The Character of Batman

Batman is currently the most popular comic book figure, due in large part to the success of the live action film The Dark Knight. The box office doesn't lie on this one, The Dark Knight holds the record for highest grossing weekend opening of any movie, ever. Right now, I doubt even Tony Stark could knock Batman off of his proverbial popularity throne. Yet as timeless as Batman is, his character has gone through dramatic transformations over the years, often acting as reflections of changes happening in society at the time.

A few years ago, bringing up the topic of Batman during normal conversation would have been considered weird. Batman was not the "cool" thing, definitely something reserved for comic book nerds and children at heart. Speaking of children at heart, that reminds me of my favorite interpretation of Batman outside of the comics:

Batman: The Animated Series


Batman: The Animated Series takes a darker, more realistic tone than most of the previous Batman incarnations. Yet it is still outlandish enough to remind viewers of the comic book that it is based on. The various plots used in Batman: The Animated Series were very well written and show parts of the Batman's history, which allows the viewer to relate to him better. Compared to the Batman cartoons that are on today, Batman: The Animated Series easily beats out the competition:



Now that we have seen why Batman: The Animated Series is the best cartoon version, most likely due to a lack of nachos, let's see how it compares to recent, more realistic takes on the character of Batman.

Overall, Christian Bale does a good job as Batman. The only problem is that he is not really intimidating. But with a voice that sounds like a 40 year old chain smoker, it would be hard to intimidate anyone.

Note: The first two videos may be a bit...intense for some viewers.

A Few Different Interpretations on Batman:

Christian Bale

A Musical Interpretation

Kevin Conroy (Voice Actor in Batman: The Animated Series)

Michael Keaton

But truly, no comparison of Batman can be made without, at the very least, a brief mention of his foe, The Joker. When I mention the Joker, Heath Ledger is the actor who will come to most people's minds. But before there was Heath Ledger, there was another...and I'm not talking about Jack Nicholson. I'm talking about the fact that a Jedi played the role of The Joker for many years.

That's right everyone: Mark Hamill, the guy who portrayed Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, played the voice of The Joker on Batman: The Animated Series. Apparently, he turned to the Dark Side after he realized his agent wasn't as good as Harrison Ford's.

Now, I will leave you with one more interesting tidbit I found out about Batman, he can also sing the blues.

Batman Sings!
This picture is ironic, because Batman would never do this. Bruce Wayne might...but not Batman.

European Journal 3

I am currently on a bus from Dublin back to Galway, and had recently been on a ferry from England to Dublin.

Now the question is: did I make it to Amsterdam despite the natural disaster that has halted nearly all flights in Europe?

The answer: Ever seen that movie Rat Race? Yeah, it was something like that, but without Whoopi Goldberg.

Now, even though I escaped London and made it to Amsterdam, the airline cancellations lasted longer than anyone expected. Making it harder to get on an airplane than it would be for Tiger Woods to get his good reputation back. But before I tell you about how I'm getting back to Ireland, let me tell you about how I managed to do the impossible, and get to Amsterdam against incredible odds.

After spending a night on the floor of the London City Airport, I awoke at 7:am with barely three hours of sleep to see if I could get a flight out of London. Flights were still canceled, and buses, boats, and trains were all booked up. The only choice was renting a car. As I rolled the idea over in my mind, I thought to myself about what Batman would do in this situation - because that's how most important problems are solved in my life. My conclusion was that Batman would drive there in style in his Batmobile. The only problem was that I didn't have a Batmobile, or know how to drive on the left side of the road. This is when I decided to do something that I like to call "pulling a Batman."

The phrase "pulling a Batman" refers to someone doing a highly improbable action, and doing it in a bad-ass way.

I went to the rental car desk determined to get my Batmobile, and learn how to drive on the left side of the road on my way to Amsterdam. Lucky enough for me, I did not have to drive, but I did take a car. While I was waiting at the rental car desk, two Dutch businessmen had overheard that I was heading to Amsterdam. They were heading to Rotterdam, a city near Amsterdam, and asked if I needed a ride that far. I was more relieved than Nixon was to be pardoned when he shouldn't have, which set a precedent for United States Presidents to be able to participate in extra-legal activities and get away with it, thereby increasing executive authority and creating an even larger imbalance of power between the three branches of the United States Government.

