For just a dollar, Janet Jackson could have avoided that huge Superbowl scandal of a few years back.

Hit the jump for the details...

Said colleagues included loveable but dopey Greg Sanders, Spocklike Gil Grissom, and Pointy-Haired-Bosslike Conrad Ecklie. Having the benefit of experiencing the action of the dream from both the first person perspective of my character in it, and also as a detached observer in the third person, I knew that the previous night, Ecklie himself had, in what the director had tried very hard to convince us was a sign of his having a deep dark secret, panicked and thrown a disposable syringe behind my car. I led Greg there, feeling all the while conflicted. For those of you at home not familiar with the show, Conrad Ecklie is a comparatively minor character, originally Grissom's day-shift counterpart, but later his boss. Ecklie is career-minded, politically savvy, and spiteful, and we're all supposed to hate him and want him to turn out to be on the take or have a heroin problem or whatever. On the other hand, Ecklie is also a competent CSI, and the other side of his being a total dick in order to advance his career is that he's actually good at his job. Further, the scene of Ecklie discarding the syringe was so obviously a bit of misdirection that it's obvious he'll turn out to not be doing anything wrong, which I know in my role as a detatched observer, but which I am genre-blind to in my role as a participant. In fact, observer-me has already worked it out (It's going to turn out that Ecklie has diabetes and it's an insulin syringe. I largely know this because the discarded syringe is pretty much identical to the ones we used to use on the cat. Never mind that it's kind of an old fashioned way for a human being with a good job and health insurance to be using. This is both TV and a dream), but participant-me has to go through the story, possibly to learn a Very Important Lesson about jumping to conclusions, and somehow the fact that my heart wasn't pure will counter the fact that to not bring this to the attention of important people seems to kinda be the converse of my job.

Anyway, this bit takes like a second, but dreams don't really work on the same notions of linear time as real life does. (I once had a teacher insist at me that real life does not take place in linear time "because your mind bounces around forward and backward in time" and this was why non-linear "female" narratives (her term) were "more realistic" than "masculine" ones that had no heart and soul and related events in the order they occurred. I think she didn't understand what "real life" means.). Grissom catches me trying to explain what the syringe means, and comes over, though I has been trying to keep him out of it until Ecklie wasn't nearby. He won't let me explain or collect the evidence, and instead gives me sort of look that indicates that he knows more than I do, and is probably a better person too, and we are led inside the high school. Which may also be our lab, I'm not sure. I try to explain that, no, I'm not trying to make implications about Ecklie using drugs, though, hey, maybe he is, and no, I don't expect Grissom to seize this opportunity to discredit his nemesis and advance his own career (Though the phrase "And then everyone moves up a rung" was spoken), but that I don't think we ought to sweep this under the rug. I point out that, as part of the backstory, Ecklie has thrown some sort of fit when the health insurance folks came through and wanted to force everyone in the lab to take some kind of blood test so they could, I don't know, have the slow ones in the pack put down, and suggest that if he's got some kind of health problem that he doesn't want anyone to know about, this could somehow compromise the integrity of the lab, as I skip over actual dialogue and instead use the power of an Imagine Spot to show how Ecklie might go into, say, DKA at a scene and pass out, tainting evidence.

