You know, I spend more time thinking about Superman than I probably do any other topic. It’s a bit of an obsession for me. For the last decade I have been in what could be called a deep research into the franchise. I have watched every Superman-family television show or movie that has yet existed (with the exception of the new “Krypton” show, which I’ll get to soon enough). In my most recent failed attempt at post-secondary education, I wrote essays about the character any time a class offered enough wiggle-room that I could justify it. My computer has more than a dozen text files just containing random notes and research related to the character. What I’m saying is: I care an awful lot about Superman and it occupies a large part of my mental real-estate.

It has finally occurred to me that maybe I should start putting some of those thoughts on my site here. What is the site for, if not to contain all my thoughts? And I mean, it’s easier than finishing Secret Government Robots, isn’t it?

With that in mind, I’m going to start a new weekly thing to join the other weekly things I do here: Unstructured Superman Thoughts, Facts, And Opinions. They’ll be quickly-written, first-draft-posted ramblings, like everything else I do here, it’s just that I’ve put way more thought into them than everything else I do. I’ll schedule them on Saturdays, I guess, so the first real one (I am not counting this post) will be tomorrow.

Now, in case I ever actually get anyone who reads my Superman Thoughts, I admit that they are just my opinion. I am going to be saying things like “Superman SHOULD have super-ventriloquism” which is a fact that not everyone agrees with. What I am actually saying is that “In my opinion, Superman should have super-ventriloquism” but this is my site, so I can act as though my opinion is fact here. But I will definitely be espousing views that many Superman fans will find even more controversial than super-ventriloquism.

This particular Heritage Piece is not from my childhood. It was not drilled into my brain and I can’t quote from it. Those, I admit, are the things that I like about these things. Still, I obviously knew who Terry Fox was. Looking back, I’m somewhat surprised their wasn’t an ad about him back in those days. Why did it take so long, I wonder? Ah well, he has one now. It’s a straightforward piece, narrated by Terry at first, then closing with a narrator filling in the blanks. I don’t even really have much to say about it. (Note: This is not a sign that I am against cancer research. Those rumours are unfounded as I have said at my many press conferences on the subject.)

True PDR Fact: Walking across Canada is something I’d actually enjoy doing. Not even for a cause, necessarily. I just think that, if the weather was nice and I wasn’t broke and I had the time, I’d be okay with doing that. It’s a dream that will never come to fruition. Terry Fox, on the other hand, did his thing under much worse circumstances and for much better reasons. I don’t think this Heritage Commercial, had it been around in my youth, would have been easily memorized, but I do think it’s a perfectly good way of memorializing Fox and that’s what it is actually supposed to do, so I’m going to give it Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. It does its job.

I fully admit that my claim that Terry Fox is a “cyborg” will likely be argued by some. Fair enough, but it’s a claim I first made when Canada put him on money and I wanted to say Canada was the first country to have a cyborg on its money. You can take that away from us, sure, but it would make us feel bad. Meanwhile, if you want to argue that Terry Fox was famously not “unstoppable” okay, but in that case it should make you feel bad.

A group of innocent people are captured and forced onto a stage-like prison where they are coerced into acting out scenarios for the amusement of a mysterious audience.

Dierdre Gates

In the outside world, Dierdre was a normal person with friends and family and a life. Then, one day, she woke up in a strange house, made up of rooms that were only three-quarters complete. And from the incomplete walls came laughter and gasps and other reactions to whatever happened within the house. Joined by four strangers, and the occasional “guest” thrown in, Dierdre is apparently meant to be putting on some sort of entertainment for an unknown audience.

Rob Flanders

Rob has adapted to the imprisonment by trying to give the audience what he thinks they want. He hams it up for the crowd and plays along with whatever storyline they seem to be trying to generate, convinced that once they are satisfied they will release him and the others back into the world. Dierdre completely disagrees with him.

Mateo Leoni

Mateo is convinced that the five of them are dead and are in some sort of purgatory, or are in an alien space zoo, or it is all a dream. He has a million theories for what is going on, and will alter his behaviour to adjust to whichever theory is prominent at any given time, making him a real wild card.

Oscar Wiffle

Oscar is just as confused as the others, but he just goes with the flow. He doesn’t try to ham it up like Rob, but he also doesn’t try to escape. The prisoners have free food, working television, and occasional events to break up the monotony. This place seems as good as anywhere else, he figures.

Charlotte Dennis

Charlotte is swayed by the whims of the others. She is convinced by Dierdre’s insistence that they try to escape, but also understands Rob’s plan to go along with the captors. She’s also developed a bit of a crush on Mateo and occasionally goes along with his nonsense plots.

This would be a show in which characters are tortured for the amusement of an audience, for the amusement of us. My theory is that the audience is bored wizards.

“On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-stained blocks of Pentelic marble, grows an unnaturally large olive tree of oddly repellent shape; so like to some grotesque man, or death-distorted body of a man, that the country folk fear to pass it at night when the moon shines faintly through the crooked boughs. Mount Maenalus is a chosen haunt of dreaded Pan, whose queer companions are many, and simple swains believe that the tree must have some hideous kinship to these weird Panisci; but an old bee-keeper who lives in the neighbouring cottage told me a different story.”

Today I am reviewing a beekeeper from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. I expect that even the most devoted fans of Lovecraft would barely remember this character, though, given that he is alluded to but twice in a minor Lovecraft story, “The Tree“. He doesn’t even do anything in the story. Basically, this story is narrated by some chump. That chump tells a story that was related to him by a beekeeper. Thus, the beekeeper is neither the narrator, nor is he actually a part of the story of the tree.

What do we know about this guy? Not much. He’s Greek. He’s old. And he knows this story. He automatically gets Two Honeycombs for being a good beekeeper (one doesn’t get to be an old beekeeper if one is not good at it, after all), but I could infer more. Maybe this beekeeper actually knows a lot more than this one story. Perhaps he knows all manner of secrets of the Lovecraftian universe and all its monsters and such. It seems entirely likely that this beekeeper is a major force in protecting humanity. Nobody out there can prove me wrong! But, unfortunately, this story also can not prove me right.

Two Honeycombs out of Five.