Don't Touch the Banana

Heh, heh. No, really, it’s not meant as an innuendo.

I tend to write only about my personal life in blog posts and in other online venues, and then only in limited detail with a degree of anonymity lent to all involved. There are a number of good reasons for this. First and foremost, my professional life is boring as hell to the average human being. This is true of most lawyers, believe it or not. As exciting as you may find Law and Order, life just isn’t that enthralling for your run-of-the-mill J.D.  I’m currently a securities attorney, or more precisely, a securities regulator since I work for the state and not for a private firm. Aside from patent law, I’m not sure there is another job less exciting to the average Joe. This is not to say I don’t enjoy my job, just that I acknowledge most people don’t want to hear wild stories about securities law. Nor could I share a lot of stories if you did want to hear them. That, also, is in the nature of being an attorney.

I am also painfully aware of the fact that your online presence follows you. Everywhere. What you say online reflects on you in the eyes of potential employers, potential clients, and judgmental strangers.

But, I don’t want this blog to become about nothing but our new baby. Cute as she is, there are thousands of baby blogs out there discussing the same stuff I’m likely to find interesting about being a parent. While I may deny it kicking and screaming, there is more to life in this universe than admiring the cuteness that is my daughter. Also, and more to the point of this post, I’m not all that interested in working with or for people who have no sense of humor, so if I can’t make the occasional observation about working for the government or the practice of law, what’s the point of having a blog and a regular audience of three or four readers? I would never bite the hand that feeds me, but making sweeping generalizations about lawyers and government is the God-given right of every freedom loving, red-blooded American. Vulcan-Americans, on the other hand, do not have this right.

Ba-dum-ching.

I’ve worked for more than one state agency in my professional life, and have a number of friends who work for various state and federal agencies, so I feel this qualifies me to comment on the condition of such employment generally. Not necessarily from my own direct experience, mind you, but from direct and indirect observation (that should be enough disclaimer for now).

 The truth is that, from the standpoint of an employee, working for state government is not a bad gig. The pay is generally low, but if you aren’t shackled with obscene amounts of debt (read: if you didn’t go to law school), it’s generally enough to make ends meet. It is also an employment position that allows you more flexibility in terms of having a personal life than many similar private sector positions. Here I am thinking specifically about the legal industry. Many of my law school classmates made double my annual salary in their first year out of law school. They also worked double the number of hours I did, staying in the office for late nights, weekends, and holidays. It works for some people, and I’m not saying I couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, but I have definitely enjoyed the fact that I get to come home to my wife at a fairly reasonable time every night, and can take advantage of vacation days without falling behind on the ever-looming “billable hours goal.” Now that we have a kid, this quality of life aspect of any given job is even more important.

All of that is great, but we love to poke fun at state government, and for good reason. Governments of all shapes and sizes do have some incredible bureaucracies. There are aspects of government (some would say “all of it”) which are inefficient, out-dated, inflexible, and downright useless. One thing in particular the government does not do well is respond well to change, or adapt to new situations. See, e.g., the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, or the BP Horizon disaster in 2010.

A friend of mine (one I should stress works for a different agency than I do) shared this story with me over a beer not too long ago about an apocryphal scientific study that may or may not have actually taken place (but probably didn’t):

In this study, they (the ubiquitous, scientific “they” who always conduct these studies) placed three chimpanzees in a room where they lived, worked, and played. The chimps were well-adjusted to each other and generally cooperated with each other. After an initial period of happy coexistence, a new element was introduced to the experiment: a short set of stairs leading up to a banana hanging from the ceiling.

The natural reaction of the chimps was to immediately try and storm the stairs for the banana, but each time one chimp reached for the banana, a fire hose would loose a painful stream of water not only at the chimp reaching for the banana, but at his two compatriots as well. After an initial adjustment period, the scientists no longer needed to turn the hose on the apes - each time one started up the stairs, the other two pulled him down and beat the snot out of him.

Eventually, they replaced one of the original chimps with a new chimp who had never seen the fire hose, or experienced life in this room. The new chimp immediately saw the banana at the top of the stairs and went for it, only to be pulled down by the old-timers and beaten unceremoniously into submission. It went on in this fashion until the scientists had eventually replaced all of the original chimps with chimps that had never experienced the wrath of the fire hose. Any time one of the apes reached for the banana - BAM. None of them had any idea why it was done that way, they just knew it had to be done.