But this all goes nowhere as some new piece of evidence, or perhaps enhancing some old evidence, leads me to a mall, which, despite any resemblance being coincidental, my brain tells me is the long-extinct Jumper's Hole Mall (Which Leah and I drove by the exit for last night. I can't be sure how much my memory tells the truth, but what I recall of the Jumper's Hole Mall tells me that it looked just like the also-extinct Ocean Gateway Mall in Ocean City, where Leah and I were Wednesday). There is some sort of psychic's shop set up in the mall, and through its window, I can see a woman with Caribbean features, dressed in your stereotypical fortune teller's costume (If you imagine Calypso from Pirates of the Caribbean you'll be pretty close), gesticulating over a contraption that looks like a sort of amber orb nested in a Cat's cradle frame of dark wood. This device will be called an "Alien Fetish" in the dream, thanks to backstory, a term which is funnier in the waking world. She is the who that dunnit in the investigation I'm working on, but also, as I know thanks to my third-person perspective, an alien bent on world domination. Using her fetish. I arrive on the scene at the same time as Jared Martin (who had played the villain in the aforementioned Knight Rider episode, hence the connection) as more-or-less Harrison Blackwood, his character from the 1989 War of the Worlds TV series (Yes. Really. There was one. It was pretty good.). I kept wanting to call him "Dusty", which apparently is something that he gets called a lot, because he played a character named Dusty on Dallas, a show I never watched, and can't can't remember him being on. I, again thanks to my third-person-perspective, knew that he was from a secret government counter-alien agency, though, thanks to my first-person genre blindness, I take this as "The feds are trying to muscle in on our investigation." That's right. Alien body-snatchers, and I'm worried about jurisdiction.

Dusty wants to go in guns-a-blazing, which indicates that he's not quite his character from War of the Worlds (who was a peacenik), but I persuade him to pursue a more subtle approach, by which we engineer it so that she is compelled to leave, and, as she crosses a highway, I obtain the alien fetish by the simple expedient of pickpocketing it from her. Unfortunately, I blow my stealth roll or something, because she fights back and throws Dusty into the street, in the path of an oncoming bus.

Now, at this point, there's a sort of fork in my perception, wherein I know what is supposed to happen, but my ability to perceive events as an outside observer gives me the ability to trump this. I'm supposed to somehow sacrifice the Alien Fetish in order to save Dusty, thus ensuring that the episode ends as a zero-sum-game without either side getting this powerful whatever it is. Instead, I just use the Alien Fetish, sort of holding it out in front of me like a weapon, pointing it as Dusty, and thinking at it really hard. I'm not sure exactly what this does, but, despite neither of them seeming to move, the bus fails to hit Dusty, as he is somehow sprawled a bit to the left.

I think I may have gotten too close to being lucid at this point, because I woke up after this.

JJ Cummings is one of the few people to successfully make the transition to mainstream florist from the adult floral industry

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this roll of toilet paper was a gift created especially for you, Bozzuto Management has apparently trademarked the phrase "A Gift Created Especially For You."

You may be thinking that seven hours seems to miss the definition of "Happy Hour". But look at what's being advertised. There is no such thing as unhappy hour at the strip club.

Personally, I'd prefer the food be fresh and the service be good, but I'll take what I can get.

OH NANCY PELOSI NO!

Stuff? Sweet! I love "stuff".

Mr. Brooks: When trying to score cheap political points by insinuating that a candidate is too much of an elitist to go to a Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person's Favorite Family Restaurant, you may want to try harder not to reveal that you yourself are too much of an elitist to even know which Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person's Favorite Family Restaurant has a salad bar.

In other news, Obama has been accused of "plagiarism" because a speech he gave about the price of oil had a similar message to a speech given by Mario Cuomo back in the 1980s. I suspect the person responsible for making this claim is my sister's computer science professor, who recently accused my sister of "the most blatant case of plagarism" she'd ever seen, because she quoted a source, giving proper credit and citation (The source in question was Wikipedia), because "Even if you cite the source and put it in quotation marks, you still have to change the wording."

'Sides, I don't see President Bush being accused of plagarising President Clinton, or Clinton plagarising Bush, or Bush plagarising Regan, or Regan plagarising Carter, or Carter plagarising Ford. And yet, I'm fairly certain all of them delivered a speech whose message was "The state of our union is strong," many of them several times.

FAIL.

• Calls from Comcast, asking me if I'd like to sign up for cable, because I don't have cable (I have cable): 2 a day every day for a week.
• Calls from the credit card company asking if I would like to do a balance transfer or sign up for their new credit protector program: 1 a week
• Letters from AARP suggesting that send them some money and become a member, because I'm fully eligible, after I wrote them a letter telling them that I was not interested, that I was not eligible, and that I was not going to be eligible for another twenty years, and was told that they were very sorry and it wouldn't happen again: 2
• Calls from Sprint on my cell phone assuring me that this was a free call, and asking if I ever went over my minutes, and telling me that I was eligible to get a second line: 4

Iron Man is a story about a hard-drinking, womanizing arms-manufacturer, who is forced to come to terms with the fact that there are indeed negative repercussions to selling dearly weapons after he is gravely wounded. And it's got a flying armored war-suit in it.