Tangents on United States Governmental policy aside, I was damn lucky to be offered a ride by two Dutch businessmen who had the LAST CAR to rent at the airport. So we drove, over England and through the chunnel, to Grandmother's house we go. And as I woke up from a nap one of the Dutch businessmen exclaims: "Welcome to Belgium."

Belgium is a very beautiful country to drive through. I even had a Belgium waffle, and it was delicious. Yet when I finally arrived in Rotterdam I was surprised to learn something that should be rather obvious about Dutch society considering their history as some of the best traders before and even during the rise of the British Empire. Put simply, the Dutch are very good at making money. (Note: I say only say this cause I'm still annoyed at having to split the cost of the rental carI had to split the cost of the rental car and chunnel pass three ways with the two Dutch businessmen. While it was completely fair, I felt that things would have been quite different if I had been hitchhiking back in the United States. So if I had not made it to the Netherlands in the same style as Batman, I at least had arrived in a style somewhat fitting Bruce Wayne.

After taking a train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam Central, I stepped into the city with no place to stay and no idea where my friends were. But I knew one thing, I had information on where they were staying - I had a place to start. After a few hours of scouring and exploring the city, I received a call from a friend of mine who was also visiting the city. We chilled for a bit, grabbed some coffee, and he showed me a good hostel to stay at for the night.

After a decent nights rest I get a call from my friend Torsten who I am supposed to be meeting in Amsterdam. We meet up and it turns out his flight was canceled as well, and he is stuck in Amsterdam. Here, let me set this scene up for you differently:

We have two American college students stuck in Amsterdam, with nothing to do for a couple of days while their flights are delayed. Amsterdam, what a terrible terrible place to be stuck in, with absolutely nothing to do. Luckily the airport gave us a hotel to stay in for a few days, and we found enough historical sites and museums to entertain us for the duration of our stay.



There were several differences I noticed between Dutch and American society. The two that stand out like a football player does at a Star Trek convention are coffee and bicycles. The Dutch have more bicycles per capita than I have ever seen in another country. Approximately 16 million people live in the Netherlands, and there are about 16 million bicycles in the country! The Dutch like bicycles much more than they like windmills. This article should tell you a bit more about bicycles in the Netherlands:

Dutch Bikes

The Dutch don't just have a plethora of bicycles, but they also use clean power sources. The countryside of the Netherlands is littered with wind turbines that produce electricity, which is much more efficient and sustainable than the burning of liquefied and fossilized plant matter that so many other countries use.


The coffee in Amsterdam was also quite interesting. Now, there are many people out there who would condemn coffee and say that it is bad. I would agree. If you have too much of anything it can be bad for you. For example, you can drown if you have too much water. However, the pros and cons of drinking coffee is a discussion for another time.

Also, there were hookers in windows in the red light district......gross.

Overall, my first real tour of mainland Europe was about as much fun as Al Gore would have had if he wasn't cheated out of an election. Except I don't have an exceptionally large stick residing in my nether-regions, while it seems Al Gore might.

However, Man-Bear-Pig is real.


P.S.

Jack Martin saved my life from a crazy bicyclist, he's da man.

European Journal 2

I'm supposed to be in Amsterdam right now, enjoying a nice cup of Dutch coffee. Instead, I am spending my night in the London City Airport with two Dutch guys and a girl from Germany, all of us hoping to God that flights will resume tomorrow.

But first, let me explain how my travels got me here...

It all started several days ago when myself and my friend Torsten flew from Galway Ireland, where we are currently studying, to Girona in Spain. While there we saw the Salvador Dali surrealist museum. And let me tell you, judging by his artwork he did more drugs than George W. Bush did in while in college. After visiting Girona, and sampling some of the local and cheap Spanish wine, Torsten and I went our separate ways. He went to visit an old friend in France, and I went to visit a friend of mine in Sheffield, England. Yet the way I met this friend was rather...unusual.

