon. It was all right there, on his mask, in his breath.

(If you don’t happen to live in a pretend world where the teenaged Vader from the prequels doesn’t exist and never happened, you should try it! All you do is vehemently deny the hoax of pee-wee Vader, and then big Vader gets to keep his freaking awesomeness. As it turns out, denial’s not that hard—once you do it a few times, the gist is simple. If, for example, someone asked if the prequel-era Vader reminds you of a dude who got kicked off The Hills for being too fake, a good way to reply is Shut up! Shut up, I CAN’T HEAR WHAT YOU’RE SAYING TO ME shut up shut up.)

As with Darth Vader, so with Boba Fett—there’s no way to look at Fett’s mask/face and conclude he has a surplus of friends; this is not a dude who likes pets. Or children. Or talking.

In summary, then here are the main points to keep in mind with regard to the bounty hunter:

1) Being a modern-day bounty hunter means chasing down people who have skipped out on bail or warrants

2) If the A&E reality TV show Dog the Bounty Hunter is an indication, the coolest part of this work is getting give yourself a normal-at-first but vaguely creepy nickname.

         3) It does not mean you’ll get to be a renegade, a gun for hire in a cosmic battle of good vs. evil; even if it did, you’d be

         4) a renegade killer who, despite or maybe because of his cool helmet, is entirely friendless, and who, come to think of it, must be

                a. a super boring eater, who

                b. never gets to check his teeth in the mirror,

                c. or kiss a girl.

Tomorrow, we’ll pass along critical, detailed information about stunt actors, enabling you to decide the important question of What’s Worse.

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