This, in my friend’s view, is how many government agencies, offices, and divisions are operated. No one currently working in many such offices was around when key decisions were made, and no one is aware of why things are done the way they are. They’ve just always been that way. And if you deviate from them, expect to catch a beating.

My suspicion is that virtually every workplace has some element of this mentality rearing its ugly head from time to time. With government, it just never goes away. Gotta end this post quick. I think I hear a fire hose turning on.

Milestones

OMG! I'm in an effing shark!

Today was the big two-week check up for Olivia. For the uninitiated, this is where a medical professional determines whether or not you are competent to care for an infant based on the only-partially-under-your-control metric of whether or not your child has re-attained or exceeded his or her birth weight. It’s fairly normal for a baby to lose up to ten percent of their birth weight in the first few days after birth, and slowly put it back on over (roughly) the next two weeks. 

I don’t know what the consequences are for failing to achieve this threshold, but I suspect water-boarding is involved. Fortunately, I don’t have to find out – Olivia is back up to fighting weight with 2 ounces to spare. Overachiever.

Despite the sleep deprivation and total lack of coherent feedback from our child, I can see why so many parents make a big deal about this age. The first year, and definitely the first month, is packed with milestones. First car ride (almost necessarily the one home from the hospital), first outing, first trip in the stroller, first time in the crib, first time you interpret a random hand stretch as your daughter giving you the California howdy... there’s a lot going on if you are observant enough to pay attention. There are also a lot of firsts for parents. First sleepless night, first infirmity brought on primarily by lack of sleep and consequent loss of immune system, first night spent sleeping (or trying to) on the floor of your child’s nursery, first poo, pee, and/or vomit related stain found on your clothes while in public, and so on…

The firsts are fantastic. I’m trying not to miss any, but I know inevitably there will be some I can’t be there for. Mostly because I haven’t found a way to stay home and watch the baby all day long and still get paid. If any of you out there can think of a solution to this dilemma, please let me know. As much as neither my wife nor I want to closet ourselves off from the world (we don’t) it is hard not to selfishly hold on to these early days for ourselves alone. Especially when we see our friends’ children, a mere two months, or four months, or nine months ahead of Olivia, and see what a huge difference such a short period of time can make.

Hell, the first two weeks have already made a big difference. She’s already gained two ounces.

Things I've learned in one whole week of parenthood

We received a lot of advice and warnings from experienced parents in the nine months leading up to the birth of our daughter. We also endured the taunts and maniacal laughter of those who couldn’t wait to see us dealing with the trials and tribulations of parenthood. These are people who supposedly love us. I’m convinced at least a part of the joy of being a grandparent is an unhealthy dose of schadenfreude.

Needless to say, much of the advice we received, whether good natured or not, turned out to be right on. Here’s a little of what we’ve learned so far.

You will not sleep again.  Duh. I never said these were going to be profound. Certainly each baby is different, but in general they have no respect for clocks, schedules, or the fundamental difference between day and night. If you can catch two or three hours at a stretch, consider yourself fortunate.
It’s not been long enough to assess how well we operate on such a poor sleep schedule. I’ll hazard a guess - not well. But so far, we’ve done better than I would have guessed. That is not to say “well,” but we do what we can.

Listening to your baby crying for no discernible reason is about as helpless as you’ve ever felt. Every parent goes through it. It’s as inevitable as Congressional gridlock, and almost as painful. Your baby has one means of communication available to her when she is born - crying. Crying can mean anything from “I’m hungry,” to “I’m tired,” to “I’m in pain.” It can also mean nothing at all, as some of the literature will tell you that babies sometimes need to cry for some period merely to expend excess energy. I don’t know that I buy this, necessarily, but there are definitely cries that appear to have no obvious cause. They. Suck. If you are remotely human, you don’t like hearing your child cry. Having it go on for hours and knowing you’ve tried pretty much everything humanly possible to alleviate the cries makes you feel like the most incompetent parent in the world.
If those cries happen to take place at night, and feed into the lack of sleep discussed above, then... well, your nights aren’t going to be fun.

Car rides and strollers are kind of magic. Our kid doesn’t exactly love the infant carrier. The idea of being strapped in to something doesn’t sit well with her, so we tend to get serenaded with high pitched cries every time we have to take her somewhere. As soon as the car gets up to speed or the stroller starts bumping along, the volume falls to zero. I suspect this will not last forever, or at least not for the duration of long car rides to visit family, but it is pretty nice to know we have an almost surefire way to put our baby under without pharmaceuticals. 

