Recently, the Illuminati (Hoboken Chapter) decided to bless my little town with a movie theater. It’s not huge (5 screens) and it’s located on the butt end of town right under the shadow of the world’s rustiest overpass, but hot damn, a real-life movie theater in walking distance! The last time I had a movie theater I could even theoretically walk to I was 12 and sneaking in R-rated movies in the State Theater in Journal Square, Jersey City. Since then it’s been a depressing series of suburban and mall gigaplexes, swamped with shitkickers and a good half hour’s drive under ideal conditions. So: HOT DAMN, a real-life movie theater!
As a result, The Duchess and I have gone to several movies recently that we would not have seen until pay-per-view some months from now. The modern moviegoing experience is tragic: Overpriced, overcrowded, and stuffed full of kids who have more money to spend in one Saturday night than I had my entire childhood. Bitter? Not me. I just despise children. Don’t hold it against me.
So we don’t make it out to too many movies these days, trying to avoid sitting in a darkened room with assholes. We’ve tried going to movies at 10AM, but this just replaces young assholes with elderly assholes. Trust me: The whole world is populated with assholes, and assholes ruin everything. But the fact that we can walk to the Hoboken theater is too great a lure, and we’ve seen 2012, Avatar, Sherlocke Holmes, and It’s Complicated there within the last month. That’s a record for us. And we only had one asshole moment in those four movies (a group of kids who found their conversation too delightful to end, but they were literally stared into terrified silence by a man a few rows down from them). I can guarantee you we wouldn’t have seen 3 of those movies if we’d been forced to gas up the car and drive to them.
So here’s my Question for the Week: If you suddenly had super evil SuperVillain powers (or, why not, SuperHero powers) would you a) actually put your time and energy into dominating/destroying/saving/protecting the world, or would you just spend your time making a nice fortune and possibly turning loud kids in theaters into toads?
Me, I’ve never understood the assumption that people who develop super powers of some sort (either genetic, magical, or technological) would immediately give up their lives of desperate labor to take up . . . desperate lives of labor. I mean, taking over the world is tough work: You have to seize trillions in assets, hire yourself an army and staff it properly, monitor your minions for betrayal, build underwater bases – whew, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Now, I can better understand superheroism once the Super Villain is in place: I can imagine someone with psychic powers just making a nice comfortable life for themselves until a Super Villain starts mucking everything up, and then, after a good nap and a sandwich, the Super Hero decides, well, this guy’s ruining my stock portfolio, better take him down. But the Super Villainy just mystifies me. Not the idea of using your powers for your own gain, but the idea of putting so much drama into it. Why not just use your powers to start a really cool Ponzi scheme?
Sure, everyone likes to picture themselves in a cool costume, lording it over an army of redshirts, but the work, man, the work involved! I mean, if I can use my super evil powers to get free drinks at the local bar, all well and good. But administrating a mercenary army of thousands? Who wants the headaches? And then, after it’s all said and done, what have you accomplished, really? You’ve made yourself CEO of a corporation. An evil corporation, sure, but a corporation nonetheless. I’d rather nap in the afternoons.
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I would be a superhero in the hopes of finding acceptance among my peers, and perhaps becoming well-liked.
The problem is when you accidentally kill someone when they irritate you at a bar or something, with like your heat-vision. A hungover apology the next day won’t cut it. It’s the Fortress of Solitude for you before long!
Just got the new Inner Swine and it may be the best one yet! I laughed out loud at “your house is growing tumors inside of you” and the cats batting at your dangly bits. Not done reading it yet. So why is this coming out all in italics? Anyway, thank you. I love when I get a new Swine in the mail!! Oh, I read the parts about salons pushing hair products out loud to my hubby. He whines about that too.
Me, I’d try and use my super powers in getting the next Avery Cates novel to come out…I don’t know about you all, but if I’m going to fantasize, I’m fantasizing big!
Being a ludicrous super-villain sounds like fun: Global domination? Riches beyond my wildest dreams? RULING WITH AN IRON FIST!? Yeah, that sounds all well and good, but people are people and people are going to bitch. “Oh the trains are late.” “We don’t have enough oil.” “Your army of giant death robots are crushing my town, again.” Whine whine whine. Yeah, fuck the hoi polloi, I am a goddamn masked super-villain, the world is my playground, I am the kid holding the magnifying glass up to the ant hill (because my fool proof scheme of building a giant magnifying glass will totally work). But it does not matter how big or advanced my robot army is, at one point I will need people, dang. As a super villain you have to have a hierarchy of various goons at your disposal and, as goons are wont to do, they will do incredibly stupid things, such as being engulfed in flames at importune times(“STOP DYING YOU COWARDS!” Zap Brannigan). No super power can account for the almost suicidal stupidity of your average goon. What about being a super-villain without the organization? In that case you know what would separate you from the stick up artist or the average con man? A cape. Who wants to be the Librace of knocking over dry cleaners or check fraud? Fuck that.
What about saving the world? Bah! You see a long time ago a humble man rose up to power. This guy had good intentions (probably), and a folksy can do spirit that makes the USA THE BEST GODDAMN COUNTRY EVER. Thus armed he tried to bring about truth, justice, and the american way, by goddamn force if needed. Things were blown up. People were tortured. Whole countries were razed to the ground. I’m talking about George W Bush here. The point is that no matter how good you think you are, you are ultimately fucking it up for the rest of us if you can’t keep it to yourself. Okay fine, I’m a supehero. I spend my time rescuing cats from trees, putting out fires, and dealing with whatever fuckers decide to try and turn all the water in the world into apple sauce. Now what? Constantly being assailed by villains, the people freaking out because I could turn on them any minute now, getting destruction of property (that would be my name) lawsuits thrown at me from every which way, and I’m not even rich! So I’d have to do all that and have a job where I have to pretend to be one of the normals? Fuck that. In theory one could be a superhero with a super-villain type organization, like The Mink in Omega the Unknown, but that would lead back to all of the super-villain organization downfalls.
Therefore, the only solution to this is to start a cult. All the spoils of villainy with the adoration of super-heroism. A cult would be almost laughably easy with superpowers. Perform some miracles, point out some omens, profit. No one is going to meddle with your affairs unless you get greedy. You might just get a tax exemption from the whole deal. Just enough to get me enough cash to keep in top hats, champagne, and gold plated Lamborghinis.
Zapp Brannigan = hero.