Becoming Great

If you get bitten by a radioactive spider, derive strength from a yellow sun, or come from a long line of Amazonian royalty, it makes sense that you would be superpowered. In fact, it would seem like a rip-off--for you and the world-- if you weren’t. But what about the average guy who decides to fight evil on a higher level than average allows? What about someone like Tony Stark who, with no special skills other than a space-age suit and a brilliant mind (well, millions of dollars, too), chooses to put himself on the line for his fellow human beings, out of a sense of loyalty to the species, by becoming the scarlet and gold powerhouse Ironman? Or, as an even more long-standing and familiar example, what are we to make of the tormented, orphaned Bruce Wayne who uses his family’s vast resources and his own internal demons to drive his crusade against the forces of darkness and chaos? If you are propelled by chemistry or destiny toward greatness, is it as amazing as choosing selflessly to become great? Or does taking care of others who can’t do what you can do, regardless of how you can do it, the most important part of this equation? I realize all of this is just talk, since superheroes, in the comic book sense, exist only in fiction, but reading Ralph Cosentino’s Batman: Story of the Dark Knight got me thinking about this stuff. And I don’t think I’ll finish anytime soon.

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Story-Knight-Ralph-Cosentino/dp/0670062553

http://www.answers.com/topic/ralph-cosentino

Color Coded

My generation are the television cusp kids. The biggest changes and developments in television viewing have happened in our lifetime. Think about it: we went from three channels and endless hours of shouting out the window to direct our dads which way to turn the antennae, to a million channels and endless hours of watching anything we want on our kids’ XBox 360. Although the biggest leap was the one from grey-scale to color. Remember? When we were really young, most programs were still taped in black and white, which worked very nicely because no one had color sets anyway. But then things changed drastically. If you were lucky enough to have a color television, turning on the set was like Dorothy stepping into Oz. The networks scrambled to best the competition with their prismatic line-up. Programs even boasted of their technicolor triumphs in the opening credits. And the one I remember most is the bold banner proclaiming “In Living Color” across the bottom of the screen when “Batman” came on. Not having a color set, and not realizing it was the box rather than the broadcast that determined what I saw, I would feel my heart race each time the words unfurled. Only to be disappointed, of course, when what appeared were still black-and-white images. I rejoiced when the new television showed up and never took a single, vivid POW! for granted. In Ellen Stoll Walsh’s Mouse Paint, some mischievous rodents color-rock their monochromatic world. Now that’s living color.

http://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Paint-Ellen-Stoll-Walsh/dp/0152002650

http://www.teddarnoldbooks.com/ellen.html