Digital cameras are a godsend. I used to fancy myself a hobby photographer. I haven't picked up a camera in any serious fashion for several years, but I have taken more photos in the last ten days or so than I have in the previous ten months. I am very glad I don't have to pay to have all of them developed. Even a biased dad like me recognizes that the blurry picture of my daughters foot isn't really worth keeping.

Friends and Family are incredible. Southerners do food for almost any occasion. Someone die? Feed the family. Somebody born? Feed the family. We've had a lot of friends and family taking care of us, in many more ways than just keeping us nourished, and that has allowed us to spend more time focusing on our new addition. We are immensely grateful, and I can't imagine doing this without some kind of support system in place. Also, we have a ton of leftovers if anyone is hungry.
Mostly, I’ve just learned that I’m a big sap. Having a kid is pretty awesome, and we’ve spent a lot of time just staring at her sleeping. It’s hard to be human and not get a little sappy about your kid, so I fully expect I will embarrass myself will all manner of unmanly demonstrations of sentimentality in the coming months and years. I probably won’t share all of those.

Oh, and I’d like to throw a shout-out to Lumos Studio (www.lumosstudio.com) for the photograph above. As I mentioned, I'm a biased observer, but I happen to think they do some pretty damn fine work. Thanks guys!

Olivia: The Prequel

Intellectually, I think most prospective parents... nay - thinking people - understand that the Hollywood representation of labor and delivery is total BS.

I can confirm that your suspicions on that score are accurate.

In film and television, labor almost always begins with the woman's water breaking suddenly, without warning, and generally in an inconvenient location or in the midst of a dramatic conversation. Usually, by the time the pregnant woman arrives at the hospital, the baby's arrival is imminent.

In reality, every pregnancy, and consequently every delivery, is unique in its particulars. Probably there have been a handful of Hollywood-esque deliveries in the history of modern obstetrics, but most are a little more drawn out, a whole lot messier, and much less overacted.

Our story began on Thursday night, a full three days before Olivia was actually born. My wife began having contractions around 9:30, too sporadic at that point to consider going to the hospital, but strong enough to make us believe this could be the real deal if they got close enough together.

Most OBs and midwives will tell you not to come to the hospital until contractions are coming at least every five minutes, and have been for a couple of hours. Some may want them even closer in time. What these professionals really aren't so good at conveying, especially to first time mothers, is how to tell when real labor has begun. Not all contractions are created equal, and most women in late stage pregnancy will experience Braxton-Hicks contractions, which generally aren't very painful (relatively speaking). If those go on for, say, ten hours at five minutes apart, even a woman who suspects she is not in active labor will probably get annoyed enough to call her practitioner and try and find out what the deal is. And if the practitioner's answering service has instructed its people to tell every woman who says the word "contraction" to come on to the hospital, the woman may end up sitting in a hospital room for six hours or so unnecessarily. I'm not bitter towards the answering service at all.

What we learned from this experience (a week before our Thursday night contractions started) is that labor contractions should be strong enough that the woman cannot talk or walk through them. Besides the obvious problems with this guideline - that it is completely subjective and every woman has a different threshold for pain - it turned out not to be entirely true when real contractions started on Thursday, and continued into Friday and Saturday. While it became increasingly unpleasant to walk or talk through those contractions, it could be done. It was a little harder for my wife, but she managed too. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

By Friday morning, it looked like active labor was likely at any time. The sporadic contractions were becoming more regular, though still too spread out to head to the hospital. It was not until late Friday night that they were consistently five minutes apart and we headed out to the hospital. We were assessed, and ultimately the hospital staff determined that labor was not progressing. Even though the contractions never stopped. This is apparently known as prodromal labor - labor like symptoms that don't progress to the birth of a baby. And when they don't stop at all, they suck. We were sent home, and the contractions continued unabated, strengthening throughout the day Saturday. From Thursday night until Sunday morning, my wife might have gotten a total of three hours of sleep. I wasn't much better off, but I wasn't dealing with stomach wrenching cramps at ten minute intervals, so I think I was still in the better position.

By Sunday morning (and I mean early Sunday morning) it was clear that something had to give. We headed back to the hospital for the third time in a week, and I will admit I was afraid they were going to send us home yet again. Mostly, that idea was just disheartening. We've heard some first time mothers end up in the hospital dozens of times with false labor, pre-labor, or whatever else pregnancy can throw their way, so I guess a false start or two can be forgiven, but when you are entering your third day with no sleep (and you don't have an outside baby to account for that lack of sleep) the prospect just makes you tired.

