The Last Airbender
June 2, 2012
I have always walked a lot, and though my life has changed considerably since my son was born last year I still walk a lot, now with him strapped to my chest. I wish I could say I spend the entirety of each walk marveling down at him, and though there is always at least a little marveling, the truth is I continue for the most part to spend my walks now as I have spent them for some time: scrutinizing one glimpse of trash after another in hopes that one of these pieces of trash is actually a baseball card. As I wrote recently in an essay for Chicago Side, I’ve found a few baseball cards lying in the street over the years, but I haven’t found any in quite a while, and the actual ratio of pieces of trash scrutinized to pieces of trash that turned out to be baseball cards is so infinitesimally small as to be statistically nonexistent, similar in that regard to the ratio of planets in the universe versus the planets that support human life. So far there’s been just one and we’re on it, ruining it I guess, what with all the littering and Happy Meals. I found this card some time ago and since it was a card, albeit not a baseball card, I picked it up and brought it home. I suppose it came in a Happy Meal or something, if they still have Happy Meals. Happy Meals sprung up after I was done with childhood, so I don’t recall ever getting one. Anyway, this movie looks fucking stupid. I vaguely remember it coming out but I can’t say when. Sometime in the vague slab of years that occurred and continues to occur after the more delineated progress of time in childhood. The character featured here can bend all four elements, according to the back of the card. I can’t bend elements. But I can break wind. Ha ha ha ha ha! Right? Oh, man. Where was I? Oh yeah, walking, looking. I wish I had spent my writing time this morning working on a prize-winning short story, but this is my one life, an absurd blue miracle: walking, looking, cardboard, fart jokes.
Cardboard Gods 
FanTAStic animated series…one of the worst live-action adaptations of all time.
Fitting: M Night Shyamalan said this, about the adaptation from kids’ show to movie:
“I took away a little bit of the slapsticky stuff that was there for the little little kids, the fart jokes and things like that”
Wait until your son is a little older, Josh. I learn all about Airbenders and Pokemon and Beyblades from my 6-year old (whom I still find myself marveling over at least once per day).
IMDB user rating: 4.5 = all you need to know
Because I have a 10-year-old son, I have seen quite a bit of “Avatar: the Last Airbender”, and it’s a well-written, exciting, and surprisingly funny TV show. The movie adaptation, however, was terrible.