It's a MiniBest!Another week, another Newsweek article overinflating the importance of the 1960s and the Baby Boomers and, of course, freaking Woodstock.
Look, I get it: There are 60 jillion baby boomers out there, 60 jillion people with money who will buy anything that seems to say that their lives were significant and important even though their lives were actually devoted almost entirely to silly fashions, terrible music, and feeling bad about the fact that they still smoke marijuana at 54. But even with that amount of expendable cash, does Newsweek (and CNN and MSN and every other major media outlet) have to keep kowtowing to the Baby Boomers and pretending that the Baby Boomers changed the world?
They didn't. Dancing in the mud at a farm in New York and dodging the draft by going to Grad school did not change the world. Neither did the music, which sucks more the more you listen to it.
And yet, that doesn't deter Newsweek which this week reviewed two new movies about Woodstock, an overblown, overhyped, oversold, overappreciated event if ever there was one. I can't believe that we've had, what, one movie about the Space Program, ever, and yet we've had, what, 100,000 movies about freaking Woodstock?
It's not as though there were no other movies released last week. There were plenty of other good movies released last week. But Baby Boomers don't want to read about other movies, they want to read reviews of movies about them and how important they were.
Well, you won't catch me mythologizing and overinflating the importance of dimly-remembered things from my past in hopes of somehow capturing the zeitgeist and making millions simply by cataloging vague memories and wrapping them up into something shiny and new.
Nope. I won't do that. I'm far too busy for that kind of thing. Too busy presenting number two in The Best Comic Book Characters I'm Pretty Sure Only I Remember, which, for the sake of the Baby Boomers, I'll just say, right now, upfront, has nothing to do with Woodstock, so you can stop reading this now -- I'm done talking about you. Go put on your old Who albums and sing along withem while saying, in between the lines, "No, Roger Daltrey, the song is never over, not while we still believe."
The rest of you, now that they're gone, can focus on Argh!yle!, a character who deserves to be mythologized and promoted and have two movies released about him in one week if ever there was such a character.
Character: Argh!yle!What Was The Deal With Argh!yle!, anyway? Argh!yle! was, as I recall, the archenemy of Ambush Bug, a character who had started out wanting to be the archenemy of Superman, but never quite realized his dreams. Then Ambush Bug (whose power was teleporting to places where his little mechanical bugs had flown) troubled the Legion of Substitute Heroes for a while before settling into life as a private detective of sorts who battled his own archenemy, Argh!yle!
Oh, and also, Argh!yle! was a sock, with a metal mask.
His Power Was: That's actually a bit unclear to me. I didn't remember Argh!yle! having any powers, so I consulted The Unofficial Argh!yle! Biography (apparently, a sentient sock didn't give permission for an official biography) and that, too, was unclear. Argh!yle! could apparently create metal masks to hide his disfigured sock face, and also had other, unspecified "great powers" that I don't remember but which were, undoubtedly, great.
Isn't it incredible, by the way, that someone, somewhere, devoted time to creating an unofficial biography of a sock? True, that goes against my premise here -- the premise that I'm pretty sure I am the only one who remembers these characters -- but it's still pretty incredible that actual computing power and intellect has been used not once, but twice, to talk about a sock wearing a metal mask. Take that, civilization!
Why I Remember Him: I loved Ambush Bug and his zany adventures -- the zanier, the better, was my opinion -- and having him battle a sentient sock in a metal mask was not only zany, but also managed to make fun of Doctor Doom (who was a stupid villain among other stupid villains in a stupid comic book.) That, and my life has been devoted to remembering things that have little value to society, and that's worked out pretty well for me so far.
What Does All Of This Have To Do With Baby Boomers? Nothing. That's just something I wanted to get off of my chest. I'm sick of hearing about the Sixties. Get over yourselves, already.
UPDATE: Hey, guess what? Newsweek reads me! After I first published this on August 6, 2009, Newsweek's writer Mark Hosenball claimed Woodstock was no big deal. You know what is a big deal? Admitting TBOE was right -- even if you did it indirectly.
Other Comic Book Stuff On here? Check out The Best Of... Kids' Stuff.
Other Things That Make Me Mad? Battlestar Galactica's ending.
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