As it turned out, my concerns were unwarranted. Sunday was it. We arrived around 5:30 a.m. and were whisked to a labor room by 6:30 a.m. I'll spare the details - very few of you would actually have any interest, and those who do can ask my wife in person. The reader's digest version involved the best epidural ever, a lot of raspberry popsicles, several hours of Sportcenter (my wife is awesome), and a mere 10 hours of waiting-and pushing-beyond what had already been endured.

And then there was Olivia. 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and 20 1/2 inches of born contrariness. And she is everything we imagined she would be.

A brief epilogue. I will never in a million years compare the male experience of labor and delivery to the woman's, but I was completely unprepared for the physical toll the process would take on me. There is more adrenaline, tension, fear, and exhilaration in a brief period of time than any human body is meant to take. I crashed harder the night my daughter was born than I have in a long, long time.

My wife stayed up and fed our daughter. She is way tougher than me.    

She has arrived...

Olivia Katherine was born August 14, 2011 after a mere 65 hours of labor (God Bless my wife). Hope this explains the absence of a post on Friday and Monday. The vital stats and stories will come later, but for now I just wanted to share the good news with those who might not have already heard through the grapevine.


More to come....

Making sense of the chaos...

Fair warning - not the most lighthearted of posts. I'll trade by keeping it relatively brief. 

I am not a theologian. I am, frankly, pretty awful at apologetics. I know that many of the reasons people have for doubting the existence or the goodness of God are rooted in some intensely painful places, and there is no denying that people are capable of incredible evil. I don’t think I need to list examples - read the headlines this week or the history books published twenty years ago, and you can find plenty on your own. Bad stuff happens to people all the time, and I can’t offer a specific explanation for most of those circumstances or point to a greater purpose behind the suffering. But I do believe a greater purpose exists, and despite the condition of the world and the suffering I see in it, I do believe in the existence of a loving God who is more than just a theistic clockmaker who watches over the world without acting.

A group of us gathered this week in a friend’s apartment to pray for a man we all know and love who has been suffering with incredible pain for the past few months. It’s left him unable to work, and at times unable to get out of bed or walk. He’s a good person, as evidenced by the number and quality of the people who surround him. If circumstances were dictated by the worthiness of the individual, then his current condition would be completely incongruous with who he is. But rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

In the midst of the pain he’s been going through, he has been incredibly patient, positive, and grateful. Yeah. Grateful. Among the things he is grateful for, he expressed to us that he has grown closer to his wife in the last three months of trial than they have been in a long time. In all likelihood, the circumstances he is suffering through right now will pass - maybe not as soon as we would all have it, but pass just the same. Whether they do or not, those circumstances have still produced something good. These circumstances are not the hardest I have seen friends and loved ones go through, but I offer it as an example that the seemingly random crap that life occasionally throws at us is not always meaningless, or useless.

I’ve seen this in my own life through lost jobs and lost opportunities - things that outwardly appear completely negative, but produce great good. My wife and I would probably not be anxiously awaiting our first child right now if we had not also gone through some very uncomfortable circumstances in the recent past, and we'd never trade what we've gained for anything. I’ve also seen lots of dim circumstances - lost loved ones and sickness, for instance - in which I cannot point to any obvious greater good. Not that can be observed without some degree of faith, anyway. Some people will beg for the explanation to every circumstance, but I don’t think anyone can give that to you always. But I’ve seen often enough that the bad is not always so bad as it seems. And I believe that there is, in fact, some greater purpose. Yeah, I wish I could see it too.

I’m not saying God causes bad stuff to happen to bring the greater good out of it. Again, I'm not a theologian, and even theologians will disagree about that depending on where they fall on the free-will spectrum. I personally don’t think God directs a murderer to pull the trigger (call me a heretic if you will), but I have seen what I attribute to God bring good out of a bad act of human frailty numerous times.

Life is chaotic. That is neither inherently good nor bad, but sometimes rough stuff happens that doesn’t seem to have a good explanation at the time. Or ever, to our human point of view. Faith that there is a larger story that I can’t completely comprehend helps me make sense of the chaos.

