I’ve been listening to a lot of Same Cooke today, and this line from Another Saturday Night is just sheer hilarious brilliance:

Instead of being my deliverance, she had a strong resemblance to a Cat named Frankenstein

In other news, I was also thinking during my SUPER FAST march home, about that time that Superman and the Flash raced, and I was trying to remember who won. I was hoping that it was Superman, but I wasn’t sure. I’m looking it up… Ah, excellent. Here is some great source material on it:

Superman’s Race with the Flash
Superman #199

The very methods devised by the race committee in this story line are the key to it’s own undoing. You see, in this race Superman is forbidden to use his powers of flight, that’s fine and I agree with it, as we are looking for the fastest runner alive, not the fastest flyer. I mean we already know that Superman can fly faster than the Flash so let’s just toss that right out. Now, we get to the double standard, the Flash is allowed to use his powers of molecular vibrations to sublime through various obstacles on the race course, while poor Superman, must trudge around or over them. Am I the only one that sees this as quite unfair!? This is not a race to see who is that fastest standstill vibrator; it is a foot race - where you run. Despite this unfair and possibly racially motivated handicap, big blue still manages to pull it out for a tie. I award one victory for Superman.

You know, I never used to like Superman growing up. In fact, I quite actively disliked him. It never turned to hatred really, but it certainly wasn’t positive. And it wasn’t even like Spiderman - who I also didn’t like - but who did have that cool period with the black alien symbiote costume. Superman never had that cool phase. But that never stopped me from reading a lot of those old Superman comics from my brother and my dad, as shitty as they usually were.

But now, I’m starting to come around.

And I attribute that solely to the WB Network’s excellent comic-book adaptation TV show, Smallville. Now, if you’ve never watched this show before, you probably have a semi-negative attitude towards it, like I did. You probably think its just another teen drama piece of crap. And yes, it’s heavy on the teen drama, but it’s so very much more than that too. I would venture to say that it’s nearly perfect in what it’s going for. And that being a fantastic reinvention of the Superman mythos for a young audience. Oh, and the colors are beautiful too.

The insights into all the characters are totally kickass. It makes me actually like the whole story around Superman, because - and this is what they are after of course - because I can relate it all to my own life. Totally kickass. It’s not just like some dude flying around outer space with near godlike powers who just seems like a pussy because he never does anything cool with them. It gives you a window into why this archetypal character is this way.

I was thinking last time I watched it about how Superman from like some kind of archetypal psychology standpoint might be considered some kind organizing principle in the mind. Like he/it exists to stabilize and balance and unifying wild and unstable elements of the psyche. Which is a totally interesting way to look at Superman. It makes sense though, because in all the standard formula episodes, there’s like some person (autonomous complex?) from Smallville who got their hands on some meteor rocks (psychic energy?) accidentally, and then that magnified whatever imbalance was in them already. And then that imbalance threatens the community, until Clark Kent comes along to neutralize them. It would make perfect sense according to Jung’s thinking, that he is some sort of image of the Self, the impulse towards individuation. And then you have Lex, who is the shadow side of him, and is always feeding the shadowy impulses of Clark. All very riveting. This week, there’s an episode where Lex apparently moves further towards evil. It should be a hoot.

I also heard rumors they would be introducing a young Bruce Wayne to the show soon to. I can’t hardly wait.