Marco McClean's Comments

It's weird that I'm just noticing this now, but out of all the superheroes ever, my least favorites are these ones. My favorites are more like the latest teevee versions of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, and the movie version of Wolverine. The characters in the Sandman books and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books, and maybe the Tom Strong comic books. The Fantastic Four's powers are not really desirable. They're like the unfortunate B-grade freakish power people in the Wild Cards book series. Ben, especially. I remember talking with my stepbrother at the barbershop after school, about what Ben's private parts might look like under his breechcloth-thing, and what it must be like for him to use a toilet, and what exactly would come out? Rocks? The stretchy woman in The Incredibles is nice, but the Incredibles is fun and funny. The Fantastic Four are trying to be serious. It's hard to identify with them. And the Invisible Girl is always being captured, and then Johnny and Ben have a stupid argument over who gets to rescue her.
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I don't like McDonalds' fries. The fries in the Safeway deli are pretty good. Big, thick, triangular cross-section, chewy, coated with something savory, not sickeningly salty. They used to give you ranch dressing free, to dip them in, if you asked, but you have to pay for that now. It's still worth it.
I don't like chicken-paste nuggets, either. Safeway used to have real breaded deep-fried chicken breasts (better than KFC), a cheap fresh salad bar (incl. cheese chunks, and sliced ham!) and a whole section of tables and chairs. For a couple of years I worked right around the corner from there, and every day I'd go there for lunch, spend ten minutes' pay on food, sit down for half an hour or more, eat, read the Anderson Valley Advertiser, or the whole San Francisco Chronicle (either for a quarter or from a pile of them other people left behind). The only bad time in all of that, besides eventually getting fired from that job, was: I forgot and left behind my favorite best coat ever, a beige-gray long, lined, cotton/linen duster you could use for a blanket if you ever had to sleep on a bench. I went right back for it, but someone had already taken it. It wasn't in the lost and found. I have never had another article of clothing I liked as much as that coat, and I've never seen another one like it except in noir films.
The best hamburger, for only slightly more than at McDonalds, is in Jenny's Giant Burger at the north end of town, next to the bowling alley that went out of business when the lumber mill failed, that before that was the champ of hamburgers: the grill in the bowling alley served up a juicy, crisped, peppered log of burger with fat slices of onion and tomato on thick sourdough bread toasted on the grill next to the meat. Kosher pickles. Fries. And squeeze bottles of ketchup, mayo and mustard on the counter. Except for Jenny's, that whole world is gone.
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Aurochs. You don't see that word every day. It's neat that the singular looks plural, which I didn't know when I was in grammar school, around 1970 and I wrote this cartoon poem:
An osprey virtuoso, inspired by his own clacking beak/ Ensorcelled an auroch (sic) and compelled him to speak./ He talked all that night, and some the next day,/ Then he smashed that bad bird and he went on his way.

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There used to be a show on teevee where a man invited people who had problems to come to the set. He chatted briefly with them, drew out their story, and asked the viewing audience for money to help them. My grandparents loved that show. My grandmother said of the host, "What a wonderful man." In one episode, a small man with an Italian accent was a carpet-layer, and he'd had an accident that cost him one of his big toes. He explained himself, talked a little bit about how he missed so much work healing up (it wasn't just the toe; there was more damage), and there were bills and expenses, and he had a family to support, and he went back to work, but... He was shy and ashamed and trailed off. There was a pause. The host said gently, "I don't think people realize how much we all need that particular toe for balance. Missing your big toe must make it hard for you to work with carpets." "Oh, yes," the man said. "It's very hard. People /don't/ realize." The host said, "Well, I'm sure plenty of viewers out there have been moved by your trouble and will be happy to help out." He turned to the camera and said, "Won't you, folks?" This whole time, the station's telephone number was in the frame, on a cardboard sign on an easel. They cut to three or four commercials, and when they came back on, the host had been given a note that had the total amount of money people had called and pledged to give to help the man. I don't remember how much it was; it might have been fifty, it might have been five hundred, and it wasn't for the station, it wasn't like a pledge drive, it was for the man. The host shook the man's hand, sent him limping away, and a woman came on to talk about /her/ problem. It was a half-hour show. It was on every day. That was broadcast teevee, live and simple and perfect, available all over Los Angeles. I haven't thought about that for years, but the tone and value of that show is probably what made me want to do radio and make teevee shows in the first place... So, to answer you: any two toes but the big toes. I need those for balance; we all do. Maybe the two little ones on the outside, one from each foot. Tell your friend, take it or leave it.
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In 1981 I bought a 1963 Rambler Classic for either $200 or $400. I paid the Earl Sheib on Arden Way $59.99 to paint it the turquoise-green-aqua-blue that the far right side of the rectangle above calls /blue/. That was the most beautiful car I ever had, but not the coolest-looking, which would be the car I have now: a 2004 Prius, original silver-gray everywhere but primer-black front fenders and bumper from CarParts.com. It looks like a little spaceship. It looks like a genius high-school kid's science-fiction car that he bought from the neighbor for in trade for mowing the lawn, built flight into and experiments with it in the desert, being spied on by the CIA with binoculars, from a mountain, where they're about to make the bad decision to go down and capture him, triggering his casual /bye, fellas!/ literal flight to a secret cavern stocked with food and water and further experiments; he suspected the spying and planned for this. It looks like a plucky underdog robot Mexican race car. But imagine a turquoise-green-aqua-blue 1937 Talbot-Lago T-150 teardrop coupe, converted to electric. That wouldn't have to fly. It would win in all the art and design and coolness categories, with or without a winged chrome eyeball for a hood ornament.
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For me, it's /cheers/ at the end of a comment or opinion post. I just hate it. Logically it can't always be childish and sneery and wannabe bullying, but that's the way it sounds in my head.
Also, it bugs me when a writer, and usually this is a fellow old person, leaves out the word /I/ at the beginning of a paragraph. As in, "Went to the store for milk," or "Took a stroll past the eyesore in question," or "Never heard of such a thing!" or "Will check it out." Not "We'll check it out," which would be fine, even the royal /we/. But "Will check it out." Ugh.
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People who use their powers to enrich themselves are not superheroes but supervillains. The writer mentioned /Heroes/ but seems to have missed a major point made there, where Hiro grasps this principle. Hiro's use of his power to control time to gain money, not to do good but simply for money's sake, results in a frightening lesson, which he learns. He won't do it again.
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Of /course/ a clairvoyant or spoon-bender or spirit medium or faith healer or astrologist or time-traveler feels a test is unfair by being designed to make it impossible for him to cheat. If there's truth to a claim, then it will survive magic-trick-exposing testing. And I say this as a huge fan of charismatic bullshit artists. Maybe they're crazy, maybe they're not, maybe they're fooling even themselves, but they're entertaining, and that's okay. Until their magic power is unambiguously validated by real testing, entertainment is all it is.
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Profile for Marco McClean

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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