Bat/Man

There are two reasons for writing this post. First, the saga of man vs. bat. Second, my excitement over the summer movie The Dark Knight.

On Christmas Day, Lana and I got home after dark and Lana messed around in the storage closet next to the kitchen, rearranging some empty cardboard boxes and putting some new boxes in it. It is a fairly large storage closet, but we have it nearly full of stuff, not junk of course, but stuff.

Baron, our cat, sat outside the door staring into the closet after Lana left the door slightly open. (When is a door not a door? When it is ajar!) We didn't move and seemed to be mesmerized by what was happening within. It was a little creepy, especially because I was already feeling jumpy after having finished watching Zodiac about twenty mintues earlier. It wasn't a particularly scary movie, but the idea of a killer who strikes at randon for the joy of killing is incredibly terrifying to me.

I walk to the door and listen in on what Baron has been paying attention to. The soft sounds of movement are coming from within the labyrinth of boxes, golf clubs, crates, and computers. Whatever is in there, is not only moving around, but somewhat frantically by the sounds of it. As I try to figure out where the sounds are coming from, Baron's farm cat instincts kick-in and he starts prodding around the closet. He seems to locate where the creature is, but I pull him back so he doesn't catch whatever it is.

Lana and I decide to leave and try to find some mousetraps...On Christmas Day...at midnight. We're smart, us'ens is. After discovering that 24-hour stores are not open on Christmas Day, we head home, slightly dejected. When we enter the apartment, Baron is sitting at the door to the closet, meowing, running his arm under the door, and his nose is on the door like a pig on a truffle.

I decide to open the door and take one final look. As I open the door a crack, I look into the living room and see Lana looking on from a safe distance. Looking down, I see Baron poking his head through the crack and look into the closet. My heart skips a beat as a I see a bat lying on the floor, screaming and baring it's teeth at my cat, whose face could not have been more than couple of inches from the bat's, if not an inch. Scared, yes scared, for you see I have an active imagination and all I could think of was the bat killing my cat, flying to my neck and latching on, killing me in a bloody struggle before I see it heading to my wife with my last dying breath. Anyway, scared by the impossibly improbable hyperbole of the situation, I yell "Baron!" and try to grab him before he gets bit. He does not relent from trying to get to the bat. Again I yell "Baron, no!" and notice that Lana and screamed and disappeared. I pull him back from the jaws of death, (or at least a one in twenty shot at rabies, or was it one in 2000? (I can't remember if it said 0.05 chance, or 0.05 percent chance)) and slam the door. Some quick work with some packaging tape seals him into the closet. Thank God for Christmas. Really!

I call the animal control people the next day to see if I need to bring the bat in for rabies testing as it may have bitten my cat, the chance is small, but it all happened so fast. They said that I'd have to pay for the test, so, sorry Baron. I opened the door, didn't see the bat, but had heard it earlier in the morning. Shut the door, steeled myself against the possibility of having to find it in the maze of storage, and opened the door again. It was in a box, sleeping. I tossed it outside.

What fun that was. Lana and I were kind of terrorized by this bat in our closet. I slept uneasily, imagining a flock of bats circling my room in the middle of the night. Lana said she had multiple baticide dreams, with different combinations of killers. The only one who wasn't scared? Baron, our cat. He was fascinated by it, and probably would have fought it. Lana named him Baron von Kitty when she first got him. I proposed that we rename him Baron the Lion-Hearted. When the dragon was wreaking havoc and choas on the quiet hamlet of our apartment, Baron von Kitty stepped forth to slay the fang-bearing dragon, before being pulled back by the very villagers he had pledged to protect, to the point of death, or possible brain-virus. For this reason, he shall forever and anon be dubbed Baron the Lion-Hearted.


From one hero to another. I have to say I am excited for the movie The Dark Knight to be released, even though it won't come out until June or July. Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite movie directors, so when he took over the Batman franchise, I was eager to see what he would do with the series. Memento, style-wise, is one of my favorite movies. Insomnia was pretty good flick, and I enjoyed The Prestige. So, when I watched Batman Begins back in 2005 I think, I was wondering whether it would be a Batman movie, or a Christopher Nolan movie. It managed to be both. I was never really a fan of the Batman movies, but I found myself wanting to see more. I kind of forgot about it until seeing a preview before I am Legend. The new movie looks even better than the last one. Heath Ledger as The Joker looks incredible. I watched Thank You For Smoking tonight and I'm excited about Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face, although it won't be a large part of the movie. I couldn't help but think of Matt Ellsworth as Aaron Eckhart's character.

I like how the new Batman movies are realistic, to an extent. The action is not out of a comic book, but to an extent, it is all within the limits of human effort. Like the Scarecrow didn't have any special powers, he simply used mind-altering drugs to gain an advantage. The Joker will not be a supervillian, but a regular person who happens to enjoy immorality and choas. We get some of the psychology behind the characters, their histories and reasons for acting the way they do. I love it. Christopher Nolan does not have an easy job. It is as if he has to please comic book readers, Batman fans, the fans of the Batman movies who don't necessarily read the comics, and his own fans. With the first movie, he seemed to please them all. I hope the second and third installment do the same. Apparently, contracts have been signed for a third Batman movie, coming out in 2010 or 2011. While I wish the movies would come out yearly, it is worth the wait if the movies are worth their weight.

If you haven't seen the preview, check it out online. And try to watch the prologue to new movie. There is a 7 or 8-minute short created for IMAX theatres that isn't a preview, nor part of the movie, but a prologue featuring the rise of The Joker, which is supposed to take place in the time between the end of Batman Begins and the start of The Dark Knight.