Iron Man
2008, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges

Anyway, hit the jump for the spoilers, but even if you don't, if you've somehow managed to avoid knowing this: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STAY UNTIL THE END OF THE CREDITS.

Anyway, you know this bit: Tony's been captured by Generic Middle Eastern Villains in Afghanistan. A flashback conveniently takes us to a brief presentation explaining how Tony Stark is an exceptionally brilliant guy who runs the weapons company founded by his late father (who was one of the inventors of the nuclear bomb). His business partner is Obidiah Stane, who we know instantly is evil because he is (a) bald, (b) the guy who ran the company from the death of Stark's dad until the younger Stark came of age, and is therefore a Grand Vizir archetype, and (c)named Obidiah. Stark gambles, has words with a reporter who accuses him of being a merchant of death, explains to the audience, through her, that making weapons is actually good for world peace, then beds her.

The cute reporter wakes up alone the next morning, just in time to see Stark's really cool house, which prompted Leah to comment, "I want one of those." She does this while not wearing pants, which elicited the same comment from me, and is escorted out, into minor character status by Tony's personal assistant, the tragically named Pepper Potts.

The cute reporter will reappear to deliver the occasional plot coupon, but will not be a major character or love interest because, cute though she is, Pepper is (a) The Girl Friday archetype, and (b) Gwenneth Paltrow, and therefore wins.

We also meet Tony's chatty, British voiced computer, who Leah thinks would have done a better job than Val Kilmer at KITT. We've also met by now the Air Force liaison to Stark Industries, who is so unimportant to the story that one gets the feeling that during writers' meetings, they just referred to him as "Stark's Black Friend" (Though I have a suspicion that should they go to franchise, he will eventually play whichever of War Machine and Iron Monger is the guy who's just like Iron Man, but black and beige instead of red and yellow)

Anyway, Stark gives some speeches about how using weapons is the American Way.

I'm going to point out at this point that, unlike Leah, I never much cared for Iron Man. In the world of Superheroes, especially in the Marvel world of angsty superheroes like Spider-Man, Tony Stark is the Superhero who sold out to The Man. In fact, he didn't even sell out. He is the Man. Iron Man is sort of Marvel's answer to Batman: just a normal guy who makes up for his lack of super-powers by being disgustingly rich, and applying his wealth to heroism. He's not super strong, super fast, or able to climb walls. But he's got a freaking suit of armor. But that's pretty much where the parallels to Batman end. Batman's a vigilante. Iron Man is basically a government contractor. Bruce Wayne maintains peak physical condition. Tony Stark drinks like the freshman girl who lived across the hall from me junior year who got carted off on a stretcher twice in one week while the EMTs gossiped to each other about her having had the highest BAC on record. Batman actively resists authority, even actively trying to overthrow the oppressive government of the dystopian future in The Dark Knight Returns. Iron Man becomes the poster-child for the government's side in the Marvel Civil War.

And indeed, Tony Stark is an easy man to hate. He beds, then summarily dismisses -- and not even in person, but rather via his assistant -- the cute reporter. He drinks too much. He speaks gleefully about weapons of mass destruction. He doesn't seem to care in the slightest about the deaths he causes. He's chipper and upbeat about war. He misses an award ceremony because he's got a hot hand in a dice game. In short, Tony Stark is kind of a bastard.

But he's the kind of bastard you just love to watch.

Tony wakes up, a prisoner of the Ethnically-Evil thugs (I noticed that they do make a point that these thugs, who turn out not even to be the actual big bads, are not politically or religiously motivated, but are just megalomaniacal. I assume this was a touch of political correctness), and with a new accessory: he's got to lug around a car battery which is wired to his chest. He took some shrapnel in the attack, and only an electromagnet embedded in his chest keeps it from piercing his heart. His co-prisoner fashioned the device, for some reason not having any unpowered magnets which wouldn't require him to lug around a car battery.

