New Yankee Stadium

Was at the new ballpark yesterday, a Mets fans surrounded by Yankees fans (and maybe two White Sox fans - even if Pres. Obama loves them, they still aren't popular outside Chicago). As a place to watch a ballgame, it's very good. Good sightlines, good sound system, the same exact classic feel as the old Yankee Stadium. The barrage of graphics and noise was actually not as bad as it was at the old park, though I really wish they wouldn't use a sound clip of the annoying John Sterling's "THHHEEEEEEEE Yankees win!" (I cannot bear to listen to the Yanks not because I am not a fan but because he is all catchphrases and cliches.)

The park boasts lots of elevators, long overdue for a ballpark; a very cool little team museum with a collection of hundreds of baseball autographed by Yankees players from Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle down to guys even dedicated fans cannot recall; wide and airy corridors at all levels; and a strong but not overwhelming sense of Yankees history. (If only Citi Field had one tenth of this look back at the Mets' past, I'd be happy.)

That said, it was odd how much Yankee Stadium and Citi Field seemed alike, and not just because they serve the same function. You can tell that under the differing throwback designs, the parks were built by the same firm. Functional and comfortable, but not really that imaginative. I scoffed when I read a review by the architecture critic of The New Yorker that took both teams to task for not coming up with something really new. I thought, why does it need to be new? These are baseball stadiums, and aren't about innovation. But I think he had a point. There can be a way to salute the past without aping it.

For what it's worth, I think that Citi Field, with a slightly better selection of food, a miniature replica of the stadium for kids to play whiffleball in, and the soaring Jackie Robinson Rotunda as its main entry point, is just a bit better a place, even if new Yankee Stadium trumps it as a place that salutes baseball. But taken as a whole, both are not quite the sort of forward thinking edifices that you would think New York would demand.

Now if only someone can explain the Joba Rules to me.

Disney Buying Marvel

Really. The Mouse is buying the Spider for $4 billion. (Where are they even finding the money?) At some level, this is not a total shock, since it seemed likely for years that some movie studio would buy Marvel and use its characters to make movies, TV shows, and money. But the timing, in this rotten economy and from a studio that only recently bought Pixar, is quite the surprise.

I cannot even begin to imagine what this will do to the comics industry or to Hollywood. I can guess it will change Marvel in ways we can't foresee, that it will hurt Boom Studios just as their line of licensed Disney comics is launching (is there any way that the license won't be revoked and kept in-house?), that DC is really nervous, and that the handful of people who actually are selling Marvel are feeling really good today.

Prediction: Disney will push to get its favorite actor, Johnny Depp, into a Marvel film.

More to come, I am sure...

The Big Question About Marvel and Disney,,,

What will Stephen Colbert, friend of Marvel, employee of Viacom, and keeper of Captain America's shield, have to say about the sale?

One Last Disney-Marvel Thought

Disney bought Marvel because Marvel comes with hundreds of recognizable, established characters. It's why they bought the Muppets, and part of why they bought Pixar. There's no need to create anything new.

Which is becoming the dominant mode of so much of pop culture. By my reckoning, the last time a hit film was built around a new character was (rather ironically) Pirates of the Caribbean, when Jack Sparrow burst forth. Since then, it's a steady diet of familiar faces, even in great films like The Dark Knight and the Hellboy films. The only people who don't fall back on established characters for their hits are the Pixar geniuses, and even they are doing sequels now. And I cannot recall the last time that Marvel or DC created a totally new breakout hero.

I know that some TV shows are totally original, from Lost to Mad Men, and that you can turn old ideas into genius. But in a fall that includes not just TV shows based on films but second efforts to turn films like Parenthood into a series, after a summer where originality was a premium in the blockbusters, and on a day when Disney takes another step towards never having to develop new characters, I find myself wondering about where the next Spider-Man, the next Jack Sparrow, the next New Thing will come from. And if anyone will notice.