Yeah, but are felonies really crimes?

In the President's defense, lots of things
are illegal. It's easy to loose track.

Calm down everybody. The President didn't commit a crime. Unless of course it's a crime to direct your lawyer to pay women for their silence with the intent of keeping your extra marital affairs from the public in the days and weeks leading up to an election because you think that the conservatives you conned into supporting you might stay home on election day if they knew what a sleaze you are is a crime. But if that's a crime, I don't know what to believe in any more.

Above: the mood among the President's
legal team earlier today. Well, at least
among those not going to jail. Yet.

It turns out that all that's a big huge federal offense, and that the President just admitted to it to Fox News's Ainsley Earhardt in an interview in which he's insisting to her how not guilty of crimes he is:

"...and they [the hush money payments] weren't taken out of the campaign finance, that's the big thing. That's a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me."

-The President, admitting to a felony

Yeah, so in the interview, due to air tomorrow, he lie'splains to Earhardt that because the hush money came from his own pocket it's all good which, according to this, is not at all the case. In fact, it's the opposite of the case. Apparently he would have been ok if he'd funneled the money through the campaign, but then it's tough to funnel hush money through something with public accounting records. It un-hushes it.

Holy shit, wouldn't it just be the best if a
Fox News interview was what finally did it? 

Also, he kind of makes it sound like the
conviction just happened to Manafort, but
 didn't he commit like a bunch of crimes?

Incidentally, the headline story on Fox News as I write this is not the President discussing the finer points of concealing affairs from the public on the eve of an election by making illegal campaign contributions through a lawyer or whatever, it's the fact that the man accused of murdering Mollie Tibbits might be an illegal immigrant. Might be. That actually has yet to be established, but that didn't stop Newt Gingrich from chiming in with how this case is "...historically far more important than what happened to Paul Manafort." Really? More important than the President committing a felony and then chatting about it on Fox News?

Hey, you don't suppose Gingrich is trying to distract us by trotting out the discredited and racist assertion that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than citizens, do you? I mean, I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions about a guy who went after a different President for lying about an affair while he himself was cheating on his wife and is now handwaving the current President's multiple affairs and subsequent pay-offs to cover it up but...but...no, now that I think about it, I do want to jump to conclusions.

Yup, he was cheating on his 2nd wife, Marianne Ginthner, during the
Clinton impeachment. Oh, and Ginthner had been recently diagnosed with
 MS. Oh, oh! And he'd started seeing her while married to his first wife.

An incompetent Nixon, but with less charm.

Yeah, but Nixon was like, super-guilty, wasn't he? I ask because the President made a weird comparison on twitter wherein he's Nixon and I'm not sure he wasn't to be Nixon.

You know, because he was indeed a crook and
we've been kicking him around for forty years.

Pictured: Donald McGahn II and his
actual hair. I'm not kidding, that's real.

It all started last week when the New York Times reported that White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II was cooperating with-wait, II? As in the second? Isn't that just junior? Huh...I guess he must be fancy. Anyway, they reported that Donald F. McGahn the younger was cooperating with the Mueller investigation because, you know, the law. He answered questions related to the firing of James Comey and how Russia basically owns us now. The little details that led us to the preposterous situation we now find ourselves in.

He also discussed with Mueller how much the President would like to fire him and shut down the investigation. Something innocent people totally do, and something I'm sure was probably awkward for McGahn.

"Really? Fire me? Whatever will I do?"

-Robert Mueller mentally calculating

his speaking fees and book deal

"If you're planning to testify please queue
up here. If you have secret recordings
please use the starboard lifeboats.
That's it, nice and orderly now."

Holy shit, right? Well, who knows? On the one hand I think we're all hopeful that this is the thing that finally brings this truly bizarre season of The Celebrity Apprentice we've been watching these last twenty months to an end. On the other hand, according to the Times, McGahn has been cooperating for the last nine months so if there is some explosive piece of damning evidence, you'd think we'd have heard about it by now. But whatever it is, there is a sense that this is another example of a Trump loyalist seeing reason and grabbing a lifeboat while there's still time.

