In the first of many posts to come.

I went to see the Met's Superheroes exhibit on Saturday, and I was completely off my nut about it. I bought the exhibit book for $30. I had to talk myself out of getting the $50 hardcover version just 'cause I wanted it to last forever. Seriously, you cannot surround me with fabulous couture AND the Mark II Iron Man suit, the new Bat-suit, and the skin-tight vinyl of my very favorite and first lesbian crush. I mean, Catwoman's costume (from Batman Returns, the only Catwoman that matters) WAS RIGHT THERE. I wish the stupid book of the exhibit displayed that instead of a production still. There's nothing quite like it. It's just...sex.

It's also something of a disillusionment to see up close. It just proves the magic of movies and comics that I never noticed that the stitches that supposedly keep the entire thing together are really just pasted on patches with lacing. It's hard to describe, so everyone should go see it. (If they'd let me take pictures, I'd never have left.) Things that stayed fucking impressive on closer look? Definitely the Mark II armor and the new Bat-suit and Mystique's scales, which they put on a dummy and painted it and its eyes so it was the only dummy in the place to have any life to it.

I mean, there's this goddamned AMAZING Thierry Mugler dress that is supposed to be a take off on the mutant body, and it is devastating to see. (Best pic of the Catwoman costume, too.) BUT LOOK AT THE MODEL AND HOW SHE IS PAINTED AND HOW SHE MOVES!!! (Dress in question appears at 2:22) viridian already has dibs on this one, but wow. If I had no waist at all, I'd be all over that shit. I'd hit it like a freight train.

I need to figure out how to copy pictures from my book without destroying it so I can babble some more about these clothes. In the next installment of Trinity Goes 'Splode Theater, I will talk about all eighty pairs of highly impossible shoes THAT I MUST HAVE.

Appealing to the lowest common denominator

It's already a given that there are favorite sports in the Olympics. We like things that are pretty or whose physical prowess is demonstrable in a dramatic way. Gymnastics, we know, is always going to the get the coverage that handball, volleyball (note: except beach volleyball), softball, even basketball, aren't. It's just so pretty and surprising and scary and amazing. The track and field events will get their day, but there's definitely a reason they drag out the gymnastics events over the entire two weeks of coverage. You could do all the individual medal events--the beam, the bars, etc.--in a day or two. But why? The better to spread them out and have people tuning in each night for twenty minutes. Maybe they'll stay and watch other stuff!

It works, so they'll never stop doing it, but the coverage is agonizing. They cut away and cut between things. Our other broadcasting prejudice--to only display those countries as are good/likely medal contenders, the host country, and ours--make it even worse. Here's some gymnastics! Well, ours, China's, and some of Japan, but they're only silver medalists. They're not the plucky USA team that shouldn't even be here! Wait, Michael Phelps is doing something! Cut to him listening to his iPod! GREAT STUFF.

Actually, I'd like to see all of the event, good or no. I'd love to know when in the event something is going to happen or not, and not be yanked every ten minutes between sports. NBC is tempting me to set up the DVR recording for the first two hours, ignore it, and then come back and watch on fast forward until I catch up with real time because this schedule is nuts. Even Bob Costas is like, "Sorry folks, this is no way to broadcast a jumping frog race, and it's going to go on for another week."

This is unexpected

And yet, not?

Guess who's boycotting Tropic Thunder?

I guess it's all a matter of which actor you trust to satirize which material. Robert Downey Jr. can, apparently, do a literal blackface to poke fun at people who...do blackface. But ask Ben Stiller to skewer actors who play characters with disabilities by pretending to be an actor who does, and there'll be trouble. It's a question of talent, certainly--RDJ is the better actor by orders of magnitude between the two of them--but I wonder if the writing of the one set up isn't more sensitive than the other? Both are meant only to harsh on the people who would exploit minorities or the disabled for fame and glory. You'd think they'd be able to do as well for one group as another.