I realize this post is a bit heavier than usual. That’s intentional. Every now and again I think it’s important to take a step back and examine so when you spend the rest of your time not taking yourself too seriously (as you should), it’s not because there is no substance there to be taken seriously.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Reboots...the black holes from which creativity may never escape...

They are making another Superman movie. Let me get my excited pants on. Spidey too? Well, there is certainly some room for improvement on the last franchise. Fantastic Four? Seriously? Sigh...

I am a fan of comic books, and by extension of comic book movies. The first comic books I remember reading were some Batman mags (Detective Comics, I think) and a random issue of the Avengers (it may have been the only actual Avengers title I ever owned). I got them as a get-well-soon present while I was in the hospital with a badly broken arm in fourth grade. Probably I had a few comics before that, but these stuck in my memory. The simple stories, the artwork, and the black and white division between the good guys and the bad were very appealing. I got hooked on Spider-man, X-Men, Batman, and a smattering of others. As with many of my peers, my affection for reading comic books eventually developed into an obsession for collecting them that was directly at odds with appreciating the stories and characters. This collection mentality was exactly what the industry was trying to encourage in the nineties - what with all the die-cut, hologram covered, foil wrapped, No. 1 issues that were coming out, what were kids supposed to think except that every single issue of every single comic book was one day going to be worth as much as Amazing Fantasy No. 15 (first appearance of Spidey) or Action Comics No. 1 (Superman’s premiere). So instead of actually reading comic books, we brought them home from the store and put them straight into a mylar bag, supported by specially made, acid-free cardboard backings, and placed them in corrugated boxes designed to fit them precisely and keep them in “mint” condition.

I don’t know why the term “mint” is applied to comic books and baseball cards. They are not coins, and are not minted, nor does any flavor beginning with spear- or pepper- have anything to do with them. But I digress...

Fifteen years later I’ve got three huge boxes of comic books, only about half of which I have any recollection of actually reading. I could easily pare the collection down to a handful I would actually like to hang on to, but short of just throwing the rest out there’s nothing I can do with them. No one buys nineties era comic books (or baseball cards, for that matter). No one. They were overproduced, and comic book stores all over have more than they need. So, I’m stuck with my bloated collection instead of a distilled handful of issues with actual worth.

This is kind of how I have felt about comic book movies over the last several years. We have a bloated collection of movies, spinoffs, sequels, and reboots that has a net effect of dragging down the value of the entire genre. Any given movie may be excellent or total crap, but even the good ones tend to get undervalued over time as we see more and more crap that is simply derivative of what’s already been done.

Comic book movies have a hit-or-miss history in Hollywood. Batman is pretty much always box office gold, even if one or two of the big-screen turns of the caped crusader have been less than well-received by fans. (Nipples on the Bat-suit, Mr. Schumacher? For shame.) Anything featuring The Punisher might as well be released straight to DVD, John Travolta’s appearance in the film not withstanding. But the real variable in comic book movies isn’t the value at the box office (though that does vary widely) but the quality of the underlying film. Crappy films happen - I get it. It pains me when a character I grew up with is given a spotty treatment by Hollywood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, anyone?), but c’est la vie. What drives me nuts is the current environment of constant, never-ending reboots. The attitude seems to be: It made money the first time, so lets do it again with a new cast and a slightly new direction in two years. Hooray! Unfortunately, from a financial perspective, this strategy seems to work, so we’re not likely to see a change anytime soon.

The big heroes probably need a reboot every fifteen years or so. “Need” may be too strong, but it can at least be forgiven and enjoyed if done well. But let’s look at a few of the recent insta-reboots.

Hulk (2003) and The Incredible Hulk (2008): Yes, the Eric Bana version was simply awful. There was nothing remotely redeeming about that film. Anyone who cared a lick about the character of the Hulk had to have been miserable in the wake of this travesty. But did that mean we needed another one five years later? And was Edward Norton’s version such an improvement that the reboot was justified?

I know - this reboot had nothing to do with redeeming a piece of crap movie and everything to do with fitting the Hulk into Marvel Studio’s long-term goal of an Avenger’s movie. The idiotic limitless size of the 2003 Hulk would not have meshed well with the other... more realistic?... heroes that will be featured in that film due out next year.