Whichever it is I think, and I should preface this with 'I'm not a lawyer,' but whichever this is the thing for the President to do is keep his mouth shut, right? Again, I'm not an expert, but is anyone else convinced that this is all going to end in months of hearings where every single tweet this man has made since Twitter was a thing gets read into evidence? So obviously he started tapping out reactions:

Now it may look like the President of America can't spell the thing that's investigating
him for collusion and obstruction of justice, but that's just because you hate America.
The President, and a small group of people know exactly what 'Councel' means. 

Rats: you can't even trust them
to conceal your crimes...

So the guy John Dean 'ratted out' would be Nixon and he didn't so much as rat Nixon out as he testified against him to the Senate Watergate Committee because he was pretty sure Nixon was going to screw him first. Also, is the President unfamiliar with the colloquial use of the term rat? Does he think it means 'to cooperate with investigators'? Is that, to him, a character flaw? Trump's saying that McGahn is actually testifying-which he's not, is he? Isn't he just being interviewed by the Special Counsel?

If anything, shouldn't Trump be
asking Dean for advice on how
to not go to prison?

I think that's different but whatever. He's saying that McGahn is cooperating with Mueller because he, Trump, is allowing him to. John Dean,who-yes of course he's chiming in on this, Trump just called him a rat. He says that there's no indication whatsoever that Trump told McGahn to cooperate and that there's no reason to believe the administration has a clue about what he's told Mueller and I don't know, I think I'd be inclined to trust his assessment since he once was part of an actual cover up. He knows how it's done.

Here's what Dean had to say-and yes, all future political discourse will be twitter based. Rome had the forum, we have 280 characters, all caps and emoji.

He didn't enter the White House
graciously so at least he's consistent.

So really unless that legal-sized notepad
is just full of McGahn's Teenwolf fan fic,
he's giving Mueller something good.

Later, on CNN, he said that there's basically no way McGahn talking to Mueller is going to be good for the President:

"I can tell you this, even if he didn't go in with the intent to incriminate the President, even giving...just putting everything into a timeline for the Special Counsel is just invaluable information."

-John Dean, on the phone with CNN,

 presumably through a shit-eating grin

Yeah, but is it any less realistic
than what actually happened?

Look, we all, regardless of our politics, want this to be over. For Trump and his fans, the hope is that he'll be exonerated so that he can get back to the business of being terrible at his job. For the rest of us, we're hoping to watch as he's escorted from the White House in disgrace. And then, since we're just spitballing here, maybe then the woman most of us voted for could finally be sworn in? You know, like in a democracy? Ok, neither of those scenarios are terribly realistic, but at least we can agree on that first part, right?

But can't we also agree that cooperating with authorities investigating a possible crime and in this case, a pretty goddamn serious one, isn't the same thing as ratting someone out? That it's actually more like, you know, the thing you're supposed to do?

...well? No? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Here, let me clear that up:

So there's a new Spock and-huh? No, not Zachary Quinto, a different Spock, but still the same Spock. Yeah, you might want to buckle your nerd belt, we're in for some chop.

I...I told you to buckle up and you-you never listen to me...

Pictured: a quarter of Ethan Peck's genes.

This new Spock will be played by Ethan Peck, the grandson of Gregory Peck which, acting talent is hereditary, right? Anyway, he's the former star of the TV version of Ten Things I Hate About You where he played the Heath Ledger role. Yeah, I didn't see it either, but then I'm out of touch. Peck will be playing Spock on season two of Star Trek: Discovery which is set ten years before the original Star Trek but roughly around the same time as the Star Trek reboot movies. With me?

Huh? Who left this picture of creepy
Rogue One CG Tarkin here?

No, of course you're not and neither am I, but that's ok. We're going to power through. So in its first season Discovery named dropped Spock a few times because the main character, Michael Burnham is his human foster sister and a lot of the marketing for season two has revolved around the idea that it will be delving into that relationship and since you can't just CG a deceased actor into a prequel without it looking like unnerving, Polar Express-ish nightmare fuel, a new Spock had to be cast. Hence, Ethan Peck.

Above: The white guy they got to
play an Indian guy who was first played
by an Hispanic guy. Because time travel.

You're probably wondering why they didn't just get Zachary Quinto back since we're already used to him as the new young Spock and since-wait you weren't wondering that? Well these are important questions that need answering. Shame on you. Anyway, although Quinto's Spock is theoretically the same person, he's from an alternate timeline where Eric Bana murdered Kirk's dad and caused a temporal chain reaction that turned Khan into Benedict Cumberbatch. And no, we're not going into that again, just trust me on that one.

