In Which I Talk About, Among Other Things, Dr Horrible

So I was going to post my second post a few days ago, actually. I had been thinking about it all day at work, and had come up with a few different ideas of things to talk about. But when I got home, sat down in front of my screen, and pulled up my text editor, I had completely forgotten the ideas I had for things to talk about. Luckily for you, dear readers, I have a few more ideas now, and I actually typed them someplace safe, instead of trusting myself to remember them. In fact, I noted them in a Draft of an email in Gmail, which has a couple of benefits. Well, one benefit, really. That is that I can access it from work or home. Anyway, down to business.

First, I recently read an interesting article on why movie ticket prices are so damned expensive these days. As it turns out, it's mainly due to assholishness on several levels. Firstly, actors are assholes (I should qualify that by saying "some actors are assholes") and demand excessively large fees to appear in movies. Secondly, movie studios are assholes in their relations and contracts with movie theaters. Movie theaters have to lease movies from studios, and the contracts (which, obviously, vary from movie to movie) require them to pay the studios 75-80% of the ticket price for the first several weeks of the movie's run. As time goes on, the theater gets to keep more and more of the ticket price, but 6 weeks later, when the theater gets to keep 75-80% of the price for itself, no one is buying tickets any more. The following quote sums it up pretty well:

The studios spend too much money making movies (and make too many movies), they squeeze as much box office revenue as they can from the Theaters thus forcing the theaters to charge us high ticket prices to make what little they can from each ticket, gouge us at the concession stand to make ends meet and show commercial after commercial after bloody commercial to pad some profit.

Okay. Enough of that. Next up, my bike. My bike is now safer than it has been in several months. I got all four brakepads replaced, the brake lines tightened, the slowly-leaking back tire replaced, and my front wheel replaced. Apparently, my worn-out brake pads have slowly been wearing a groove into the wheel, which could cause the tire to blow out, etc. So yeah. There's that.

Next up, Kitten, aka Matilda. She got spayed slightly over a week ago, and has been wearing one of those silly, ridiculous neck-cone-thingies ever since. She's not allowed to lick her wound, but she really wants to. We don't want to police her 24/7 (nor can we; we have to sleep and eat and do stuff other than watching the cat sometimes), so she gets to wear an E Collar. (That's the official name. I asked the vet why it's called that. The E, apparently, is short for Elizabethan. ;-) ) This collar has been a continual source of both amusement and pathos, in roughly equal amounts. She went back in to the vet this morning for a follow-up, and they said that she can quit wearing the collar in two more days. So that's nice for her. She'll be glad to have it off. We've been taking it off for small periods of time, to allow her to eat and drink (which is possible while wearing the collar, but much easier without it), and to have some supervised bathing time. It'll be nice for her to be able to lick whatever she wants. ;-) I'd post pictures, but, you know, I'm a lazy bastard.

Okay. The rest of this post will be spoilery. So if you have not seen Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog or Batman The Dark Knight, be warned. Also, if you haven't seen Dr Horrible, in addition to being warned, you should also be sad, as it is no longer available for free online viewing. You can buy it on iTunes or you can wait and buy it on DVD later. The DVD will reportedly include "Commentary - The Musical", so it might be worth buying just for that. Also, I would imagine that if you were to do some sailing, looting, and/or plundering, you would probably be able to find it online somewhere. Anyway. Onward!

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog was great. I have absolutely no quibbles, qualms, or complaints with the first 35-40 minutes of it. About the ending ... My first reaction was "OMG, they killed Penny! You bastards!" (Of course, the "they" was referring to Joss Whedon, et al.) I was not happy with a dark, depressing ending to what was, up until that point, including the first half of Act III, a light-hearted, funny show. But the more I think about it, the more I think I am satisfied with the ending. I've been thinking about other ways it could have ended, and haven't thought of anything that would be fully satisfactory.

Alternative ending #1: As suggested by my friend, as well as my brother, Hammer knocks Horrible to the ground and Horrible drops the Death Ray. Penny, having realized what a douchebag Hammer is, picks up the Death Ray and kills Hammer her damn self, "and becomes Dr. Horrible's evil queen, Bad Penny." Presumably, they are both admitted to the ELE. The problem with this possible ending is that it would be very out-of-character for Penny. It would have been very cool, and light-hearted and happy and stuff, but I really can't imagine Penny being evil.

Alternative ending #2: After properly defeating Captain Hammer, and winning Penny over, the evil Doc gets word from the League that his membership is confirmed. Penny's not cool with that. He decides that he'd rather be with Penny than be evil anyway, so he gives up his supervillain dreams and becomes Billy. Originally, I had told my friend that Dr Horrible becoming good would be the worst possible way to end it. This wouldn't quite be so bad, as he wouldn't necessarily become good, he'd just be giving up his dreams of being really evil. But I still have problems with this ending. It's too cliched and trite. Also, I really wanted him to become an evil supervillain. I would have been disappointed if he did not join the League.

Alternative ending #3: Captain Hammer defeats Dr Horrible and marries Penny. No. Absolutely not. I don't even need to discuss this. On second thought, this would have been the worst way to end it, even worse than Dr Horrible becoming good.

The real ending: The way it actually did end was consistent with all the characters, poignant, and not trite or cliched. And it makes a great supervillain origin story. The more I think about it, the happier I am with the way it did end. I liked how we got to see that, in spite of what he claims, he actually did care about her and he is truly hurt that she's dead. I liked how he was blamed for a murder he did not actually commit. I liked that he made it into the League. I liked seeing the party at the League and getting to see all the other supervillains. I really liked his red costume.I liked that his evilness came at such a high personal price. Because of that, he will not be at all wishy-washy about his evilness. He's going to be a callous, uncaring bastard, which is how a supervillain should be. And I liked that, throughout most of the show, he is Dr Horrible on the blog and Billy in life, but right at the very end, his final bit of blog is as Billy. Just about the only thing I don't like about it was that I kind of wish Captain Hammer had been defeated more solidly. (Like, maybe he should have died, too.) I understand why he's still alive, and it's not that big a deal to me, but it might have been nice to kill him off.

If you have other alternative endings you would like to discuss, that's cool. Post them.

I was going to talk about Batman The Dark Knight here, but, on second thought, I'll save that for another posting. I don't want any confusion in the comments about whether we're talking about Dr Horrible or Batman. So yeah. Eventually I'll probably talk about Batman. We'll see when that happens.

Oh, one more thing. I'm officially soliciting suggestions for the title of my blog. So if you have a good idea, let me know.