TV Discussion Fisto's Disco: The LACWAC Social Thread

She doesn't do a whole lot. She just sits in my hands. And if I move my hands and disturb her, she'll slowly try to move away, such that I have to keep her treadmilling in my hands.

I'm not afraid of spiders outside. If I see one, it's no biggie. I am afraid of them in my house, or if one happens to get on me.

She is not an animal that I would have wanted to handle out of my own curiosity. One of the keepers is handling her to get her accustomed to it so that she could be used as an educational animal. So when she asked me if I would like to try holding her, I wasn't going to admit to being afraid and say no, I had to suck it up. But after a minute of holding her and just seeing how mellow she is and how she makes no effort to bite (and she doesn't move fast and doesn't jump or anything surprising like that), the fear passes.

I remember in my previous internship I was pretty much told to assist with moving a hellbender immediately after being shown a scar one of the keepers had from being bitten by it, and that was a similar experience of acting like I was not intimidated and just going for it. And pretty soon I just thought the hellbenders were so cool.

 

I just watched Elysium, pretty good film with great effects. I'd give it a 7/10.

I also watched X-Men: First Class last week for the first time, and wow, it was amazing! It's my favourite X-Men film and I'd give it a 9/10.

And because I'm suddenly a huge X-Men fan, I'm currently watching the animated series X-Men: Evolution, which I'm really liking. I reckon most of the characters match the films so well and some of their voices even sound exactly the same. For an animated series made in 2000, it's actually really good.

 

I've watched nearly everything I've wanted to so far this year, but I still wanna watch Man of Steel and Jack the Giant Slayer, they both looked good, but I just never got round to watching them.

 

So, it looks like Bryan Cranston's gonna be cooking up some... krypto meth

... you know, because Breaking Bad and... Man of... yeah, that was a bad joke.

 

My group just finished our 6 week Star Wars marathon with ROTJ tonight. Luke unmasking Vader... Easily my favorite Star Wars moment.

In other news, my neighbors had one of their infamous parties. Thankfully nobody set the deck on fire this time.. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

 

Yes it's on the DVD and Blu-Ray box set of season 5 and on the complete series too.
It was a cool epilogue to the show because we know more about this Hurley/Ben team that Hurley talked about at the end of the finale during the flash sideways.
In my opinion no show can do better than LOST did.

 

I guess I've seen all of the movies I wanted to see in the theater so far this year (with the exception of Man of Steel, for which I changed my plan after hearing reviews). But the next Hobbit movie is one of the highlights of the year for me and my son, and it of course doesn't start until December.

 

I've always been more of a DC guy, mostly because I grew up on Batman and Superman cartoons, which I preferred to X-Men and Spider-Man (but I liked them too). I liked the Burton Batman films and the first Christopher Reeve Superman film. And I liked Man of Steel and don't think it warranted a 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating (it was in that ball park when I went to see it). And I liked all of the Nolan Batman films, though Dark Knight Rises was definitely the weakest. Justice League and Justice League Unlimited I just started watching in the past year on Netflix and think that is a great show (I think DC has Marvel beat in the animation department, some of the Marvel shows/animated films are terrible, IMO).

And within the past 6 months or so, I've started reading comics, with a bias towards DC because I have generally liked them better in the past and because their comics are more reasonably priced for their titles in the "New 52" reboot than most titles in Marvel's "Marvel NOW" line, especially when buying digitally.

I didn't know of "Marvel Unlimited" until today, which is an even better deal than DC's. It's essentially Netflix for comics. $9.99/month to have unlimited access to many titles in Marvel's library, though apparently with a 6 month lag in the newer titles. Still an excellent bargain compared to what I could get for $9.99 at a comic book store or even with DC's discounted digital prices.

Conversely though, I'm blindly jumping around and reading random stories and story arcs. Like Amazing Spider-Man #20 (first appearance of Scorpion), reading select issues of Fantastic Four by J. Michael Straczynski (my favorite author at the moment), and arbitrarily jumped into the Nation X arc of the Uncanny X-Men.

I have to say that thus far my preference for DC is cemented... Marvel isn't bad, but I'm just way less interested in its universe so far, and the story arcs of DC - at least in my experience - tend to be written so that as long as you start an arc from the beginning, you can generally jump on in. Whereas even when I started the Nation X arc, there are just so many references to previous events that the story does not bring me - the reader - up to speed on. I feel like I either have to say "I don't care" and push on; wikipedia the hell out of characters and events that are mentioned; or keep reading backwards, rather than forward.

X-Men, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are generally what I'm most interested in now. Though I figure I'll also look into Daredevil (especially since his comics are currently being received very well).

Is anyone here a comic reader that has suggestions for story arcs that they liked in any of these lines? I'd be open to any of Marvel's other heroes too. I did want to however pass on Days of Futures Past for the time being. I've been looking forward to the film and would be interested in reading it after I've seen the movie, and would rather go into the film knowing nothing about it at this point.

 

I don't know if it's a matter of DC being unable to sell other heroes on the big screen, or if it's just a lack of trying.

There's no excuse in my mind for why they can't make a Flash, Aquaman or Wonder Woman film. I have never written a script in my life, yet if I were getting paid to sit down and write scripts, I would think that there's definitely enough decades worth of source material that even if I resorted to adapting an existing story line, with very little creative liberties, I could at the very least be able to write something decent. I would more expect this kind of difficulty for films based on characters like Hawkman (or Hawkgirl), Cyborg, or Martian Manhunter, since they tend to be less iconic (or at least charismatic) heroes that might work best in supporting roles like Hawkeye and Black Widow have filled, rather than having their own films.