And that's how Biff Tannen
became mayor of Hill Valley.

So Quinto's Spock is still Spock but he's not exactly the same Spock that Leonard Nimoy played because he's had different life experiences. Star Trek: Discovery meanwhile is set in the Prime Universe where Eric Bana didn't travel through time and implode his home planet, along with his mom who was played by Winona Ryder (yeah, that movie was kind of bananas), so Ethan Peck's Spock is just a younger version of the same Spock from the original TV show. And don't worry, the blood oozing from your ear is completely normal.

Zachary Quinto, seen here
with a look of smouldering
intensity, is an actual actor.

So that's the shaky, appropriately technobabble, in-universe reason Star Trek: Discovery needed to recast Spock again, less than a decade after the reboot movies did it. But simpler reason for the a Spock is that Zachary Quinto is a successful, famous person and probably not interested in working for TV money. And this seems to be a running theme. A disagreement over salary between Paramount and two of the famous, bearded white guys named Chris, that is Chris Pine who played Captain Kirk and Chris Hemsworth who played his Eric Bana-murdered dad, has likely just sunk any chance of another Trek movie featuring the J. J. Abrams series cast. And that's probably fine, if for no other reason than it's super confusing to explain to new viewers that Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to the series that the movies are a soft, alt-universe reboot of.

"What? They changed the angle of the
nacel pylons? Who are they, Hitler?"

-Me, in my angrier,

more obsessive days

So what do I think of all this? Thanks, I'm glad I pretended you asked. I don't mind. Maybe I've matured as a fan. Like, I no longer fly off the handle about things like the Enterprise getting redesigned or whether or not Klingons have hair. The only trepidation I have is about the show relying too heavily on other Trek stuff. Season one drew from earlier series', but it usually took those ideas and went in a different direction, so if revisiting Spock adds something new that's fine as long as it doesn't detract from the rest of the cast.

As for the recast itself, like I said, I don't know much about Ethan Peck beyond what his IMDB page tells us, but he seems Spocky so far. And according to his twitter page he has the approval of Leonard Nimoy's family so sure, bring on the new old, yet younger Spock.

Pictured: Ethan Peck Vulcan saluting with Adam Nimoy and Terry Farrell. Yup, Spock's son
is married to Dax from DS9. Now you know some Star Trek trivia. And you can't unknown it.

Today in Pokémon-based investments:

Look, I don't want to tell people how to spend their $56,000 but...uh...no, I absolutely want to tell people how to spend their $56,000. Buy a car, go to college, maybe put a down payment on a house. But whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, blow it all on a box of Pokémon cards at an auction.

If you can think of something better to do with fifty-six
thousand-oh right, a bank. You could put it in a bank.

Wait, Esquire covers Pokémon
news now? Shouldn't they be
writing about attractive people?

Because that's what some buffoon did. Wait, sorry, that's just unfair of me. I'm only calling this as yet unidentified person a buffoon because they went and blew fifty-six thousand dollars on three hundred ninety-six, 19-year old trading cards. And only an buffoon would do something that stupid, right? But this could be a genius move because according to Esquire Magazine, there's a chance that there's a Charizard Holo among those cards and one of those once sold for $55,650. So in many ways this ridiculous extravagance could secretly be a wise investment. And-huh? Uh, no we didn't talk this already. You're thinking about that other Pokémon card that sold for a similarly preposterous sum.Yeah, it's turns out they're a lot of people out there with massive amounts of disposable income and no better ideas about how to spend it.

The secret is to win at the games.

Oh, and when I called this a genius move a moment ago, understand that I mean that in the way that gambling at a Casino is a genius move. That is to say, it's genius if it pays off. Otherwise you just threw your money away like an idiot. Because if this buyer drops fifty-six grand on a sealed, pristine condition, first edition or whatever box of cards and then starts tearing them open only to not find a Charizard Holo card-an extremely likely outcome mind you-they're going to feel quiet the fool.

I mean, more so. Charizard or no Charizard, they did just spend the average American's yearly income on Pokémon cards. Although I'm not sure now if that says more about this anonymous collector or America.

Pictured: the average American's yearly income...let that sink in.

Just give someone a rose already...

