I'll have a Tanqueray on the rocks with four olives

Do you remember my theory that, just the way guitar players are fundamentally Stratocaster guys or Telecaster guys (even if you play a Gibson), painters are either green guys or blue guys? And that I'm a green guy (although that's not to say that my use of blue is, on occasion, celestial)?

Now, dear friends, we rewind perhaps fifty years to the young boy I was then, reading comic books in the attic of Ken and Joe [redacted]'s house in Bay Head, New Jersey; staring at the amazing characters Jack Kirby drew for Marvel Comics (Have I told you my theory that people are fundamentally Marvel guys or DC Comics guys?); gears turning in my head--gears that would slowly, ever so slowly, crank out, as if I were sausage, the greatest portrait painter of the 21st Century (Division 2). What a sight that was--I can see it in my mind's eye as I type.

I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. To a certain degree, of course.

Now fast-forward fifty years to the pathetic wreck of a man I am today, wrestling with the question of what upcoming superhero movie I feel like going to next time I'm in New York (because Troy doesn't have any movie theaters).

Brief aside: Most comic book movies are complete trash. And I don't mean that in a good way. You should spend your movie money in a better way, given that we are now talking 12-15 bucks a crack, but not necessarily to see Werner Herzog's documentary about the cave drawings in the south of France because, despite the 32,000 year old paintings, which were stupendous, the movie was stupid and annoying.

Thor jumps to mind (Kirby drew him, if I remember correctly). And I'm a big fan of little Natalie Portman. But I think I'm going to go see Green Lantern instead. Because I saw the coming attractions, and there were moments when the entire screen appeared to be filled with the exact same color green as you can find in a bottle of Tangueray gin.



And it is my absolute favorite color in the whole world (the picture doesn't do it justice). Which is why, when I drink gin, I drink Tangueray. On the rocks with four olives.

Back to the Green Lantern: I'm only going for the green acid-flash experience. I'm sure it's gonna suck exactly as much as Thor, or any of the Spider Mans, if that's the plural in this case. Don't even ask me about Captain America. Iron Man, on the other hand, was actually pretty good. Also a Kirby character, but Robert Downey Jr. deserves all the credit. Likewise some of the Batmans.

Still, it's fun to spend a couple of hours in a big multiplex, with smuggled-in snacks (I like a ham and Swiss on rye with lettuce, tomato and mustard and a Snapple Arnold Palmer), watching a movie, no matter how crappy, and remembering the boy in the house, his little brain wrestling with issues like composition and gestural fluidity and whatever that word is for when parallel lines appear to meet at a point in the distance.

Constantinople?
Of course it's not Constantinople.
Oh.
It's something like juxtaposition, but I can't quite remember it and I can't decide what to google to find out.
Oh.
Or parallax. But that's not it either.
Man, you are a wreck, aren't you.
I suppose.