I Got 13 Turtles and a Superman

Where it's at...

I've been remiss in writing posts lately. The heat and rain have kept me inside, though I enjoyed a few bike rides in the morning drizzle and quiet early cool.

On one dawn ride, I encountered 13 turtles! A dozen Eastern box turtles, like this lovely pair, and a large common mud turtle by a drainage pond covered in lily pads.

Chipmunks and fence lizards dash across the trail; the mountain Laurel blooms have fallen, replaced by the white bodies of male Long-tailed Skimmer dragonflies and their stepped wings. The bumblebees are loving our overgrown lavender bush.

Another denizen of the backyard hitchhiked into the house inside a pair of swimming trunks that I left to dry on a chair. This Eastern Gray Tree Frog spent the night under a pile of towels, until I found him when I was about to don my trunks. After exclaiming my surprise, I cradled them in my hands and let them jump into a neighbor's tree where they belong. They sing to me every night as I read in the basement lounge pit.

Another denizen of the Pine Barrens that lives in my house is this pitcher plant, which I bought at a farmers market. After a tough winter, it has thrived indoors on gnats, tiny ants, and fruit flies, growing to twice its original size. They evolved to survive the barren sandy soil by extracting mineral nutrients from insects that drown in the sticky and acidic liquid in their trumpets.

They like water from below, and my yard is often very dry, so I think we'll keep this one inside. Maybe I'll bring it outside in the autumn to let it eat better, but right now it's doing well eating the flies attracted to our fruit bowl.

As for books, I finished reading James by Percival Everett, and think it is well deserving of its Pulitzer prize. An excellent read that brings Jim to full life. I hadn't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn since college, and I'm about halfway through it. It's difficult, to say the least. Twain seems more interested in the Duke and Dauphin con men, who I find tedious. I liked Everett’s take on them.

I'm also currently reading The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, an excellent science fiction novel from 1957 that inspired cyberpunk. It's a revenge story and somewhat fantastical, and humans have discovered teleportation via ESP, called jaunting. (This also inspired a classic Stephen King story, “The Jaunt.”) I'm a little over half through this as well, and I like it's original title, Tyger, Tyger! as Gully Foyle is one of the most driven, ferocious, and obsessed protagonists I've read in a while. The view of the future is believable, diverse, and feels like Neal Stephenson could have written in ten years ago, much less than 68.

I went to see the new Superman movie, and my mistake was watching the 1978 movie with Christopher Reeve the night before. A few days before, I watched the Reeve biopic Super/Man, which chronicles his rise from stage actor with an overbearing and pompous poet father to the iconic superhero, to character actor, and steeplechase enthusiast, which ended in his accident. Reeve was a pilot, sailor, and athlete and feel into a deep depression when his injury ended those activities, but became an advocate for quadriplegics and also pushed for medical treatments for spinal injury. When he died, he had recovered feeling in his fingers and some movement in his legs.

The 1978 Superman movie holds up well, and the hero’s introduction, where he saves Lois Lane from a helicopter crash, then stops several crimes, and still has time to rescue a young girl's kitten from a tree, remains the best onscreen portrayal of the character. I was hoping for a single scene that evoked this in the new film, but there are none. The closest is when a child in a fictional country about to be invaded by a dictator holds up a flag with the Superman symbol. I agree with Richard Roeper’s 2.5/4 star review for Roger Ebert’s site, that unfortunately there's nothing we haven't seen before multiple times, and it all feels like leftovers from a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. Nathan Fillion is funny as Green Lantern, and Lex Luthor steals every scene… which should not happen in a Superman story. Superman loses his temper and yells a lot, including at Lois, who he's dating… and never has any moral authority, or a scene where he wins. He's beat up from the first scene, where we are treated to a synopsis of his heroics in stopping a war… but we never see that, until the very end.

I'm glad that Superman isn't a brooding antihero, and I liked Mr Terrific, but the writing fell short of the storylines in the excellent 4 seasons of Superman and Lois, where he had to make tough moral choices, and convince others that he was right. I look forward to the next movie and I hope it's more about Superman. Maybe he'll get to fight Brainiac, or Darkseid… two very powerful adversaries who force tough decisions that don't bend his moral authority.

Do I regret seeing it? No. It's good to see a superhero movie that's bright and bold and funny, that mocks the billionaire villains of our world while letting us escape their clutches for a while. But I wish someone would trust that people want to see Superman be Superman for 2 hours, without sidekicks who can swear, kill, and create giant green middle fingers, because Superman is so uncool. As the story tries to tell us, it's “punk” to be earnest and heartfelt and stand for what's right … so let him.