Ok, so I have some questions. First of all, are we for real. Like as a country? I'm really starting to think it's time to pack it in.

It was nice while it lasted guys, but that
electoral college nonsense really screwed us.

Also, neither she nor Trump won the
popular vote, so they have that in common.

Because Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former White House Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaisons whom Trump brought over from his previous job as host of The Apprentice has been secretly recording conversations in the situation room. Let me be clear. I don't follow reality shows so I bear this woman no ill will. In fact, I think her reality show credentials make her just as qualified to be President as Donald Trump. I'm just questioning how she can just walk into the situation room with an iPhone set to record and what that says about us.

I mean as a country that would like to be taken seriously. Look, I'm not like an expert on these things, but I have seen a lot of The West Wing and I'm pretty sure the situation room is the secure command center from which Presidents are supposed to decide whom to bomb.

Nancy McNally wouldn't put up with this shit. 

Above: Chief of Staff John F. Kelly,
cackling maniacally after firing Omarosa.

The recording is of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly firing her, which again, doesn't really sound like the kind of thing you need a command center for, but here we are. In it, Manigault Newman, whom I guess we just call Omarosa, asks if the President knew that she was being fired to which Kelly said not to ask and that they were having a 'non-negotiable discussion.' That suggestion that the President doesn't know what's going on with his own staff was born out by another recording released by Manigault Newman in which Trump says he saw on the news that she'd been fired.

"Do I feel my ears burning?"

-The Queen

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was characteristically outraged but weirdly not by the fact that the President is learning about changes in his staff from Fox News, but that Omarosa has the audacity to record a conversation-something Donald Trump is famous for doing himself apparently. But sure, by all means let's pretend that this is an actual Presidency and not the farce that's going to make America re-think the entire idea of the executive branch. Incidentally, I'm fairly certain the U.K. would have us back if we asked...

"The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security. And then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee."

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders

without a hint of irony

"When Omarosa records conversations it shows a lack of character. When the
President does it, it's awesome. Yes I know how I sound, and I don't give a shit."

-The White House Press Secretary

"Whaaat? No..."

-Omarosa, unconvincingly

Yes, the very idea! How very dare she not take this Administration seriously? Anyway, Omarosa claims that she has more tapes, even more damning than the ones she's released so far and is waiting for the President to make his next move which, spoiler alert, is a series of tweets questioning her sanity and making thinly veiled threats. So why not just cut to the chase and put them all out there? I mean, why not-oh shit, is she holding out because of her book deal?

Like, I'm not holding out hope that she's sitting on one that's going to make the people who still support him see the light, or the GOP start acting like grown ups, but this reality show bullshit of artificially building suspense by cutting to commercial is wearing a bit thin. 

Goddamnit Omarosa, just give someone a rose and let us get on
with our day. Sorry, is that the wrong show? Forget it, I don't care.

Jason Kessler knows how to draw a crowd!

Kessler, seen here preparing for-huh...
is that a MAGA hat I see back there?

Hey, what if you had a Nazi rally and nobody came? That's that Jason Kessler, organizer of today's Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington D.C. discovered. Yeah, Nazi marches have sequels now. Anyway, unsurprisingly, counter protesters outnumbered Kessler's two dozen or so shitheads by like an order of magnitude. Which, I know it's hard to count people in Washington what with all the tarps, but the media is using phrases like dwarfed, and vastly when remarking upon the regular person to Nazi ratio.

Like this time, not only was his group outnumbered, but they were also intimidated into wrapping up early. In fact, the rally was scheduled to begin at 5:30 but they marched, Jason Kessler spoke and the thing wrapped up all before 5:30.

You know, for a racially superior group they sure need a lot of police, many
of whom are people of color, to keep them from getting their asses kicked.

"Why should we have to wait in
traffic? I mean, we're white."

-White Supremacists

So I guess what I want to know, is what do white supremacists hope to accomplish with these rallies? I mean, realistically, what are they after? Normalization of their fucked up worldview? Tax breaks for caucasians? A special diamond lane for white people? Do they not know that these things aren't going to happen? What outcome are they hoping for other than violence? Kessler had to carry his limp flag around today because the cops confiscated his flag pole because it would absolutely been used to brain someone from one side or the other.

"All we want is to be recognized as
the best race. Is that too much to ask?"