Ever since the first X-Men film, it just seems like Marvel has had a steady stream of movies, with some duds (IMO) like Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Punisher and Fantastic Four, but enough successes with X-Men, X2, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, First Class, Iron Man, Captain America, The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, and The Avengers to keep things rolling.

And now Fox is going to reboot Fantastic Four with a shared universe with X-Men (I don't know how that's going to work), and is looking at more obscure heroes like Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Ant-Man.

Meanwhile DC is too scared to commit to anything that isn't Batman (and now Superman) to film, but instead keeps looking to television. Green Arrow exists on TV, they are apparently looking to use Arrow as a test bed for The Flash. There was talk of a Booster Gold show that apparently fell through (I haven't heard anything about it in a long time), there was a proposed Aquaman show that never went anywhere, a Wonder Woman show has been in development hell for forever.

Unless DC plans to pull the actors from these TV shows to star along side Cavill and Affleck on the big screen, I don't know how they plan to do their Justice League movie. Wikipedia makes reference to a possible Green Lantern sequel, though I thought Reynolds at one point said he wasn't interested in reprising the role. So they might have to reboot Hal Jordan's story again, unless they continue off the same continuity but go with someone like John Stewart or Guy Gardner instead.

DC's planning has been a mess and I found it odd that they are already planning a Justice League movie, when none of the constituent pieces seem to be in place.

Though I have to say that merely having Batman and Superman on screen together would be enough to make me giddy in a way that putting the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor together failed to do. The only thing that Marvel could do that would come remotely close for me personally, would be to have an X-Men/Avengers crossover, the likelihood of which is pitifully low given that Fox has the rights to X-Men.

 

Finished moving house after a fortnight of back and forth of between here & Stockholm (where we lived before). We now live in the city that I spent my toddler years in & was born in.

Didn't miss it one bit.

 

Had a phone interview today with a zoo back in Michigan. I felt it went well and am hoping for the best. Though I do love it where I am interning and the people I work with and had hoped something would become available.

In other news, that tarantula I posted a picture of and said kind things about turned around and bit a keeper unprovoked today. Does not make me want to handle her again, though I know that I have to suck it up and continue to handle her. We have no idea why she bit and she gave none of the signals that tarantulas apparently give (according to the internet) before biting.

A keeper was holding the tarantula and we were sitting at a table just talking, the spider sitting calmly in her hand for several minutes. I then see the fangs come out and calmly (I got made fun of after the fact for how emotionless my tone was) said something like "I think you're about to get bitten" while the spider simultaneously did just that.

The keeper, who kept pet tarantulas as a kid and had never been bitten by one before, had very unkind, not appropriate to re-state here, things about the tarantula after the fact

 

TaradosGon : Good luck on that position you interviewed for... and also for something opening up where you are if you prefer that.

So a question on the tarantula bite; are they not venomous? I thought that they were (I guess all spiders technically are, but usually not at levels dangerous to animals and people)... but maybe some species like this one are not dangerous to people? Either way, at that size it must hurt. Yikes.

 

I do not like spiders. At all. There's Black Widows all around my backyard (and occasionally in my house!) I've been bit a few times.. Not fun.

 

They all have venom, but the venom of this particular species is about as potent as a wasp sting. It hurts, but is not fatal unless, like wasps or bees, someone just has an exceptionally bad allergic reaction. The bite did very little damage, the keeper was bit on the finger which swelled up a bit, but there were just two little pink dots where the fangs punctured the skin. I don't know much about tarantulas, but I was always intimidated by the size of their fangs, but apparently they inject only the very tips. I would have expected it to do more damage than it did.

Everything that I've read on them suggests that they pretty much won't bite unless threatened in some way and will give certain signs, like flicking hairs off their abdomen or raising up their front legs and bearing their fangs before biting. This was entirely unprovoked, she didn't give any sign and was not being threatened in any way. We've been working with her for a week (this was day 7) and she's been fine all 6 days. Our only theory was that we had just fed some frozen mice to the birds of prey and that perhaps the scent of mouse was still on her hands, but we have no idea.

The other keeper has been reading about spiders lately and she was rambling off random facts to me. I don't remember the total species of spiders known that she had said, but it was in the tens of thousands, and of those less than 100 are considered dangerous to humans. It was something like 60 out of 50,000. Tarantulas venom is not particularly potent, they are slow moving, and are considered to *usually* be a less aggressive group of spiders that rarely bites.

 

Michigan has black widows, though I think they are a smaller and less venomous subspecies than those in the southern states. I think the jury is still out on the brown recluse. The Michigan DNR website shows how they can be identified and I think they are known in Ohio, but last I knew they were not believed to be established in Michigan.

Out here in Idaho there are "hobo spiders" (I can't get over how dumb their name is). I keep hearing about this species specifically, like they are significant in some way. Some sources say that they have a bite that causes necrotic lesions like a brown recluse bite, but I know I found a link to Orkin's website and a couple other sources that say this is misinformation and that necrotic bites attributed to hobo spiders were probably misidentified brown recluse bites.

Hobo spiders... never have known a hard day's work in their lives.

On a tangential note: I get to put on a wet suit and "teach" a baby jackass penguin to swim tomorrow. They instinctively know how to swim, so I think the whole getting in the water with a wet suit is more for the keepers' own enjoyment than anything else.

 

Will you teach it to dance too?