After being shocked, shocked, to find the Lockheed MartinStark Industries logo on a bunch of weapons being passed around the terrorist camp, Stark is ordered by his captors to build them one of his latest WMDs. Instead, Stark builds himself a miniature magic free-energy device which he can plug into his chest to replace the car battery. It would, hint hint, power Stark for a lifetime or two, or "something big for fifteen minutes". Then, he decides that, with death likely to only be days away, what he'd really like to do with his remaining time is cosplay Fullmetal Alchemist and makes himself a suit of armor. Stark breaks out, busts shit up, and escapes, trashing his tin man suit.

Safely rescued, Hollywood decides that Stark is a bit too capitalistic for a big budget movie, and has him forswear the barren road of making weapons, and orders the arms manufacturing division of Stark Industries shut down, to instead focus on exploiting magic free-energy devices, like the one in his chest, and its big brother back in the lab, which isn't cost effective, but looks kind of cool. Obidiah Stane, being evil, wants none of this, and tells Tony to lay low while people freak out about him trashing the company. Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money advises everyone to sell their Stark Industries stock, prompting suspicions that this movie was filmed before March 11, when Jim Cramer lost a lot of people a lot of money by shouting that it was crazy to take your money out of Bear Stearnes, which proceeded to completely collapse over the next few days. The scene probably doesn't have its desired impact any more.

So, having decided to forswear the barren road of weapons development, Tony decides to make himself a new and better suit of armor armed to the teeth with all kinds of weapons. At no point does it occur to him that an unobtanium-powered electromagnet keeping the shrapnel out of his heart is, just possibly, not the best of all possible treatments for his injury. Also, as a womanizer, isn't it going to be inconvenient explaining the big glowing circle on his chest all the time?

At this point, I'm going to identify one of my points of evidence that Hollywood is not really into superhero movies:

1. Every Superhero Movie must be an origin story. Specifically, it must take at least 2/3 of the movie for the superhero to actually become the superhero. Ideally, we should not see the hero in full costume until the climax. Preferably, no one even uses the superhero's name, at least until the end.
Spider-Man is an origin story. Batman Begins is an origin story. Heck, Transformers is an origin story. So is The Hulk and possibly The Incredible Hulk too. And Ghost Rider. And Daredevil. And, somehow, Electra despite the fact that she was already in Daredevil. And The Punisher. For team-superheroes, interestingly, you don't need to do an origin story per se, instead, you do the origin of an individual character, showing how they came to be part of the group, as X-Men did with Rogue, though if you're the Fantastic Four you can still do an origin story. Now, I'm not all that well versed with comic book superhero tropes, but if my memory serves me correctly, in print, they usually don't start with the origin story. They start us out right smack in medias res, and let us start caring for the character, and then they go back and do the origin story. (It is entirely possible that I am simply mistaken on this point). In Iron Man, we get to watch Tony create Iron Man thrice. In fact, just about the only thing anyone does in this movie is to build super robot armor. Tony builds himself the Mark I suit. Then Tony builds the Mark 2 suit (which is going to turn out to be whichever of Iron Monger or War Machine is Iron Man's Black Friend). Then Tony builds the Mark 3 suit. Then the (non-religious, we promise) terrorists reassemble the Mark I suit. Then Stane builds his robot suit. Then we get to see some robot fighting.

Now, it is a testament to just how awesome this movie is that I just sat here and told you that, for the better part of two hours, we get to watch Tony build Iron Man suits, and yet I still maintain that this is the bestest superhero movie in decades. Intermixed with a few comical injuries resulting from his various attempts to master flight, Tony upgrades his warm glowey heart-enhancement. Not into something that would render him able to survive independently in the event something were to happen to his batteries, but rather into a warmer and glowier chest batteyr, which he has Pepper install for him, firstly because it isn't, as it turns out, a good idea to perform open-hearty surgery on yourself (The easy part was taking my brain out [2 pts]), secondly, because Pepper fondling Stark's heart is a good visual metaphor, and thirdly, so that Stark can tell her to discard it, not being sentimental, and she can respond by bronzing it instead, which he will eventually find heartwarming.