Fortunately, there wasn't a repeat of the violence from Kessler's previous rally in Charlottesville, but since Kessler didn't smack his forehead and and say, 'Sorry everybody, I don't know what I was thinking with this whole white supremacy thing." I think it's safe to say he didn't take the hint either, so I'm sure we'll be hearing about "Unite the Right 3: Even Racist-ier" soon which if this trajectory holds should consist of Jason Kessler, that guy with the MAGA hat and 80,000 counter protesters. 

Yup, the good news is that emboldened as they may be by the Trump administration's unwillingness to call Nazis Nazis, they still can't draw a crowd. Well, that's not true, they can always draw a crowd, it's just a crowd that outnumbers them one hundred to one and calls them out on their racist bullshit. So in many ways, thanks.

Above: Noted racist Jason Kessler waving his limp, pole-less flag.

From the guy who brought us Tiny Sub:

Musk? Because his name is...sorry,
I'd like to say I'm better than that, but
I think we both know that's not true.

Just so we're clear, Elon Musk can't like, own Mars, right? I ask because he held a secret meeting in Boulder, Colorado last week to discuss plans for colonizing the cold, airless wasteland and historically people...ok, mainly white people, seem to have a notion that if you go somewhere, you own somewhere. The Americas, Africa, India, Australia...it's not a great track record. So I just think it's time we, as a planet, come to an understanding that Mars isn't up for grabs no matter who puts their distinctive musk on it first.

So the meeting, called a 'Mars Workshop,' because 'secret, closed door meeting to discuss conquest of Mars' would sound...you know, crazy.

Not to mention futile.

Nothing terrible has ever come
out of secret meetings, right?

The workshop included scientists and academics from a broad range of backgrounds and organizations including NASA, but Musk asked them all to keep their attendance secret and this is kind of where I get squidgy on the subject. I'm all for exploring space, that's awesome. But not that Elon Musk asked me or anything, I can't get behind that exploration being sponsored and branded and just another innovation from the guy that brought us that stupid rescue sub he threw a tantrum about.

Remember that? When Elon Musk, unsolicited, built and shipped a child sized rescue submarine to help get those kids out of a cave in Thailand? That was great and all, but when the Thai military got the kids out, Musk threw a Trump-worthy tantrum and started calling everyone pedophiles. Is that the kind of person we want to make Viceroy of Mars?

"I mean, they've been down there eighteen days, they couldn't
wait another week? And then I'm an asshole for asking them
to put a couple of them beck in there so I could rescue them."

-Elon, first of his name,

ruler of the Red Planet

SpaceX: "There's a good chance you'll die..."

-SpaceX's ill-advised 

marketing campaign 

The point of this get together was to discuss advancing plans to put humans on Mars by 2024 which, yikes, is not that far away. It's a prospect that even Musk believes is fraught with danger. Speaking at South by Southwest this year he said:

"For the people who go to Mars, it'll be far more dangerous...Difficult, dangerous, good chance you'll die. Excitement for those who survive."

-Elon Mu-holy shit, what is wrong with him?

Wait, does he have a Genesis Device?
Because that would make this a lot easier.

So much danger he himself wouldn't dream of risking his own life. Besides, he's just too damn valuable. No really. And I get that, I wouldn't get in his stupid Mars commuter ship either. My issue is that he's so gung-ho about something that's not only incredibly dangerous-for other people-but also something that a lot of actual, non-rich scientists aren't sure is even attainable with available technology. So unless SpaceX is sitting on a Genesis Device Musk hasn't told us about, we might have to look into trying to make this one a little more habitable.

"But that probably won't happen, right?"

-Humans

And I get that this is what Musk is trying to do, give the human race somewhere else to go just in case, I don't know, we end up ruining our climate with centuries of industrial pollution. And that's a laudable aim...the planet B I mean, not ruining this one. It's just a laudable aim I wish was being explored by like an international team of scientists with purely humanitarian motivations and a willingness to wait until the technology is mature instead of some bored rich guy with a cavalier attitude towards other people's safety who once shot a Tesla at Mars just for the hell of it.

Maybe I'm just prejudiced against the ultra-rich but when someone is famously kind of an asshole and willing to cram people into a SpaceX® brand rocket and launch them towards a frigid, radiation-baked hellscape with a better than 50/50 chance of dying horribly, I'm not sure we should be trusting him with the fate of the human race.