X-Men (2000) and X-Men: First Class (2011): The spread is wider here, but only if you look from the beginning of one franchise to the beginning of another. The first franchise last put out a movie in 2006 (X-Men 3: The Last Stand), unless you count the festering pile of poo that was the Wolverine movie in 2009. But this reboot is perplexing to me. The earlier franchise did at least a passable job with the X-Men story and characters. And lets be honest - who else could have played the adult Charles Xavier than Patrick Stewart? Wizard magazine called that one years before the script was written. I understand the reboot actually made a good flick (haven't seen it yet, myself), which is gratifying, but the movie wasn’t promoted very well and didn’t have the star power to draw the huge crowds that usually justify comic book movies. So if it wasn’t to replace a crappy franchise, and it wasn’t to make a cash grab, what was it?

Spider-Man (2002) and Ultimate Spider-Man (2011): Again, shorter spread than these two start dates indicate - Spider-Man 3 was a 2007 release. I can sort of get the theory behind this reboot. Based on the trailers, the new Spidey flick looks much darker and grittier than the Sam Raimi franchise which, by its end, was beginning to suffer from some of the same goofiness that defined Joel Shumacher’s much lamented Batman & Robin (aka, the Batman with nipples). To the extent that they are going a darker direction, Ultimate Spider-Man may be Marvel’s attempt to do a Batman Begins for one of their most endearing characters. The only problem with that is that Spider-Man is not, and never was, as dark, brooding, angsty, or angry as Batman at his most light-hearted. They are vastly different characters, despite the similarities in their backstories. I’ll probably drop ten bucks to see the new Spidey, but I’m not sure what to expect.


Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four (2013): A good friend of mine has said repeatedly that the best thing the Fantastic Four had going for it was Jessica Alba, and they made her invisible. I really didn’t hate the 2005 version, but I didn’t love it either. This is somewhat appropriate, in that I had a lot of ambivalence toward the comics on which the movie was based. My feelings on the FF - books and movies - can pretty much be summed up with “meh.” Yet, I didn't care a lick for Iron Man comic books as a kid, and I have thoroughly enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s turn as Tony Stark, typecasting be damned. Thus, I don't think my lack of strong feeling about the FF has impacted my opinion about the movies.

Certainly there is some room for improvement over the first two movies with a reboot, but I’m not sure how this quick reboot helps Marvel. My best guess is the studio needs a filler project for the year following the Avengers big release while they go to pre-production on their next big buildup for...whatever comes after the Avengers. Probably more sequels.


Superman (1978), Superman Returns (2006), Man of Steel (2013): Okay, so the Brandon Routh reboot in 2006 was warranted if only by the passage of time. Nearly 20 years had passed since Christopher Reeves wore the blue and red pajamas, and movie-making had come a long way. A lot of people wanted to see what could be done with the Man of Steel on screen in the modern era.

But it was terrible. It seems there are a lot of filmmakers who subscribe to the George Lucas school of thought that if you throw enough money at the special effects budget, you can skimp on script-writing and direction. In fact, in a recent conversation with a friend about movies in general, Superman Returns was one of the films we determined demonstrate that Kevin Spacey is maybe the most directable actor in Hollywood, in that his performance quality is almost totally dependent on the skill of his director (contrast American Beauty and K-Pax if you need a “for instance”). This means that in his turn as Lex Luthor, he couldn’t convincingly villain his way out of a wet paper sack.

Of the big name comic book heroes, I feel like Superman is the riskiest to portray on film, financially and otherwise. Superman’s almost infinite power and unwavering morality make him inaccessible. It’s difficult to get modern audiences to relate to him without fundamentally changing the character. He was never my favorite hero as a kid - I didn’t hate him, but I never saw the drama in fighting crime when you were bulletproof. I don’t know that I’m the best person to determine how this next movie version of him is likely to go. Only time will tell I suppose.

Although not an insta-reboot in the same vein as many of these others, I would be somewhat remiss to not talk about Batman (1989) and Batman Begins (2005). These two franchises are probably spaced about right, and ignoring the Joel Schumacher efforts, both franchises have made for quality entertainment. I look forward to the Dark Knight Rises next year, and while part of me is disappointed that the current cycle of Batman movies will end at three, the entire point of this posting is that the law of diminishing returns calls for a lesser number of higher quality movies rather than squeezing a franchise as fast and hard as possible for a bunch of predictable, plodding storylines.

Still, I'm more likely to buy a ticket to each new reboot than I am to stay home in protest. Despite my well-reasoned frustration and desire for greater quality entertainment, I suspect Hollywood knows exactly what it's doing. After all, there aren't many big studios failing financially at the moment. What do you think about the constant rebooting of our childhood heroes?