Between hard drinking and having Obidiah warn him that the board isn't going to stand for Stark Industries getting out of the WMD business, he has time to fly the Mark 2 Iron Man suit out to the edge of space, whereupon he ices up and nearly crashes. This is largely an excuse for him to come up with using a gold-titanium alloy for the next revision, which will solve the icing problem, and make him red and gold, instead of looking like a Cyberman.

Ever since I started to study television and movies with a critical eye, I've found that, with very little effort, you can predict a good 90% of what's going to happen in a show. Ghost Rider was especially bad about this, with me calling the last scene of the movie in the third scene. What bothers me the most these days is that conflict so often feels artificial, not an extension of the characters and situations but rather "Movies without conflict are boring, so here's some." This is largely why Leah and I are the only two people in the world who didn't like Superbad. For me, the litmus test for whether or not a movie is good is not that I didn't see it coming: you can just have random shit happen for an hour and it'll be unexpected, but not good. The litmus test is whether, having anticipated the resolution, it is still enjoyable to watch it play out. I know how Casablanca, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Citizen Kane end, and it's still a pleasure to watch it happen. That's real quality. If it's only good because it's unexpected, that's, in the words of Mr. Rodriguez, "Interesting... No, wait; the other thing: Tedious."

Now, all that said, I totally did not see one element of the resolution, and that's what's just happened. So far, the running count: 1. Spare Heart-battery; 2. Flying too high causes you to meet not Icarus's firey end, but an icy one. 3. Stark Industries has a giant-size version of the Heart-Battery Unobtanium reactor. 4. Heart Mark One has enough juice to power something big for fifteen minutes.

So, Stark goes to a party. This is because Stark is a drunk and a womanizer, and we need a bit more sexual tension between him and Pepper, because this is a movie and we don't have years and years over which to build something like this. Fortunately, the one night stand from act 1 has an important plot delivery, from which Stark learns that his company, which he's been too busy building a superhero costume to pay much attention to, is still selling weapons, and, apparently, is intentionally selling them to terrorists. And Obidiah Stane is behind it. Because it's always a sound capitalist decision to sell weapons to your enemies, because that's profitable, unlike selling to the US government -- of course, you can do both at the same time to make the maximum money because no one will catch you even though your logos are printed in huge letters on your wares. And if anyone catches you, you can always go on a murder spree to kill all the witnesses, as this will never spiral out of control.

So, with about fifteen minutes of movie left, Tony takes the proper Iron Man suit out for a spin, blowing up all the Stark Industries weapons that had been sold to terrorists, leading to that awesome scene in the trailer where Iron Man shoots at a tank and then walks away before it even hits.

He also destroys a US fighter jet, about which he is very sorry, but they really should not have been shooting at him.

Meanwhile, in the middle east, the terrorists round up all the bits of the Mark 1 Iron Man suit, and try to sell it to Obidiah, who is pissed at them for not having successfully murdered Stark as he'd hired them to do (The filmmakers clearly meant for this to be a surprise, because they think we are stupid). Obidiah whips out a gizmo he'd borrowed from the guys with the blue gloves from Serenity and uses it to paralyze the head terrorist while he steals the suit and has everyone slaughtered.

Unfortunately, Stane's head geek is not geeky enough, and can't sort out a way to fit a big giant unobtanium reactor into their new robot suit, which they intend to sell, but probably not to the US, because the real money is in funding terrorism. Well, okay, because Stane is just a universe-class douchebag.

Pepper gets sent off to steal some secret files from Stark Industries, because Tony wants a list of things to blow up. Pepper also finds all of Stane's evil plans (Apparently, the filmmakers thought it would be a surprise to us that Stane was behind Tony's kidnapping, as there's a big reveal when Pepper turns on the universal translator and finds that the terrorist video we caught a second of at the beginning of the movie was them asking for more money. This is because the filmmakers think we're too damned stupid to have figured it out when they told us outright) . Which would be awesome, except that Stane catches her. Fortunately for Pepper, a representative from the Society for Humorous Initials Evading Lady Deadness who Stark's been avoiding for two thirds of the movie is nearby and provides a convenient distraction while she escapes.