It's starting to look like he shouldn't even be trusted with a Twitter account.

Today in twisted masks of agony:

So remember back in the early 90's when Nintendo positioned itself as the kid-friendly video game company? You don't? Well, they did, even going so far as to throw Sega under the bus during the-wait, I can do better than that...uh...even going so far as to blue turtle shell Sega during the 1993 Congressional Hearings on Video Game Violence.

"Lookit this bullshit. This is Sega's Night Trap, and you will never,
ever see violent fucking garbage like this on one of our consoles.
We here at Nintendo are lookin' out for your goddamn kids, ok?"

-Howard Lincoln, Senior VP

of Nintendo (actual quote)*

Pictured: Sega mascot Sonic the
Hedgehog, exhibiting what was
referred to at the time as 'tude.

Yes. Congressional hearings. Back in the 90's, all the cool members of Congress were courting the 'ignorant parent' vote. Anyway, for the most part, Nintendo enforced some strict rules about what could and could not appear in games on their systems. No graphic violence and blood, no swearing or nudity and no religious imagery. Nintendo was the squeaky clean alternative to Sega's x-treme edginess. At least until this bit them in the ass when Mortal Kombat came to home systems and they insisted that Midway (the game's publisher) take out the fatalities and turn the blood into grey 'sweat.' The version released on the Sega Genesis had the gore intact (ABACABB) and sold way the hell more copies so Nintendo loosened up a bit. But even today Nintendo still seems to aim at a more all-ages crowd, especially when it comes to their own game characters. 

Which is why today's Nintendo Direct, in which we watched in horror as Luigi was brutally murdered (at about the 1:02 mark), was a little surprising.

Here, let this haunt your dreams.

Above: The Grim Reaper. The middle
ages had fairly low res graphics.

I should probably explain what we're looking at here. That's Luigi, the Mario Brother you played as when someone else hogged the player 1 controller, having his soul torn from his body by Death himself. It's from a character reveal trailer for Smash Bros. Ultimate, and-yeah, that probably requires more explanation, but don't worry about it. Smash Bros. is a series of fighting games featuring charters from other games and today's trailer introduced Simon and Richter from Castlevania. The Grim Reaper is a recurring character from that series as well. And also, I suppose, a character from Medieval superstition. So in the trailer, Luigi, who's also a ghost buster, wanders into Dracula's Castle where his spirit is harvested leaving his cold body on the floor, his face twisted into a terrifying mask of agony. 

Mama mia, right? At the end of the trailer, we see ghost Luigi try and re-enter his corpse only to again be frightened by Carmilla, another nightmare-fuel Castlevania monster. 

Pictured: unsettling evidence that even in
 death there is no escape from a level boss.

First the sickening sound of vertebrae
cracking, then the equally sickening
calypso tune heralding a 'game over.'

So is Luigi really dead? Of course not, he's a video games character and besides, that would be kind of a turn for a game series about plumbers who do mushrooms and battle fire breathing turtle wizards. Reassuringly, or not depending on your feelings about British accents, Nintendo UK's Twitter account assures us he's ok. But coming just a month after his brother Mario's neck was snapped by Ridley, the space pterodactyl from Metroid, in another character reveal trailer (30 seconds in), it does signal an interestingly dark sense of humor on the part of Nintendo's marketing people.

"Wookies have been known
to do that you know..."

And that's fine, I appreciate Nintendo being a little less uptight when it comes to their games, but still. It's probably not a great analogy, but I've always thought of Nintendo as video gaming's Disney. It's been influential in the industry, has a kind of shady past and they're known for a large stable of likable characters. So you can understand my uneasiness about watching them slaughter one another, even if it's in a Smash Bros. game. It'd be like Disney making a crossover movie where Chewbacca tears the arms off Goofy. It's just weird, you know?

But I guess that's just the Smash Bros. games. Part of the appeal is the toy box approach where they just throw a bunch of characters and settings together regardless of tone or art style. Part of me really digs it, but part of me, the obsessive 10-year old who would never mix his G.I. Joe's with his Star Trek TNG action figures, is driven up the wall by the canon-smoothy it makes out of separate narrative universes.

"What-the...what? Spider-Man and Batman in
the same box? This...this is anarchy."

-Me, age 10...and now, 

if I'm being honest

*mostly