Last summer I was doing some traveling in Italy for a few days, and went on a day trip to Florence. After walking the city of Florence in a day, and getting a sunburn worse than a Twilight vampire sparkling in the sun, I was tired and ready to go back to Rome to sleep. So I got in line to change my train ticket to an earlier time. Shortly thereafter they stopped selling tickets. An English girl who was in front of me in line turned around and asked me if I knew if there was any other place to buy tickets. Without really glancing at her I pointed to a ticket machine where she could procure a new ticket. I then decided to continue the conversation by asking her "Aren't you a little young to be traveling alone?"

Her response:

"I'm twenty."

Considering that I was also twenty at the time, I felt like the CEO of Budweiser if he walked into an alcoholics anonymous meeting...really awkward. Apparently just because someone is short does not mean they are younger than you, go figure.

After apologizing for my assumption, we grabbed a bite and talked for about 45 minutes. We then became friends the only you can in today's digital age, through facebook. This is the friend I was visiting in Sheffield. It was quite fun hanging out in Sheffield, and I even became fast friends with both a French and an Indian dude at the hostel I was staying at. So after having a few drinks with a few of the guys at the hostel I got up early the next morning to take a train down to London, so I could catch my flight to Amsterdam. Everything went fine except for one tiny problem when I got to London - ALL FLIGHTS ACROSS NORTHERN EUROPE WERE CANCELED!

Apparently, a volcano erupted in Iceland, covering most of Europe in a blanket of ash. I'm not exactly sure, but I think it looks something like this:





Or that could just be a scene from the 1997 movie "Volcano" with Tommy Lee Jones, with audio added from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Here's a link to the actual story about it on the BBC news page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8623806.stm


Either way, it's pretty shitty. So I decided to spend my time running around London trying to find a way to Amsterdam so that I could meet up with Torsten. I tried every single available transportation imaginable:

-trains, check
-buses, check
-boats, check
-car, check

All of them were booked up by the roughly 600,000 people whose flights were affected by the volcano. So here I am, forced to sleep on the floor of an airport.

The only good thing to happen while in London was the food I received for dinner. Out of the kindness of their heart, two staff at the airport gave me a bunch of leftover food that they were taking to donate to charity. If not for those two very kind people, I would have gone hungry.

Even a volcanic cloud of ash can have a silver lining.



Also, props to Erin for figuring out the meaning of "WWBMD."

What would Batman do? He would get the hell out of the UK. Let's see if I can pull a Batman.

European Journal 1

I am currently writing this blog post on a bus, that's right...I'm on a bus.

It's something like this:



The only difference being no water - AT ALL! A three hour bus ride with NO DAMN WATER! Normally I wouldn't complain as much, but let me explain why I need water as much as Kanye West needs vocal lessons.

I stayed up all night last night to finish a paper at the last possible minute, and I had 1 1/2 weeks to do it. Now, I know what you're thinking:

"Gee, uh, you must be as stupid as that last guy the U.S. elected to office."

But no, I'm not Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. I just...rediscovered how awesome old cartoons like the Justice League and Batman: The Animated Series are. They're not some retarded talking yellow sponge that flips delicious krabby patties, they're cartoons with a plot that adults can also enjoy. Not only that, but they also teach kids the difference between right and wrong, and that it's okay to stand up for what's right - especially if you have a Green Power Ring (just watch out for yellow).

But yeah, I did watch cartoons instead of doing my papers for 1 1/2 weeks. So I stayed up the night before and did it. Thus, I did not get any sleep the night before this long bus ride.

But wait, it gets better.

On the way to the bus station I realized I forgot my computer and plane tickets, and ran back to get them.


After running back to my flat with my heavy camping backpack on I realize I must run all the way back to Eyre Square - a distance that is usually a fifteen minute walk for me. Let me tell you though, most EPIC run of my life.

With the adrenaline surging through my veins, headphones around my neck blaring "Cage the Elephant," and all my luggage on my back, I ran to Eyre Square in the blistering sunlight and made barely made it in time.

Best start to a vacation ever!!!


Also: WWBMD?

Think about it...what does it mean?


The first person who guesses and posts on this blog what "WWBMD" means, will get a special mention in my next blog post.