Pepper really needs a better cellular carrier, because it takes her exactly the same length of time to get a call through to Tony as it takes Stane to walk to Casa de Stark and use his Blue Man Group device to incapacitate Tony. So as it turns out, all Pepper was going to tell Tony was that Stane was planning to kill him, so it's okay that he missed the message, because Stane tries to kill Tony by yoinking out his heart-battery. While Tony tries to crawl down to his garage, Pepper calls his black friend (I promise that the fact that I can't remember his name is entirely due to the fact that the film treats him like the "Token Black Guy", not that I do. Also, it's a funny visual to keep imagining Robert Downey Jr. doing the Stephen Colbert grin-and-point pose). He shows up just in time to not be of any help, as Tony has successfully handled the whole "In Case of Emergency, Break Memento From Your Secretary" thing and stuck his old heart-battery in his chest-hole. Far as I can tell, he shows up purely so that he can look approvingly at the Spare Iron Man Suit, so that existing Iron Man fans can get a chuckle. Both of them.

Pepper and the Super Hero Idiom Enhancement League of Dispatch break into Stane's lab, where they don some red shirts and get killed by whichever of War Machine and Iron Monger isn't Iron Man's black friend.

2. In a Superhero Movie, the good guy must face off against someone with equal and opposite powers

Batman Begins versus Ras Al Ghul, who basically taught him everything he knows and therefore has the diametric opposite powers. Spider-Man versus Venom (or "Evil Spider-Man"). The Hulk versus Evil Hulk in the trailer we saw before the movie. The X-Men movies are basically just one example after another of "And here's my equal and opposite team": Wolverine pairs off against Sabretooth, who is evil and has cat-related powers; Pyro versus Ice-Man or whatever. I gather that had Superman Returns done better in the box office, he'd have been facing off against Bizarro.

I don't think this quite gets it. It's the Matrix Reloaded problem: The people who make movies think "Smith fighting Neo good. Neo fighting A ZILLION SMITHS better!" One Iron Man good. Two Iron Mans better. It's cool and all, but at the end of the day, Good Spider Man fighting Bad Spider Man is really only different from, say, me getting in a prissy little bitch fight with some other computer scientist in scale. The great rivalries in superherodom aren't really about "equal and opposite": Look at Superman versus Lex Luthor (Strongest anyone anywhere, versus a mad scientist. Who is bald.) Batman versus the Joker (Ultrarational guy in peak physical condition versus a guy who makes up for being a bit on the frail side purely by being the craziest motherfucker since Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson) . The Flash versus Slowpoke Rodriguez (Just kidding).

Anyway, now that I've got that out of the way -- FUCKING IRON MAN VERSUS EVIL IRON MAN HELL YEAH. KICK ASS.

Specifically, Stark's ass. Using his spare heart, it takes about 81% of his power just to fly from his house to Stark Industries, a trip which is apparently short enough that Obidiah Stane could make it faster than Pepper could place a local phone call to someone she's got on speed dial.

Stane and Stark fight, with Stane showing callous disregard for life and trying such things as throwing SUVs full of orphans at Stark. This is because Stane is a capitalist, and we know thati t makes good capitalist sense to kill women and children, because if you've been *caught* in your plan to sell weapons to terrorists and murder your boss, you can make all that go away by just murdering as many people as possible. At some point, you'll have murdered so many people, and done it so obviously, that not only will no one remember that you murdered: 1. your boss; 2. his secretary; 3. An entire government shadow agency; 4. An alternative-fuels powered bus; 5. An SUV full of orphans. Also, they won't notice that you are now selling the EXACT SAME ARMOR SUIT you used to commit all these murders.

Stane has moved firmly into the "Just keep killing people, that will make it better" phase of villainy which increasingly drives me flat-out crazy.

So, I called Stane being evil, and I called Stane yoinking out Tony's heart-battery, and I called Stark having to use his spare heart battery. What I did not call was the near-climax of the fight, where Iron Man takes off for the stratosphere, with Stane following close behind. Just as Stane prepares to kill Tony with his much-more-powerful-at-least-with-Stark-running-on-fumes super suit, Tony reminds physics that Stane's armor isn't hot rod red, and therefore is still susceptible to freezing over.

Which would totally be enough to finish him once and for all, except that we paid for these special effects, damnit, and we're going to use them. Stane unhelmets Stark, because they also paid for Robert Downey Jr., damnit, and they're going to use him. Stark has Pepper blow up his heart's big brother, which for some reason doesn't kill Iron Man despite his being right on top of it, but does kill Stane. Or at least removes him from the story. (I think the canonical answer is that Iron Man, being more fleet-of-foot ducks.

Stark's batteries give out as we fade out on the scene, in order that we can wonder for a second whether or not Tony's force of will is strong enough to overcome shrapnel in his heart. Remember, this is hollywood, where asthma is an illness caused by being a wuss, and nearsightedness is a condition caused by being bookish and nerdy, and purity of heart literally means not allowing your heart to become contaminated by shrapnel. Which is to say that Stark is fine, aside from a sling on his arm. I mean, and he's also still got to have a battery in his chest to keep his heart working properly.

The next morning, with the help of the government goon from the Society Who You Have Somehow Not Noticed Yet Acronyms Down To "SHIELD", Tony has convinced everyone that there's absolutely nothing to see here people, and it was all just a Training Accident. They've concocted a cover story about Iron Man being Stark's body guard, though the only reason for this that I can see is "Well, superheroes always have secret identities." It's not like Tony has a family to protect, or like he'll somehow be less of a target for villains if he's just Iron Man's Boss and not Iron Man. It should be needless to say that Tony goes off-script at the press conference and tells the world that, yes, he is Iron Man. It's not needless, though, because, as I said, Superheroes have Secret Identities. So, kudos.

And that's the end of the movie. Nothing else to see. The end. Really. Promise.

Okay, just kidding. But don't say I didn't warn you.

These guys must be pooping money, because they paid to have Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson show up for a cameo after the credits, where he shows up uninvited at Stark's house to ask him if he's interested in hearing the good news about Jesus Christ The Avengers (Who are kind of like the Justice League of America, but in the Marvel Universe, so angstier and less gay).

So that's the story of Iron Man. I think maybe the reason this superhero movie seemed so much better than other superhero movies is that I don't really care all that much about Iron Man. Which means that my feelings and Hollywood's feelings were well-aligned; they don't care much about the actual superhero. Tony Stark is a great character, and he's who they really care about. I can do what Hollywood does: I can sit back and say "Man, this is cool character drama which has nothing to do with superheroics. And now, because it is the end of the movie, let's see some freaking sweet action sequences. This movie contained, on the face of it, insufficient Iron Man, at least in the sense that, had this been a Spider-Man movie and contained the amount of Spider-Man that this movie contained Iron Man, I would have thought this movie contained insufficient Spider-Man. But it's not really insufficient Iron Man, because, frankly, I don't care much about Iron Man. A little bit of Iron Man is really all I needed.

So, what does this say about the way forward for Superhero movies? Well, make them about second-tier superheroes. People who aren't all that huge in the public mind.

Ant-Man anyone?

Aww. My wife and infant child look so cute and loveable and carefree as I am about to back over them with my SUV

This is a little funny, because here's an adventurous outdoorsman in a playset with a bunch of wild animals, and look: his arm's missing. O for fun. Now, look at what was directly under it:

…Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

-- Ben Stein, 2008 In an interview with TBN's Paul Crouch Jr. (video here)

I don't even need to summarize. "Science leads to killing people."

Someone disagrees (emphasis mine):

I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century:

Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
...

Ben Stein wants to kill American competitiveness.

I think it's our turn to use everyone's favorite right-wing mudsling:
Ben Stein, why do you hate America?